Chapter 68 Elena #2
Elena froze. Syla and Daz said nothing, their faces shuttered. Rhumia shifted away from her. Like animals sensing disease, they were already distancing themselves.
“You say you came seeking peace. I say you wanted to help the Arohassin end what they started,” Farin growled.
“You let the terrorist into the palace. You pretended she was your aide. And when these… lotus bombs were set off, you and Samson Kytuu were found not in the palace, but at the shore, conspiring.”
“That is not true—”
“Why did you leave the palace, then, Elena, when everyone was celebrating?”
“Because I—”
I was there to give Samson to you.
And then it struck her.
This had been Farin’s plan all along.
Perhaps from the very beginning, when Samson had destroyed the mines.
Had Farin signed the peace treaty knowing it would all lead to this?
He had instructed her to bring Samson to the beach at the appointed hour.
He had swiftly agreed to her demands of freeing both Ravence and Seshar.
She had been so caught up in her guilt and regret that she had not seen his acquiescence for what it truly was—subterfuge.
She had fallen into his trap, like an insect in the web of a patient spider waiting for its dinner. And now he was ready to gorge.
“I revoke the treaty between our countries,” Farin said, his voice booming through the chamber. “And I vote that we sentence Queen Elena to death.”
She stilled. All her racing thoughts, her hammering heart, her rushing fear, were muted as she watched the cold faces of the regents before her.
“I second,” Kysha said.
Daz and Syla made no move, and Elena’s gaze settled on Risha.
The tiebreaker.
The queen of Tsuana stared ahead, eyes glazed and distant. Mouth set. She said nothing for a long time. In the deafening silence, Elena felt herself weaken, buckle.
The seashells of her headdress tinkled softly as Risha finally met her gaze. There was no kindness in her eyes. Only grief.
“Bormani could be overbearing, but he was also a friend.” She seemed to brace herself, her jaw tightening. “We do this in his memory, to serve justice for Veran.”
She raised her hand.
Elena had imagined that at her death, the temple bells would clang in mourning. The desert would stir with storms of sorrow. People would fill the streets, weeping, laying malas upon her pyre.
But she was a long way from home.
Only the sounds of the lights shuttering filled the air. Only the soft footfalls of the guard as he came forward, his face an expression of pity and resentment.
No, a small voice within her whispered. It grew stronger as the guard clipped his chain to her cuffs, as the regents rose from their seats. A deep-rooted, floundering desperation clawed up her throat with the asperity of the damned. She would not die like this. She refused.
“If you have already sentenced me, dear kings and queens, then please, afford me this one reprieve.
“Syla, Daz,” she called, and they froze at the unnerving calm in her voice. “Would you be so kind as to see to my belongings on the killdoms?”
Syla hesitated, but Daz knew the look in her eye. Unlike the Cyleoni, he had seen her fight, seen her fires, and before Syla could argue, he quickly gripped the man’s elbow and tugged him forward. “May the Mother’s Light guide you.”
He hurried out the door, Syla in tow. Risha frowned at their sudden departure, and Elena saw unease flitter across her face. Kysha merely crossed her arms. “Is that all?”
Beside her, the guard fastened a second chain from his hip to the shackles on her feet. He tugged, satisfied.
“One last request,” Elena said, and her gaze found Farin, her vision splitting into the eyes of her Agni. “The next time you plan to execute me, make it quicker.”
With a sudden jerk, she whipped around, startling her guard. She threw herself forward and tackled him to the ground. Shouts sounded. She heard the sudden thunder of more boots, but she had found his dagger, and with a wrench, Elena flung it toward Farin.
The metal king sidestepped, and the blade clattered harmlessly against the wall.
“Take her to the cells,” Farin sneered.
They dragged her to her feet, but Elena smiled grimly, her blood already roaring, her Agni surging forth as she saw the golden points of his chakras and the flows of his nadis, and pulled.
“Pick it up,” she snarled.
Farin stiffened suddenly. His eyes bulged, and his body clacked, the gears whining in protest. He resisted her instinctively, like an unbroken horse bucks its rider, but Elena surged her awareness through the heat of his veins, the bright essence within. “I said, pick it up.”
With a cry, Farin snatched up the blade.
The guards shouted, some rushing toward Farin, the others searching her, looking for a device, a tool.
