Chapter 63 Elena
ELENA
I have always suspected a deep, rotten thing at the heart of me.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Farin held out a golden kamarbandh. “This is for you.”
Gingerly, Elena avoided his metal fingers. “What is this for?”
“For tracking. I want you to lead Samson to the beach between the docks. Tell him you have something to show him on the killdoms. My men will handle the rest.”
Elena examined the waist belt. Precious emeralds and pink diamonds were set delicately into patterns of lotuses and jasmine.
Intricate threadwork twined around the band, shaping vines, trees.
She turned it around and stopped, her breath catching.
A golden Phoenix, eyes ablaze with rubies and wings flared to the heavens, rose in the middle of the kamarbandh as if ready to take flight.
It reminded her of her coronation necklace.
How heavily the Phoenix had sat on her chest. Perhaps it had been a warning of all the burdens she would come to bear.
Carefully, she turned the belt around, swallowing the sudden bitterness in her throat.
“Where is the tracker?”
He tapped a metal finger against the Phoenix with a sharp ping. “Right here.”
Of course he would put it in the Phoenix. Elena met his eyes, and Farin gave a cold, simple smile that stoked the ire in her belly. “Do you want to see if it fits?”
“It will,” she said, stepping quickly away from him.
Farin watched her for a moment, his robotic eye still. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”
“None.” She kept her face remote, impassive. “The quicker we get this done, the better. I have a lot of work to do in Ravence after the ruin you caused.”
“And I in Jantar, after the destruction you created in my mines.” This time, his smile was edged. “So I say we’re even.”
She thought of her father, falling into the flames. Her city, scorched. Her people, lost. War had cost her everything, and still, it was not enough.
“No, Farin,” she said softly. “We are not even. But it will have to do.”
Back in her rooms, Elena cinched the kamarbandh around her waist. Despite all the jewels and gold, it remained light, weighed down only by the Phoenix.
The tracker lay tucked within its hollow underside.
Elena tugged the kamarbandh tighter, wincing as it began to cut into her skin.
She draped her golden pallu down her arm when a sudden thud broke the quiet.
Elena stiffened, the pallu drifting to the floor.
Cautiously, she turned. A shape appeared outside her balcony, becoming more solid, drawing close, and she carved her hands into the Lotus, a flame sparking between her fingers when the door opened and the high sister stepped through.
“You?” Elena gasped.
“I told you we would meet again.” Sura pulled down her hood with an amused smile as she saw the flame in her hand. “Is that meant for me?”
Elena snapped her wrist, and the flame vanished. “What are you doing here? Did Daz send you?”
“No, I am not here at the general’s request but my own.” Sura sat on the edge of the bed. “Sit.”
But Elena could only stare. The high sister looked completely at ease despite dropping in with no warning, and Elena did not know what startled her the most. The Yumi priestess here, in her room, or the fact that she wore a plain Tsuani longcoat instead of her robes. Perhaps both.
“H-how did you get here?” Elena said, still standing.
“After you left, my sisters and I arranged for my journey to Tsuana,” Sura answered. “First across the bay to Nbru, then on a merchant trade ship to Tsuana. They really do have tasty fried okra here.”
“B-but,” Elena said, her mind skittering between the priestess’s odd appearance and her travels, “why?”
“The flames told me to,” Sura said simply. She looked around the room. “Do you have it? The feather?”
“The feather?” Elena began, and then she remembered the crystallized feather and Samson’s fading eyes. How he had fallen to his knees upon touching it. How it was the high sister who had told her to give it to him.
“You—you knew.” The priestess watched calmly as Elena trembled. She remembered the biting cold in his body, the pallid skin of his chest. But most of all, she remembered how that numbness had tried to drown her. “It almost killed him. You said it would help me take his Agni. You did not warn me—”
“I wanted you to establish a connection with his Agni,” Sura said gently. “Can you sense his now?”
Elena paused. She turned inward, searching. She perceived the ghost of Samson’s Agni, though the sensation felt hazy, as if trying to grasp a flickering shadow. The more she concentrated on it, the flimsier it became. “I—I can, sort of. It is easier when he’s closer.”
