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.Throughme. 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 hardthudof my heart and the flames already gathering around my palms asthe 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.
Nothingabout 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.
