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, “whenyouare the one who could have stopped it before it began.”
With the resurgence of my rage comes the threat of my fire.
A deadlythreat.
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 thebreath 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 stepstowardme.
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?