The fools. The greatest weapon she had was herself.
Jaya had been right. They would never see her as their equal.
To them, she was Elena Aadya Ravence, terrorist, warmonger, the awful and monstrous Burning Queen.
Her story and the stories of all abused Ravani and Sesharians were but mere noises in the grand symphony of their power.
Who cared about the dead Ravani? Who cared about the oppressed Sesharians?
As long as someone else suffered, as long as the metal trade survived, the regents were satiated.
They would never listen to her—even if she brought them peace.
Even if she played to their benefit. No matter the threats she crafted, no matter the alliances she forged, they would always see her and her like as nothing more than a country of fanatics, lost and broken and poor. They would always find her wanting.
Who even are you, alone?
She was the sum of her people’s hope, and the object of their disdain. She had been a liar and a fraud, hero, villain, and conqueror, but Elena knew one thing for certain—she was no coward of an empire.
Wrath—absolute, complete—ripped through her. With all her power, all her worth, Elena summoned her Agni until she was nothing more than a singular desire to burn.
She jerked Farin toward Kysha with a twisting of limbs. The Karvenese queen tried to run, but her dress caught in the legs of her chair. She stumbled, and then Farin’s metal hand flashed, and she screamed as his blade cut through her upper back.
Risha shrieked and rushed for the exit, but Elena flared her Agni forth and snagged into her prana. Risha floundered, caught. Her limbs twitched as Elena forced her to turn around, to face Farin.
The metal king ripped out the blade from Kysha’s shoulders. Blood dripped down the point. The guards moved from her to Farin, one grabbing his arm, the other his leg, but the king was half machine and moved with a brutal strength.
“Farin, please,” Risha said, her body frozen.
“Stop this, Elena,” Farin cried as he moved forward.
But she could not hear him over the terrible ringing in her ears. A pressure built behind her eyes, her mouth. Blood trickled from her nose, and Elena could taste something wet and hot in her chest, but she did not care. They had brought this upon themselves. They had done this.
A guard, bright enough to recognize her control, darted toward her.
Elena felt for his heat, the distinctive prana of his heart, and tore.
Flames ripped up from beneath his skin. He crashed, aflame. Screams cleaved through the air, from Risha, from Farin, from the guards who finally began to understand the horror before their eyes.
“Witch!”
“Sorceress!”
“Bitch!” they called her, and Elena could only laugh, her voice high and brittle.
“Better to be a bitch than a bechari.”
She raised Farin’s arm and threw the blade. It sank neatly into Risha’s chest. The Tsuani queen let out a loud, wet gurgle, her eyes catching Elena’s with a look of such confusion, she almost felt pity.
The queen toppled to the floor. Her guards cried for a medic, for help. Their voices rose in a chorus, panicked and hysterical like birds trapped in a smoking tree. It slammed into her. And for a moment, Elena swayed.
She remembered the burning mountain. She remembered her burning city. She had felt this fear—this immutable, irrevocable premonition of death.
This had been her, once.
But over the chorus of their screams, Elena heard the song of her power. The delicious, devastating thrum of her Agni, deep and resonant, like dawn breaking over a burning sea. Like beauty over horror. A goddess over men.
So she drowned that feeling.
She drowned her fear.
Elena wrenched her Agni forward and burned.
The guard closest to her shrieked as flames licked down his leg. He hopped back, kicking. Another tried to pin her to the ground, but Elena yanked the flames, and he howled at their vicious bite. She began to rise—but pain razed down her wounded leg. She gasped, crashing back to the floor.
The pain swelled—white-hot, unwieldly. It traveled up her leg, her chest, to the upper reaches of her throat.
Elena bit back a scream as her control wavered.
Farin jerked free, shouting for the guards to pin her down, goddamn it!
They rushed forward, meaty, cruel hands clenching around her arms, digging into her skin.
She fought them. Hard. With all her strength—but that too was fading fast.
Elena cried out as she was shoved onto her stomach, her chin clacking against the floor. Blood filled her mouth. Faintly, she smelled the ash of her dying fires. Someone tugged her up, and she caught Farin’s spiteful, frayed face.
“Bury her,” he spat, spittle flying from his lips. “I want her fucking entombed in the mountain.”
But she could smell his fear, taste it even now, and Elena laughed and laughed as they dragged her back to her cell.