Chapter 65 Elena
ELENA
Our stories are full of fools who, in agony, drive the blade deeper and call it love.
—from The Legends and Myths of Sayon
She slipped out of the palace, following the moonlit canals toward the shore. The moons, yellow and soft like the heart of a lotus, swelled over the horizon. Music trilled in the distance as the city celebrated, but unlike before, Elena no longer felt the urge to dance.
A large park floated along the port, and beyond it, Elena could see the silver stretch of the beach gleaming like an oiled blade.
Her steps slowed. For a moment, Elena stood transfixed as the tide crashed into the shore with steady, even sighs.
But then her gaze drifted to the killdoms out in the bay, and the moment passed. She shuttered her wonder.
Just one more night, and then we can all go home.
Elena walked down the hillside to the park.
She had time before the hour, and she knew, as she wandered through the still gardens, that he would come.
She knew before she even felt the faint edges of his Agni flickering in her mind’s eye.
Birds of paradise fluttered in between the trees, and Elena kept her eyes trained on one as she felt him approach.
“Elena.”
She closed her eyes. Drew in a bracing breath, and then turned.
There was no warm light in his gaze now, no flirty smile. He stalked forward with the slow gait of a predator, and she thought, dully, that this was the Samson Kytuu she knew. Not the tender, beautiful man who asked her to dance and dressed her wounds. Her Samson was a monster.
“Why are you following me?”
“Why are you running?” he asked.
“I am not running,” she said, and he stopped a pace before her. She could see the silver glint of his urumi. Ironic, that they both wore weapons around their waist.
“I think you are,” he said. “I think you’re afraid, but I don’t understand why.”
She barked a laugh. “I am not afraid. I told you, I am tired. There is so much to do, with so little time, and I can’t spend it dancing.”
“But you want to,” he said, and his voice struck her cold. “You want to and you’re denying yourself. Why, Elena? Why are you leading us both on this chase?”
She swallowed, gooseflesh prickling up her arms. Through the trees, she saw the silver gleam of the beach. Farin’s men would be coming with their boats soon. Perhaps she should bring Samson down, toward the shore—
“I know why,” he said, and her eyes lifted to his. “You are afraid that if you admit how you feel, you will also admit some fault of your own. You are afraid of yourself, Elena Aadya Ravence. That is why you’re running.”
“That is not true,” she said, heat rising to her face.
“It is. And you will deny it because it is in your nature. Because for whatever reason, your pride outweighs your honesty.”
She scoffed. “Is this why you followed me? To tell me off?”
“No,” he said, and his voice quivered under the weight of unsaid things. She froze, suddenly unsure. She did not want him to go further. If he did, she would regret it, and her regret would claw her until she was bleeding from within. How then could she heal from self-inflicted wounds?
“Samson, listen. Whatever you may feel about me, about us, forget it.” She drew in a shaky breath as she felt the cool press of the kamarbandh around her waist. “It will be better that way. Trust me.”
He watched her for a long moment, the shadows of the fluttering leaves dancing across his still face. When he spoke, they rippled over his lips. “I don’t believe you.”
Her pulse quickened as he stepped forward, his voice low, intense.
“And I don’t love you, Elena Aadya Ravence, I despise you.
You’re idealistic to the point of self-destruction.
You throw yourself into danger for the sake of your country, but you don’t stop to realize the consequences.
You’re self-righteous, thickheaded, and vain to the point that I cannot fully trust you.
“So why,” he said, his eyes dragging to hers with a fresh wave of pain, “can I not stop thinking about you? Why, when I try to make myself hate you with every fiber of my being, do my thoughts betray me? Why, Elena, can I not forget you?”
A roar filled her ears as if she was standing on a cliff, the wind buffeting her forward.
Everything felt distant and pointless all at once, the beach, the kamarbandh, her promise.
She had the strange, peculiar sensation of teetering on the edge, afraid of falling, but also curious to know how it felt. To fall.
For him.
His eyes, always a mask, always hiding some terror in their dark depths like an ocean drowning its secrets, were clear with desperation—to the point of vulnerability. His openness terrified her. His words pulled her in.
She trembled as he came closer and touched her chin with a gentleness that shocked her, if only because of its incongruity with the violent passion in his voice.
“You,” he said, his voice trembling. “You vex me, Elena. Every second, every moment you’re near, I cannot think clearly. And yet I cannot stand it when you stay away.”
The roar in her ears reached a keen as he tilted her chin up, bringing her face to his so that when he spoke in a hushed whisper, his breath brushed her lips.
“Why must you haunt me so? Why can’t you leave me be?” He grazed his thumb against her lower lip, shaking. “Tell me. Please.”
Because you and I are the same, she almost said. Cut from the same fabric by the same cruel gods. Vain, self-righteous, horrid. Because you are the monster I see in me.
But the roar in her ears crushed out all sound and lodged the words in her throat.
To say them was to speak a truth she’d rather ignore.
Better to leave them unsaid than acknowledge her own corruption.
If she did not speak, she could pretend the events that had led them to this point, this precipice where they stood now, was only of his making.
She was blameless, honest, true—like the queen she had always yearned to be.
But even as she thought so, Elena knew it was not true. She was just as monstrous. Just as desirous and desperate for power, so much so that it would have made her laugh, if not for the sudden tightness in her throat. The Burning Queen and the Butcher. The odd pair. Monsters of the same coin.
She had as much blood on her hands as he had on his.
And she could suffer for it on her own, because even in suffering she was vain, or—and this was a deadly, incriminating or—she could share that suffering.
