Khalil offered Rao a hand.
“With me,” he said. “We have long been the empress’s allies. Let us remove this thorn from her side together.”
They could not stop the flames. But they could stop the maker.
Rao took his hands and leapt onto horseback without fear.The Dwarali horse was a powerful steed—despite their combined weight she raced across the field of fire, her mane streaming and her muscles rippling powerfully.
Hemanth was ahead of them, surrounded by a handful of soldiers. He must have brought them from Parijat with him, or perhaps they had defected from the army. Rao did not care. In front of him, Khalil nocked his bow and, without pausing, shot one man, then another, and another. They were felled. He and Khalil kept on racing forward.
Lord Narayan lay dead on the ground, throat open and eyes sightless. His chariot had fallen.
Hemanth has something. Some weapon we don’t see, Rao realized. He opened his mouth to say it—and felt an awful weight hit them.
The horse went down with a crash. Khalil tumbled. There was a sickening crack and he was still.
“Lord Khalil,” Rao called, coughing, finding his feet. His left leg was agony. “Khalil.” It was broken, perhaps. He ran to Khalil anyway. He collapsed next to him and felt for the man’s breath, pulse. Khalil groaned.
Alive, Rao thought with relief. Injured, but alive. He looked at the horse.
They’d been hit with a thrown spear tipped with fire.
Hemanth’s soldiers were dead, arrow-struck. But a black box lay by one of their bodies. And Hemanth held a spear that glowed with flame.
False fire. Chandra’s fire.
Hemanth followed his gaze.
“It is imperfect,” Hemanth said. “But we kept it from the empress. It is not a fit weapon for the yaksa, but it serves to punish men like you.”
“You have no skill with weapons, Hemanth,” Rao said.
“And yet I will stand against you and those like you, Prince Rao,” he said, with sorrow and righteousness in his eyes. “And my priests, even the greenest boys among them, will stand against you.”
Rao drew his heart’s-shell dagger and strode forward.
He lunged first. Hemanth swung, and the fire arced through the air. Rao should have had the benefit of speed, but Hemanth had the greater reach, and Rao had a broken leg. Rao leapt out of the way. Stumbled, pain shooting up to his hip. His blade fell—
Hemanth struck him again. A blade of fire almost hit the armor at his shoulder. He lurched away. Not enough.
A spear-butt cracked against his skull.
Blackness.
ARAHLI ARA
“I won’t die for them,” Vata Ara said raggedly.
“The Parijatdvipans have a weapon once more that can destroy us,” Arahli said. “Priya is in the flames. We have nothing.”
Vata Ara shook his head, blood pouring from his wound. His face was pale. “We will find a way to survive. If we wait here, when the forest is all burned, we may walk free.”
“The fire seeks us,” he said. His gaze swept over them. “Not them. You remember how it was last time.”
“Better than you do,” Taru Ara said thinly. “I didn’t stumble about believing I was mortal. I remember clearly what we were. The fire…” Her hand trembled in his own. “The fire felt like emptiness,” she whispered. “And the emptiness was long, and our sleep was dark. I did not dream or think for so long. Maybe not until you freed me from the tree where my bones grew.”
“Sleep isn’t so terrible,” said Arahli.
“Brother, you will not turn to wood and soil and earth,” Taru said to him, grasping him by the arms. Her eyes were wrong, terribly wrong—leaking salt water, red-veined, her cheeks flushed with mortal blood. “You are more flesh than green now. Do you understand what may become of you? A permanent death. Something we can never rise from again.”
