Chapter 6 Maxim, King of Ember
Chapter Six
Maxim, King of Ember
My furious fire threatens to destroy me…and the Oracle standing a mere ten paces away from me.
I need her.
More than I’ve ever needed anything in my cursed life.
Only minutes ago, I landed my serpent on the rocky crevices on the village’s far northern side.
I deliberately kept myself away from the battle in the sky and the fight within the village.
I couldn’t risk my flames burning everything around me.
The fire that rages within me against my will… A year ago, I could still control it. Now, it threatens to burst out of me when I don’t want it to.
Even my golden serpent, loyal to me, quickly slithered away from me, seeking refuge as far as he could get while remaining alert for my call.
I’d barely found my feet on the rocks when the Oracle’s scream washed over me. Through me. Carried on an explosion of golden light.
Her cry was desperate. Full of a despair that spoke to my soul, a mirror of the battle I fight within myself every damn day.
Most startling, in that moment—that single, pure moment—the fire in my heart had calmed.
My flames had gone out. Gone out!
For the first time in my life. Not even when I was a child, and my power was a fragile flicker, had my flames ever been extinguished.
In that blessed moment, I experienced a world without fire and without fear of losing control. A world where each breath I take doesn’t threaten to burn to ashes every living thing around me.
It was over too soon. My power returned, bursting from my body, evaporating the water in every crevice of nearby rock and turning the stone to lava.
From a distance, my serpent fled even further from me. It was only because I’d chosen to land so far north of the village that the heat didn’t destroy the nearest buildings.
But that moment of freedom confirmed a now undeniable truth: The female Oracle is the key to my freedom.
If she can stop my fire with a single scream, even if only for a few heartbeats, then she can break the curse that was placed on the three kingdoms.
By breaking the curse, she will cure me. I’m certain of it.
Now, the voices of my enemies wash over me, difficult for me to hear above the constant rush of heat in my blood and the pounding of my violent heart.
Their words tell me they, too, heard her scream and responded to it.
“There’s no need to summon us.”
“We’re already here.”
I fight the hard thud of my heart and the flames already gathering around my palms as the Oracle turns her gaze on me.
Her hair is a tangled mess, shivers visibly rack her body, and her breathing is rapid.
She’s dressed in humble, lowborn clothing, waterlogged and patched in places, and wears the boots of lowborn shell collectors.
It’s difficult to tell the color of her hair while it’s wet, but the strands are dull, more faded than I thought possible, and her skin, where it’s visible, has clearly been touched by hours of sunlight.
Nothing about her is what I expected.
No fucking wonder she was able to hide from us for so long.
“Your screams of pain called us,” I say, forcing myself to speak, to drag some control back to my mind. “It seems we’ve all answered.”
For some reason, we’re all restraining ourselves.
Maybe it’s the echo of her furious cry. Or, more likely, it’s because we can’t risk her being killed in a fight between us.
We all need her. Badly. Each of our kingdoms has suffered under the curse.
As the Oracle’s faded eyes seek me through the smoky haze that has gathered around me, I’m struck still, my pounding heart stuttering.
With a single glance, she seems to see through the smoke to every flaw in my burning heart. Every shortcoming for which she will demand answers from me.
She is my only answer.
And she seems to know it.
“You’re here for me,” she says, her voice clear and strong, defying the tremors that shake her so hard. I feel the need to warm her.
Inwardly, I scoff at that impulse.
As if I could control my heat for long enough to dry her hair…or warm her skin…or even to touch her in any lingering way. As if it would be possible for me to stop her shivers without hurting her.
Fucking delusions.
I can’t even sleep without bursting into flames.
If I manage to seize her today, it will take every shred of my control to rush her to one of my warriors, who will be able to transport her back to the Ember Kingdom for me.
The Oracle has continued speaking. “I want you to know that I will fight your people to the death.” She takes a deep breath. “But I won’t fight you.”
Her unexpected declaration makes me jolt. She’s fragile, vulnerable, and open, and all of that is enough of a surprise. I never imagined she’d yield.
“For years, you’ve pursued me.” The corners of her mouth turn down as she casts her gaze in Antony’s direction, then in Stellen’s, and finally to me.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told you would destroy anything and anyone to claim me.
