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.
“I don’t know why you hate me,” she whispers, her eyes turned up to mine, searching, near-pleading for answers. “I was raised to fear you without ever understanding the true reason for it. I don’t know what power this blade holds or why I was forbidden from touching it before today. I can only tell you that my choices were based on absolute trust. A trustthat…”
Her eyes glisten with new tears as her focus flickers away from me to the man lying against the wall behind her. I noticed him before, but I have no way of knowing who he might be to her, other than that she seems to be shielding him.
She quickly blinks her tears away and returns her focus to me. “A trust that now feels naïve and ignorant and dangerous, because this blade… Oh, this terrible blade…”
Her right arm trembles, and once again light gleams around her, as if another stream of molten energy might travel along her arm at any moment.
I respond on impulse, my fiery nature overcoming my caution. “I need that blade. As badly as I need you.”
I need them both, but she is paramount. If she doesn’t understand her people’s history…
If she isn’t playing some fucking spiteful game with me right now, then I need her to understand the power she has to change my fate, all our fates.
I need her to understand her potential to release me from the burden of this fire and stop this wretched war once and for all.
“I needyou,” I repeat, grinding my words between my teeth, this time hating the admission and fighting once more to quell my rising heat, this constant force that swells and consumes my reason when I least desire it.
She closes her eyes, shakes herself, and then, more softly, she asks, “Do you?”
She opens her eyes, and I take a quick step backward.
Right in front of me, her appearance transforms.
The color of her irises brightens from faded blue to vivid amber, the color of the purest Ember flame, the same flames I see in my desert home when the heat of the midday sun wafts across the top of dunes made of thousands of grains of sand.
Her humble clothing presses against her body, accentuatingall her curves, while her now-glistening hair falls softly at her sides.
She lifts the blade higher, its silken ribbon billowing in a new breeze that catches my heat and swirls it around her in dizzying waves.
Thisis the woman I expected to encounter today. A beautiful warrior who would force me to kneel before her.
She sighs into the heat, her voice melodic. “You must earn what you desire.”
I consider her challenge with sudden distrust, but it has the effect of wrenching me back to myself. It’s a miracle that Antony and Stellen have let me get this close to her. Whatever conversation I need to have with her will have to wait.
Before I can close my hands around her, I become aware of another stream of light.
A thread of power coils through the air between her chest and mine. This thread is as amber as the Oracle’s eyes, and it’s attached to my heart.
I don’t know when the thread formed. It could have been when the blade’s golden light flooded my vision or when the Oracle’s appearance transformed, or at any other moment since she stepped toward me, but it thrums with undeniable power, a connection I both want and fear.
“You face a choice today, Maxim, King of Ember,” the Oracle says, her eyes becoming distant, as if she is, right at this moment, overcome by her foresight. “A choice that will go against every fiber of your being and require you to defy your nature.”
“What choice?”
“You must choose to wait.”
