Chapter 35 Elena
ELENA
The Phoenix, the Goddess, and the Serpent. All bound by the same fire. All damned by it.
—from A Critique of the Ancient Gods (note: debunked by historians)
Ravence and Seshar are the same, little queen.
Samson sagged in her arms, his face sweaty and grey as his body grew alarmingly cold.
You help one, and you’ll save the other.
Around her, Syla called for the medics as Chandi shouted for them all to step back, give him air, let him breathe. But Elena could tell he was not breathing, that touching the feather had snapped something within him.
“Sam,” she whispered.
Hands pulled at her. Chandi, barking at her to get up and make way for the medics. Elena was pushed away. She had never seen the commander so panicked, her eyes wide with violent desperation as she grabbed Samson’s hand and begged him to hold on, to fight.
Fight what? she wanted to ask, but her question caught in the frays of her chest as medics rushed past her.
Syla stood to the side, his mouth slack.
Even the Arohassin woman looked alarmed, her knuckles white around her stylus.
Only the bearded man seemed untouched by the chaos.
He stood still with the gravitational quality of a boulder in a sandstorm. His dark eyes met hers.
Fire, he mouthed.
Elena blinked, and then she understood. She pushed through the guards and medics.
“Get away,” Chandi snarled.
“I can help him,” Elena said, though she did not know how, not really, only that something within her too had shifted when he took the feather from her palm.
“He needs fire, Chandi,” she said, pitching her voice low to calm the commander. “Let me help him.”
Chandi hesitated, but then Samson let out a soft gasp, and she shuddered. She closed her eyes. Her face rippled with emotions Elena could not read, but when she opened her eyes, there was a steeliness there that made Elena balk.
“If you kill him, I swear I’ll cut you down right here.”
Chandi unspooled her urumi with a hiss. She moved aside, hovering close so that when Elena stepped forward, she could still see the malicious glint of her blade.
On the hover stretcher, Samson shivered violently. His eyes fluttered, unseeing.
Too much water, Elena thought.
Too much greed, too much ambition. Samson Kytuu was a man of war, and he had already razed the earth with his merciless inferno. How many more would die? How many more would he bury?
Slowly, Elena placed her hands on his chest.
She still remembered the cruel heat of his fire. The cold touch of the rain as he pressed his hands around her throat and told her that she was nothing without him.
Who even are you, alone?
Her fingers trembled.
Better to let him die now. Better to stop him before all her people fell to his sordid prophecies and his bloodletting. Would it not be a mercy to kill a man before he became a monster?
His Agni can be yours for the taking.
Her own Agni trembled. It felt like a fissure had run through her body, and she could still feel the afterquakes vibrate through her bones.
Of course she wanted to stop him, but—but Elena had not expected this.
She had only wanted his fire, and though she did not know what exactly that entailed, she had not wished this.
As Samson wheezed, as his face greyed and his spittle dripped down his lips, something raw and hurt twisted within her.
She thought of the burned girl and how Samson had healed her wounds.
She remembered how her people had bowed to him and forgotten their squabbles if only to gaze upon his fire.
Though she saw Samson Kytuu as the Butcher, they saw him as their Blue Star.
The man whom they loved, if not feared, for his terrible power.
Allowing him to die now would only make him a martyr.
And what then would happen to Ravence? To Seshar?
If she killed hope, was she not as monstrous as him?
Elena did not know if they could truly achieve peace for Ravence and Seshar. Only that the man who could possibly help save them both was now dying in her arms.
She pressed her palm against his chest, heat fanning from her hand.
Her flames spread across Samson’s body, wrapping around his arms, torso, and legs.
Elena closed her eyes and sought his Agni, following its plea deep down to the spark.
To the hidden place the high sister had shown her.
She felt the ghost of it, like shadows thrown on the wall by firelight, and heard its alarmed hiss, but she could not find it.
Beneath her touch, Samson trembled. A groan escaped his lips.
Chandi shouted something again, but her voice seemed to come from far away as Elena’s world contracted and sound seeped out.
His Agni evaded her. She could feel its vibrations, the resonance of its power shrinking beneath her touch, but as she chased it to its source, she found only darkness. And the cold.
It came at her with claws.
A chill crept up from where her palms touched his skin, up her wrists, her elbows, biting into the warm vibrance of her own Agni. Elena gasped. The cold reared up her spine, into the base of her neck. She felt her throat close, her concentration break.
Samson moaned, and her flames flickered.
“Come on, you brute,” she hissed beneath her breath. Her nails dug into his chest, hard enough to leave marks. “Work with me.”
Her flames waned, weakening as fatigue washed over her, but she pressed on, her hands shaking with effort.
“Sam,” she pleaded.
The name, soft like a prayer, escaped her lips without thought. And his Agni heard.
She felt it flail, and she surged her Agni forward, fueled it with heat, with desire, with the one desperation they both knew too well.
Endure.
Her Agni rolled into his, and she felt it then: the clear life force of it, irradiant and extant. Suddenly, Samson gasped. His body knifed up, and before Elena could react, his hands closed around her throat, his blue fire searing her face.
She cried out, falling on her back as Samson pinned her down.
His eyes were wild and crazed, his face twisted into a snarl.
Her vision split then. She saw Samson above her, choking her, and she saw him as her Agni did.
A deep, beating radix of power so bright, so vicious, his chakras and nadis glowed with the terrible force of it.
But there was a darkness at the root of him.
A toxic waste, slowly feeding. And when she peered, it looked back with golden eyes of reckoning.
Goddess, it whispered. I will hurt you for what you took from me.
And then she was back in the courtyard, pinned beneath him.
Helplessly, Elena beat against his hands.
Someone yanked Samson by the shoulders, but he still would not budge.
With one last effort, Elena reached up and slapped him, hard.
Samson gasped, head whipping to the side. Whatever had taken over him passed as he fell back and met her gaze, recognition and alarm flashing across his face.
They stared at each other for a moment, drenched in sweat and horror, before she rasped, “What. The. Hell?”
“I—I’m sorry,” Samson said. His eyes were wide and filled with a terror Elena had never seen him wear before. “I felt—I thought—you were trying to kill me.”
The bearded man wiped blood from his mouth where Samson’s shoulder had connected with his chin. “She’s the reason you’re still alive.”
Samson blinked, as if only now realizing the people around them, the chaos that had ensued. He touched his chest, then his lower belly. When he opened his hand, a blue flame curled up, and he stared at it, amazed.
“How—” he began.
Chandi helped him up, her voice small and strained. “That’s enough now. You need to rest.”
But Samson turned to Elena, reaching out to help her stand.
“Get away from me,” she spat. Her throat throbbed. It hurt to speak. She scrambled back as Samson watched her with something akin to heartbreak.
This too felt familiar, this hurt too much.
“I didn’t mean to, Elena, please, let me help,” he said.
Syla stepped between them. “Your commander is right, Butcher. You need rest. All of us do. Come.”
He offered his arm to Elena, and she took it. Samson did not try to stop her, though she felt his eyes and the weight of his guilt. When they began to leave, he called out to her.
“Thank you,” he said.
She ventured one glance back.
Too blue, she thought. A curse. A curse that is now mine.
“It’s too late to go back now,” she said and turned away. It was an insufficient reply, but it was the only one Elena could give. Because she did not know if, by saving Samson and the darkness within him, she had now damned the world.