Find someone to bear her burden of sins if only to have companionship. If only to be a little less lonely.
Elena looked into Samson’s eyes as he cupped her face, her chest twisting with a terror that made her feel like she was already plummeting, the wind raging in her ears as she fell—to what, she did not know.
And she realized she no longer cared. What was the point in denying herself, if destruction was her ultimate path?
“Sam,” she gasped, and she felt a great weight break upon her shoulders, her voice cracking upon his name. The plea in her voice registered across his face as he breathed in quick. His fingers trembled on her cheeks. “I can’t stay away either.”
She touched his chest and felt his heart thrum beneath her palm, matching the racing rhythm of her own heartbeat. Her skin prickled, hot. He seemed to shudder at her touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment and then snapping back open.
“Elena,” he whispered.
His lips, warm, soft, and near. Glistening as his tongue darted forth to wet them.
“You,” he said.
She swayed in his arms. “You.”
“You are my ruin. And I want to be completely, utterly ravaged by you.”
He cupped the back of her neck, his caress sending a thrill down her spine.
His other hand dropped to her waist, and it felt like the dance all over again, but this time, she pressed willingly into his touch.
Her hips brushed his, and she felt the cool slick of his urumi against her belly.
Warmth flared down her legs, making her weak.
Elena shuddered against him, her lips just a breath before his.
“Then ruin us,” she said.
He kissed her. Hot, slow, taking care to taste her lips and dance his tongue along the edges of her teeth. Elena gave a slight moan. She was falling, falling.
She forgot about the beach, her promises, her failures, as she raked her fingers through his hair and tugged him closer.
He moaned into her mouth. Ran his hands over the bare curves of her stomach, as if to memorize every inch.
His mouth became hungrier, harder. She bit down on his lip, and he gasped, his chest quaking against her fingertips.
She wanted to tear him apart, to peel back the layers and see what lay beneath. To see the monster and bare her own.
The desire to see him fully filled her with a heady yearning.
She grasped at the buttons of his shirt.
With a simple, effortless pull, Samson tore it in two.
She saw the faded scar running down his chest to the ridges of his upper abdomen.
When she traced it, Samson hissed against her neck.
She wanted to take it away from him, the memory and the pain it carried.
She kissed his neck, his chest, his scar until he growled low in his throat.
“Elena.”
Samson pulled her back up, kissing her with a renewed passion that made her knees buckle as his hands cupped beneath her. She gasped as he hoisted her up with a sudden strength.
She wrapped her legs around his waist as he shielded the backs of her thighs from his urumi. He kissed her neck, her breasts, his chest pressing into the curve of her stomach. When he nipped at the soft skin beneath her collarbone, Elena groaned.
“Sam, wait,” she said.
He paused, his eyes glazed and unfocused. “Do you not want—”
“No, no.” She pressed closer, shivering as she felt his hardness press against the inside of her thigh. “Just… not here. We should leave and go—”
Where? The palace? Farin would find them there. His men were already on their way to the beach. No, they needed to leave Tsuana. Now.
“The bounders,” she began, when a sudden sound to their right made her stiffen. Samson stilled beneath her, his voice coming out in short, hot gasps.
“What is it?” he said.
His lips were slick and wet underneath the moon. Instinctively, she wiped the corner of his mouth, when the sound came again. A sharp crack, like branches snapping underfoot.
This time, Samson heard it too. He dropped her immediately and pushed her behind him, reaching for his urumi, but it was too late.
A pulse ripped through the night, shattering the quiet. Samson dove, pulling her down with him. He draped his body over hers as the night erupted with shrieking birds and pulse fire.
“Sam,” she cried in warning.
She saw a shape out of the corner of her eye, and suddenly rough hands were pulling him up, pulling her away.
She yelled, kicking, hands sparking. Elena drove forward, kneeing her opponent as her flame roared to life. She twisted, calling for Samson, when someone rammed the butt of a gun against her temple.
Her head whiplashed back. A high ringing filled her ears. She tried to turn, but then a soldier punched her in the liver, and she crumpled in two like a fallen petal.
“Sam,” she rasped.
Shapes spun in her vision, quick and efficient with violence.
Something flared, and her vision cleared for a moment to see Samson, half-dressed, summoning a flame.
It rippled down his urumi with a crack that thundered through the garden.
He whirled, the twin blades cutting through a soldier with a vicious, practiced beauty.
Another brought up his zeemir, but Samson cleaved it in half.
He was a flurry of motion and fire and god-given rage. A monster, and hers alone.
“Sam!” she cried.
He whipped around at the sound of her voice, and in that moment she would remember forever, in that moment she would come to regret, his eyes crashed into hers. She saw his blazing fury, his wrath—and his tenderness. Even in ruin, he had love for her.
And it would haunt her forever.
The soldier came from the undergrowth, from the other side. She saw the glint of silver, a flapping sleeve. Samson spun, trying to dodge his attacker, but he was off step, off rhythm.
The dagger cut clean through his chest—through his scar.
Samson gasped.
“No!” she screamed.
His eyes widened in shock as he looked down at the curved blade. At his blood, already dripping.
Samson sank to his knees.
Elena screamed again, trying to pull herself up, but her hands slipped in the slick dirt. With a violent shove, the soldier pushed Samson onto his side. The pulse fire stopped then, plummeting them into a horrible silence where the only sound was that of Samson’s rasping breath.
“No, no, Sam.” She reached with bloody fingers. “Ruru, please.”
But the Jantari dragged her away as his eyes—those terrible, wonderful, cursed eyes—shuttered, their light fading fast.