Well, I won’t let you destroy this village because of me.
So I’m making you a promise: I’ll do whatever you ask. ”
It’s an impossible vow.
I’m astounded she thinks we could all agree on a way forward.
We all need her to break the curse, and it might seem we’d benefit equally from that happening, regardless of which one of us has her, but this curse has prevailed for centuries.
When the False Queen cursed the Dragonstone Blade, she broke the Kingdom of Serulia into three and forced us into war.
She was the first female Oracle. Before her, all Oracles were male, the power skipping daughters and, if the oracle had no male offspring, the magic would leap to life in the nearest male relative or, more startlingly, it would spring up in another bloodline.
Always, there was only one.
As for the curse, nobody knows how it can be broken.
Only one thing is certain: Another female Oracle must do it.
The fear is that, in breaking the curse, devastating harm could be caused to enemy kingdoms.
Whoever controls the female Oracle ensures the safety of their kingdom.
“All I ask,” she says, “is that you leave this village in peace. If you do that, then I won’t fight you.”
I wait for her to demand more, but she presses her lips together and falls silent, the dagger remaining at her side, its ivory wrapping trailing across the pebbles and blowing in the breeze.
She talks of handing herself over, but she may as well invite us to tear each other apart.
I raise my voice above the roaring of my own blood, intending to ask her if she takes us for fools, but my heart forces different words from my mouth. “Do you mock our pain?”
Her focus snaps to me, her eyes wide. “Never.” But her jaw quickly tenses. “You talk of pain when your fire destroys innocent lives. When your iron burns innocent throats. All while you stand idly by, even though your ice could douse the flames.”
As she speaks, her fierce gaze flashes from me to the locations in the smoke where Antony and Stellen are still concealed.
She speaks the truth. I can’t deny it. But my flame is my worst enemy. It was imposed on me. I didn’t choose it.
“You place responsibility for this destruction on our shoulders,” I snarl, “when you are the one who could have stopped it before it began.”
With the resurgence of my rage comes the threat of my fire.
A deadly threat.
If I could push it away, I would, but I can’t.
I need to act. Quickly. Now.
Before my flames can endanger her. Certainly, before the other two kings can seize her.
Just as the breeze can change direction in an instant, so my fire can explode against my will, and now…
I’m already out of time.
I prepare to launch myself forward, but no sooner have my muscles bunched than the Dragonstone Blade catches the sunlight, and just like when I landed, golden energy bursts across my vision.
Within a heartbeat, the explosion of light conceals everything around me.
Only one thing is startlingly clear: The Oracle.
She stands in the center of the light, her blue eyes wide, while a thin stream of molten gold appears on her right arm, defying gravity to snake upward from her hand to her neck and beneath her hair.
She gasps. “No—!”
Then, even more startlingly, the light disappears.
Just like that, everything looks the same as it did before the energy flashed.
Neither Antony nor Stellen has leaped forward; both have remained shrouded in smoke, and the stream of power I saw on the Oracle’s arm has disappeared.
It’s as if none of it happened.
As unsettled as I am, I can’t afford to hesitate a moment longer.
I plow toward her, desperately pushing on my power, constraining it with all my might, promising myself I won’t burn her.
She gasps, a near screaming, as I lunge toward her.
The heat radiating from my body will have snatched the breath from her chest, burning across her skin. Certainly, her shivers have immediately ceased.
I anticipate she’ll try to dart away from me, and I’m prepared for her evasion, aiming for her right side where her weight leans.
Shock rockets through me, and I lurch to a stop when she steps toward me.
Directly into my path and right into the heat waves billowing around me.
Shimmering air washes across her face and arms and chest, evaporating the water from her body so the air smells first like the salty sea and then like a flower I might have once held…
A delicate perfume.
Elusive.
White roses?
I know of them, but they don’t grow in the desert, and I don’t know when I would have ever held one to know its scent.
The fragrance is so. Fucking. Calming.
So is her presence, a resurgence of that moment of freedom when I heard her scream, gifting me a temporary liberty, a real hope of a future without uncontrollable fire.
I drag this impossible peace into my chest with every breath I take, every beat of my burning heart suddenly constrained and within my control.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then her lips part, a soft gesture, while the tear stains on her cheeks remain bright in the heat waves.