15. Maxim
Chapter Fifteen
Maxim
Consciousness brings pain.
But also…warmth.
And ice.
Contradictory sensations that make no sense as I try to open my eyes and move my limbs. Both are impossible. I’m lying on my back while a massive weight presses down on every part of my body, including my face, but now it’s lifting…
No… Melting.
Freezing water rushes off my body, and then my eyes fly open and air rushes into my chest as I take a deep breath.
My head is turned at a sharp angle and all I see at first is little rivers of glistening water rushing across the surface of thickening lava, the melted sand congealing and darkening to glassy, black rock at my side.
I must have burned the sand around me with my flames, creating a sea of lava before the avalanche crashed down on me.
Dragging deep breaths, I push myself upright as the final weight of ice flows off me.
The buzzing in my ears clears.
Northward, in the direction my feet are pointed, snowstorms continue to rage, a blanket of white covering the border and seemingly everywhere north of it, but behind me, surprising warmth beckons, an amber glow growing stronger.
It feels like…
My heart leaps into my throat as I struggle upright, managing to make it to my knees so I can turn into the warmth.
A line of Ember women stands in the freezing cold behind me. Their bare hands are outstretched while their bodies are fully covered from their necks to their feet in silks that whip around their forms.
Heat waves ripple from their hands.
They’ve formed a heat chain, a combining of their quiet fire that is most powerful when performed by a group of Ember women.
At their center is my sister. To her right is my aunt. On either side of them are the sixteen women of my father’s harem, one of whom is my mother. I don’t know which one she is. Only the women in the harem know her identity and none of them would tell me when I asked.
Because of that, I bestowed on all of them the title of Mother to the King, collectively the Mothers, and gave them all the security that my biological mother would have.
“Brother.” My sister’s voice reaches me like a whisper, although, judging by the way her mouth moves when she speaks, she’s shouting to be heard. “Are you okay?”
I’m completely naked, kneeling away from the women and twisting at the waist to maintain some dignity.
Every one of these women is risking her life for me right now.
The snowstorm could form another avalanche, let alone freeze them to death if their heat chain fails.
The sandy snowflakes swirling through the air are as sharp as knives—already several women bear cuts across their arms, their silken clothing torn in places.
Worst of all, they’re standing close enough to me that a single outburst of my flames would turn them to ash.
I never expected this.
Am I okay?
My voice chokes in my throat before I can answer.
“Brother!” Zenaida dares close the gap between us as she demands a response.
I give her a nod, trying to process the unfamiliar emotions I’m experiencing. Gratitude. Hope.
Yet what comes out of my mouth is born from resurging fear. “You shouldn’t be here! You could be killed.”
She stops in her tracks, but her smile is instant.
“He’s okay!” she shouts back to the other women.
I should be focusing on steadying myself, making sure my bones are healed, but I take a moment to search the women’s faces, seeking one for whom my life might mean more. Any sign that might reveal who gave me life.
Their expressions are all impassable.
It seems that, even now, their years serving my father have given them the ability to mask every emotion they might be feeling.
“Clothe yourself,” my sister says, carefully picking her path along the uneven ground, choosing the flatter mounds of cold lava that poke up through the freezing water before she chooses one on which to stand and throws me a wadded-up pair of fire-resistant pants.
I catch the clothing before the wind can snatch the pants away.
Turning my back, I quickly pull on the garment, only to once again face the snowstorm being kept at bay by the heat chain.
My shoulders slump.
I survived the pulse of energy and then the avalanche. Maybe stopped both. But I haven’t done a fucking thing to stop whatever’s causing this storm.
Zenaida reaches my side. Like Kaiba, she is brave to choose to stand in my presence. “The smoke started coming into the city.”
My focus snaps to her. I didn’t think the toxins had reached that far, but obviously, that was wishful thinking.
“Before the smoke could progress beyond the ventilation shafts, the frost wiped it away. At first, we were grateful. Then we started to freeze.” She returns my gaze, but now she gives me a firm nod. “And then, brother, we felt your fire.”
Every muscle in my body tenses, my focus flashing to the women whose power is warming me. “If I hurt anyone—”
“You didn’t.” Zenaida’s hand rises toward me, but she doesn’t make contact.
Any contact with me would be foolish.
“You counteracted the cold and gave us the chance to form heat chains within the city,” she says. “You saved lives today, brother.”
For once, I’m grateful for my heat, but then Zenaida continues.
“But we knew things were bad when the frost started overpowering your fire again.”
“So you came.”
She lowers her voice. “It’s lucky we did. Our aunt was already trying to get to you. She was pushing through the snow all on her own. Kaiba tried to stop her, but—Oh!”
Zenaida jolts and so do I.
Our aunt, Miriam, is pushing toward us right now, picking her way across the cooling stones like Zenaida did.
Maybe Miriam didn’t hear Zenaida say that I’m okay. Our aunt is a healer; her instinct is to help, but I’ve never needed her assistance in that regard. My flames heal all of my wounds, whether broken bones or deep cuts. I don’t even bleed.
I back away hurriedly, afraid of hurting her, forced to leap the distance to the next cooling rock.
I’ve never seen my aunt appear so determined as she plows toward us, her petite stature swathed in ochre-colored silks that bring out the wide streak of amber in her hair.
“Don’t worry,” she calls. “Kaiba’s watching over Aeliana. He and Riven will keep her safe.”
I crouch low to the stone, prepared to hurl myself into the water if my fire burns. “My concern is for you right now, Auntie.”
“That is admirable, my king,” she says, coming to a stop on the stone next to Zenaida’s, “but it’s the sun you should be worried about. Cold, is it not?”
My head draws back, my eyes narrowed at the way she pointed it out. Despite the warmth gleaming around us from the women in the background, the sun’s rays have remained icy blue.
