Page 104 of The Sunlit Man

Elegy gasped, and then immediately hoped she hadn’t betrayed herself. She couldn’t help it, however, watching Rebeke—short, completely without strength of arm, face streaked with tears—confront the Cinder King andtrickhim. Yes, Elegy could feel how seductive he found the thought of killing her in front of the Beaconites.

Rebeke, safest of them all at the moment, sought to give away her life for the others. She could not fight the Cinder King, but somehow she was close todefeatinghim. If he rescued the others and killed Rebeke…

Shades. Elegy had been wrong.

This wasn’t weakness. In this realization, Elegy felt a strangecalmness. Something that forced back her desire to rend and move and kill and fight.

This was strength. Rebeke wasstrongerthan Elegy was.

The moment held, with the sunlight advancing—slowly but inevitably across the landscape—and Rebeke didn’t break. She didn’t look back. She committed to her gambit.

Until, at last, the Cinder King smiled.

“You almost,” he said to her, “persuaded me. But I can see pain in your eyes. Youhurtso terribly to know they’re going to die. I will not be swayed by you. To do so would give you power over me.”

Thenshe went for him, hands going for his eyes—but one of the Charred caught her before she’d taken a single step. Rebeke struggled, ranting, screaming. Her ploy collapsing. Her frustration boiling out.

Still, it had been a valiant effort. A soldier on a losing battlefield using the only weapon she had left: her life.

“You shouldn’t have told me,” the Cinder King said, “that you were their leader. I was planning to keep you as a trophy. Now that I know you’ve been leading the dissenters against me…well, I think you’ll make a fine Charred. First, you can watch them die.” He stepped closer to her as she struggled in the grip of the Charred. “This is true power. The power over life and death. The…”

He paused. He squinted toward the advancing sunlight.

Elegy followed his gaze, and even his Charred—as always, sensing his emotions—turned to look. The moment caught Rebeke too, who was allowed to twist and search the horizon. What had he seen?

The sunlight was close to the Beaconites—and as it advanced,it set aflame the plants and even the sky: a wave of destruction, fire, and light. Moving slowly by the scale of ships, but still faster than a person could run. The Beaconites should have tried anyway. Instead they huddled together, not wanting to leave stragglers and the young—wanting to die as one, not as a field of running individuals.

In that moment, Elegy could see the strength in that too.

Together, they watched the advancing flames. A sky of red and orange, a brilliant death.

The fire undulated. The sheet of light rippled and changed.

Then a figure, high in the sky, exploded from the light, trailing fragments of fire and smoke, glowing like metal being forged. A living ember of light. Somehow, he’dlivedthrough the inferno. Indeed, the very fire in the sky seemed to arrange itself behind him into the shape of some symbol Elegy did not know. Roughly triangular, point down, with wings extending outward on either side.

“It’s him,” Rebeke whispered.

As Zellion emergedfrom the dawn, he found himself whole and unburned. The suit of armor, designed to maintain temperature and life support for the person it protected, had been able to withstand even the sunlight’s terrible heat.

That gave him hope as he directed his flight toward the patch of huddled people who were perilously close to the advancing dawn. He soared, and part of him enjoyed this moment out of his former life, when he’d been a man who had deserved the skies.

But today’s cost weighed him down, no matter how high he soared. “Aux,” he whispered. “It worked.”

There was no response. His companion all these years, the one who had started this journey with him, was dead. Well and truly gone. All Zellion had was Aux’s corpse—in the form of a tool and a weapon. Storms, how that crushed him inside.

Zellion’s failure was sealed now. Yet, for a moment, he wassomeone else. Someone who would do everything he could to respect his friend’s dying command.

Defend those people.

He landed in an explosion of dirt, hitting with the force of a small meteor, and felt the power that Aux had given him run out. As he’d been warned, only a tiny bit had remained. Barely enough to contain Aux’s personality. Dreams, ideas, and honor. Burned away in a moment. Zellion summoned Aux’s body as a shield, and that still worked, as hoped.

He jogged through the middle of the crowd of awed people, and dismissed his helm—revealing his face to the chilly open air. Still, he knew—despite his armor being relatively sleek compared to some—he’d look like a hulking monster. They made way for him as he stomped to their perimeter.

“Is Solemnity Divine still here?” he shouted, stopping at the edge of the group, sweat trickling down his neck as he glanced at the sunlight. It was storming close—again.

“Zellion?” Solemnity Divine asked, breaking from the crowd. “It’s true? You’re—”

“Shave off a sliver of that,” he said, tossing her the sunheart he’d taken from the Scadrians. “Then get it installed in theDawnchaserand give the rest back to me.Soon.”

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