Concern ringed the priestess’s voice. “Can he lock onto yours? Have you tempered your end of the connection?”
“He did once.” She remembered the sudden rush of heat as Samson had reached for her Agni on the boat, and then how everything had faded, muted after. “We melded our Agni together to sail through the Black Pit.”
Sura inhaled sharply. “And he did not take all your Agni? Oh, Great Mother. Then perhaps there is a chance.”
“Chance for what?” Elena said, frustration pushing into her voice. “Why are you here? Who are you seeking? What is this connection you speak of?”
“I have come seeking the third, Elena,” Sura said. “It is here. I know it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because your Eternal Fire has rejected your Prophet, and mine now burns black with the grief of the Goddess. The time approaches. You and Samson Kytuu must find and break the Serpent’s cage. The third will wake then. Hurry, Elena. Let us go at once—”
But Elena was no longer listening. Her heart crashed against her ribs with the wild abandon of waves beating the shore. She staggered to a seat. It felt as if she were drowning, clawing for the surface, struggling for air, only for the waves to beat her down again.
Suddenly, she felt the sharp contours of the kamarbandh around her waist, the heaviness of the Phoenix and its intended purpose.
Lead Samson to the beach. She had no room for priestesses and their raving dreams of gods and fire.
This was her purpose. She did not care about dead gods.
She did not care about unity or great divinity.
Ravence was at the end of this long, arduous journey, and she was too exhausted to entertain anything else.
“Stop,” she whispered.
“—the fires will dance in unison! A new holy age shall begin! You are the Goddess’s vehicle of change and—”
“STOP.”
Sura froze. Slowly, Elena rose to her feet, and as she did so, she remembered her father and how he had told her of priestesses’ mad rants. Their incessant need to shove upon others. Was this how he had felt, scraped to the bone, drained beyond belief, as he had listened?
“Samson Kytuu is not my responsibility,” she said. “After tonight, we will go our separate ways. Ravence does not need its god. It needs its queen, and I intend to return to build it.”
Sura sucked her teeth. “Are you afraid of divinity?”
“I am not,” Elena said truthfully. “But I am tired of these talks of distant gods. Neither the Phoenix nor your Goddess helped me when Ravence fell. The Serpent did not help us when Seshar fell. The gods are just that, Priestess. Distant, uncaring, unyielding. It is better you go back to your temple now. Your general will return soon, and I’m sure he will be curious why you will not be there to greet him. ”
Sura studied her for a long moment, then said, quietly, “Do you honestly not crave such divine powers?”
Elena thought of the killdoms, of how she had reached for and wrenched out all the bright, essential parts of the captain until he had become a shriveled mess of blood and bone.
She remembered the heat of power rushing through her veins then.
The glory of it. The beauty of it. She closed her eyes, inhaling, then spoke.
“I do. I have. On the ships, I saw the chakra points within another and could bend his heat to destroy himself.”
When she opened her eyes, she found the high sister still, her face marred with both horror and intrigue.
“Was this after you connected with Samson?” she asked softly. Elena nodded, and Sura ran a hand over her bald scalp. “I have read of the ability only in legend, only wielded by those of Agni. But it is within the Serpent’s nature to ruin all that She touches.”
Suddenly, Sura grasped her hands, squeezing so tightly that Elena winced.
“When you wield such power, it bites into your own. For every life taken, you shave off a sun of your own. How many have you taken with such powers, Elena?” When she did not answer, the priestess shook her. “How many?”
“I—I don’t know,” Elena gasped.
The priestess dropped her hands, moving back. “Then pray you find your faith again. The third will rise, Elena. And it is up to you to seek unity or wither into chaos.”
Elena entered the courtyard, her mind still ringing with the baleful prophecy of the high sister.
After she had failed to convince her, Sura had slipped out, and Elena felt no urge to call her back.
She was weary of Agni and the mad dreams it produced.
Or the people it endangered. She thought listlessly of her purpose, her fingers fluttering over her belt.
One man for two kingdoms. One monster for freedom. Surely, she could pay that exchange. Surely, she could bear that price.