Page 109 of The Sunlit Man

Ice flooded his veins. His heat leeched away. He wavered, but didn’t fall—because the bracer shut off a second later. They hadn’t wanted to knock him out, just leave him weakened. They affixed something else on his leg. The Charred retreated, and the officers vanished.

Zellion stumbled, barely able to stand upright. Then an announcement rang through the city. “People of Union!” The Cinder King’s voice. Recorded previously? “You have heard of this offworlder, the one some are whispering is the Sunlit Man. He is here. I offer you a chance to watch him. See him fall.”

The Cinder King walked slowly up to Zellion. Security cameras ringed the area, all tracking the Cinder King’s every movement, filming as he dramatically unlocked the bracer on Zellion’s wrist, took it off, then held it up, showing everyone that he’d freed his enemy. He tossed the bracer aside, then kicked away Zellion’s fallen machete.

“Now then,” the Cinder King said, raising his fists. “That duel of honor. You and me. Shall we?”

Zellion shook himself, attempting to recover his strength. Maybe this would actually be fair. He raised his fists, but found them sluggish. In fact, his entire body felt heavy, like he was tied with weights. He could barely get his fists into a fighting stance.

“What have you done to me?” he growled.

“A gift from our friends in the hidden ship,” the Cinder King said. “The freezing bracers are fine, but they tend to knock out my subjects—and sometimes I want them alert. Just…a little bit disadvantaged.”

“A little bit?” Zellion growled, shifting his stance, though even that took an uncomfortable amount of effort. “It’s one of those Scadrian weight devices, isn’t it? That’s what you locked onto my ankle?” He’d seen people wear them on low-gravity planets to move more naturally. Here, though, it had been turned up an extreme amount—making his entire body think it was working under three or four times the standard gravity.

The Cinder King smiled, then punched Zellion in the face. He tried to get his fists up to block, but was too slow, and then took a shot right in the gut. He stumbled back.

“Coward,” Zellion growled.

“There is no cowardice in victory,” the Cinder King said, striding forward.

Zellion got one good punch against the man, splitting his lip. Which healed immediately. Storms, how Invested was he?

Zellion came in again, but too slow, too sluggish. The Cinder King decked him across the face, sending him tumbling to the ground. Zellion took a kick in the stomach, then barely managed to roll away from the next.

He stumbled to his feet, straining, struggling.

“Thisis power,” the Cinder King whispered, stepping closer to him, pulling off his gloves to expose his bare fists. A bad idea in a regular fight, as you were likely to do as much damage to your hands as you did to your enemy, but the Cinder King’s Investiture would heal him from those surface wounds. “This is what it means to be strong.”

“Then why hide what you’re doing from your people?” Zellion hissed. “You want to be able to beat me, but you don’t want them to know how? That’s not strength. It’s fabrication.”

“The condemned man always sees unfairness in the world around him,” the Cinder King said, punching him again.

Damnation. Thathurt. Blood began to flow from Zellion’s nose as he stumbled back farther along the street. He didn’t have Auxiliary to count his Investiture for him any longer, but he could feel it waning, fluttering. His endurance running out, his strength beginning to fail.

“In reality,” the Cinder King said, “all I’m doing is using my advantages like you use yours.” He laughed, punching Zellion in the stomach. “Come on, now. Let’s make a good show of it, Sunlit. People will want to see you die with flair!”

He advanced, relentless, driving Zellion back. Once again, straight toward the rising sun.

Elegy remembered thisplace. The unornamented metal steps to the lower level of the ship that made up the heart of Union. She remembered her footsteps on that metal; the sound echoed like the distant workings of some terrible machine.

That’s what…that’s what she’d become. A machine. A thing, not a person. Bereft of choice, personality, and soul. All had supposedly been burned away, leaving the Cinder King with his perfect killer.

But she remembered. Old memories. Not just when she’d been led from this place as a newborn Charred. But before. Just…those sounds. The footsteps. She remembered descending. Terrified. And she remembered…light?

She found a door at the bottom of the steps, left ajar by people entering in haste, dragging Rebeke behind them. How didtheyfeel? Knowing some offworlder monster in a suit of strange armor was assaulting their city—and Charred were going wild—yet being ordered to go execute a captive?

Elegy pushed the door open the rest of the way, and the light was as she remembered it. Hundreds of sunhearts set into slots on the walls. The city’s reserve. A mausoleum. Full of souls taken by the sun. And one Charred guard.

The man growled and charged at her as soon as she entered. Elegy blocked his swinging cudgel with her forearm and stared him in the eyes. For once, she didn’t feel frantic. She felt haunted. Remembering those lights, being towed down this hallway, knowing everything she’d been—everyone she’d loved, everything she’d accomplished—would soon be burned out of her. Like a disease to be killed off by the coming fever.

She tossed the Charred to the side, which shook the wall and rattled the sunhearts. As he struggled to his feet, she took him down with a swift punch to the throat, leaving him gasping through his own blood. A second Charred burst in through the door, but again, she feltcalmas she stepped aside, grabbing his arm and using his own momentum to slam him into the wall.

He dropped.

She remembered. Just the pain, though, and terror. She didn’t rememberwhatshe’d loved, known, or believed. She only remembered knowing she’d lose it. That seemed a worse cruelty, to be left with the panic and pain, but not the original pieces of herself that had evoked such emotion. She pushed forward through the corridor lined with souls.

She stepped over the body of the first Charred and burst into the chamber where new Charred were made. Along the wall,a line of frightened people waited. New subjects to transform into Charred, to fight those she had freed, perhaps. Only three officials worked to prepare them, and they were being sloppy in their haste. For example, they strapped Rebeke into place without disrobing her.

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