“You’re bringing the Oracle home, yes?” Miriam continues before I can find my tongue.
Beside her, Zenaida’s eyes widen. I haven’t told my sister anything about my interactions with Thyra or even with Antony. I gave the barest of details about how I came to be in possession of Aeliana Vividari. But I assume word would have traveled to Ember about the fact the Oracle had been found.
My sister leans perilously closer. “What did she foretell, Maxim?”
There’s no point hiding it. “She commanded that I come to her when the sun turns bitterly cold and the sand bleeds iron.”
Zenaida’s gaze rises to the sky. Then lowers to the hazy outlines of the broken towers visible through the snowstorm.
My aunt’s gaze doesn’t waver. As if none of this were news to her and I find myself wondering: what does she know that I don’t?
I’m suddenly reminded of what I saw when I was a boy—Miriam and Aeliana meeting in secret. Aeliana gave something to Miriam and at the time, I was too young to understand how important that might be.
“Then you must go to her,” my sister says, the first signs of hope in her eyes. “With our heat chains, we can keep the frost at bay until you return.”
“What about the Iron Fae?” I ask, waving my hand in their direction. “What if they attack?”
Zenaida’s determined smile becomes grim. “I suspect the Iron Fae have other things to worry about right now.”
Past the border, the air is white with frost. Their food supplies are likely destroyed and their towers damaged. If they, too, suffered avalanches of snow, the destruction across their land could be devastating. If anything, they’re more vulnerable to attack than my people are right now.
“A strange thing,” Zenaida murmurs. “That the frost stopped the smoke. Thousands of innocent Ember Fae saved…” She shakes herself. “I will keep your kingdom safe until you return.”
“‘Until’ I return,” I murmur.
“With the Oracle.” Her lips compress, a firmness behind her eyes. “Remember your promise to me.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“This curse must be broken, Maxim. Or your days as king are numbered.”
I’m not surprised she speaks so bluntly. After I first let Thyra slip through my fingers, Zenaida came to tell me that, since I will never have a child, I must choose a successor.
She may as well have driven a blade through my heart, since a successor need only be nominated if the Ember King anticipates his death.
I took her request seriously—and still do. She is never hasty. She strategizes. If it weren’t for Ember Law, which forbids women from ascending the throne, as my older sister, Zenaida would have been queen.
She would have made a damn fine monarch.
Still, her reminder now brings home to me the painful fact that she, my aunt, and the Mothers didn’t come here out of care for me.
They came because it’s critical I stay alive until I name the next king.
Fuck, but that hurts too.
Whatever warmth I was feeling vanishes.
Taking a careful step back from Zenaida, I wipe my expression clean and square my shoulders. “I trust you to do everything necessary to keep my people safe.”
Whistling for my serpent, I wait a moment, surprised when he doesn’t appear out of the nearby dunes, where I thought he’d sought shelter.
Instead, a glint of gold catches my eye from the sky up on my far right. My serpent soars through the air, cutting a determined path toward me.
There’s something different about him…
As he snakes through the air, I make out the shape of a saddle on his back.
I catch my breath as he comes closer. The saddle appears to be constructed from the legendary dragon’s hide. Cleverly folded and strapped, since the hide can’t be pierced for stitching or cut into shape.
Unwanted fear strikes me.
I took the hide from Ortansia, the leader of the Tol-Dakri, the fierce tribe that lives in the south of my kingdom. This dragon’s hide is fabled to be the skin of the last fire dragon, which the Tol-Dakri took as a prize after the Battle of Fire Dragons. It’s sacred to them.
I promised Ortansia I would keep my possession of the hide a secret so her tribe wouldn’t find out it was gone.
Until now, the hide has been hidden within the dark channel. Aeliana Vividari has been resting on it, a precaution to protect her from my flames if I happened to be nearby.
Now, the hide is out in the open.
As my serpent soars toward me, he flies over the women’s heads.
A flicker of movement among them draws my attention, one of the women tipping her head back, the silken scarf she’s wearing whipping back off her head, but before I can focus on her, the others are doing the same, their scarfs billowing in the harsh wind, and I can no longer be sure which of them moved first.
My serpent hisses, dipping and blocking my view of the women as he soars down toward me. He won’t be able to land in this mess of blackened lava and freezing water.
Setting aside my disquiet, I prepare to leap up to him.
Seconds before my serpent would reach me, my aunt jumps across the water to the nearest stone and, in the rush of wind, calls to me. “You will bring her to me, Maxim.”
“What?”
Miriam’s use of my name instead of my title throws me, let alone her sudden command.
“If you want this curse broken,” she cries, “defy your impulses and bring the Oracle to me.”
My serpent has reached me.
I launch myself upward into his path, catching hold of his left horn and swinging myself onto his back, a seamless maneuver I’ve performed many times before.
He flies sharply northeast and I nearly command him to change course. To fly due north. But his approach is clever. This way, we’ll very quickly reach the barren eastern mountains where no sane fae goes. We can travel north along the ridge without any chance of interference.
My aunt’s words echo in my ears, her order unsettling. But more realistic than any plan I could ever have.
Getting Thyra to the Ember Kingdom without hurting her will be a massive challenge. Once she’s here? Fuck, but I can’t even sleep without burning. I can’t keep Thyra wrapped up in the dragon’s hide every minute of every day.
Taking her to my aunt is a valid option, even if I fight it with every beat of my heart.
Defy my impulses? That’s like telling a flame not to consume air.
From far behind me, my aunt’s voice reaches me. “May the Goddess of Truth and Light be with you, Maxim!”
With her prayer in my ears, I lean low over my serpent’s neck, battling the gusting wind and the frozen air as we fly into a storm as dangerous as a burst of my flames.