Page 85 of The Sunlit Man

She could not be Elegy again. She did like the name; the part of her that knew words understood what it meant. A song for the dead. And she was dead. It fit.

Elegy. She would be Elegy. Not thesameElegy, but different people could have the same name.

The killer stepped through the door and closed it behind him, soaking wet, bare-chested. She felt as if he should have a cinderheart glowing there. It was wrong that he didn’t. One did not fight as he did without a cinderheart.

Yet he had. And far,farbetter than the Charred.

She wanted that.

He had told her she should live for something. She had just seen that he was right. The rest of the Charred, they’d fought like children, like bullies with no training. He had fought with the grace of the wind itself, fully in control, channeling his anger and hisfrenzyinto his smooth motions.

A weapon was far, far more dangerous when the tip was sharp. When you could put all your force into that single point. And her anger, her desire to fight and move and do and act and kill and strain and struggle… All of that would befarmore dangerous if she could channel it into a single point as well.

That was why he’d won. The Charred were bludgeoning weapons, while he was a spear.

The woman stepped out of the cab. The one they called Rebeke, Elegy’s sister. She met the killer, then pulled back, as if before a bonfire. She clasped her gloved hands before her and stood in place.

“That was incredible,” Rebeke whispered. “It was also terrible. So terrible.”

“The art and butchery of the spear,” he said. “I know. Zeal, you should call in that we’re on our way!”

“Already raising them,” he called. “We had to escape the bubble of the Cinder King’s ships. They had a radio jammer in place.”

Rebeke went to help care for the four others, who had been knocked out in the heat and were only now recovering. They were weaker than Elegy was. So she didn’t bother with them.

A moment later, a voice came from the cockpit. Elegy tilted her head back—as if not alive with constant energy trying to make her move—and listened. She had to learn to listen. Had to learn to control it.

Only then could she fight as he had.

“Zeal?” a woman’s voice said over the radio. One of the old ones who led. “Oh, praise Adonalsium. Did you get them?”

“Five sunhearts,” he said. “They’re sitting in a sack right next to me, Confidence. We’re on our way.”

“How long?” The old woman sounded scared.

Elegy hadn’t understood fear until just now, when she’d felt it along with the other Charred. Because she’d lied to the killer. Though she no longer heard the voice, shecouldstill feel the Cinder King. His emotions, which had—just now—included fear.

“I beg a moment as I calculate our course,” Zeal said. “How…how are you all?”

“The sun continues to advance, and our opportunities to outrun it diminish. There is a corridor of darkness, the peak of the mountains touching the shadow. Alas, it vanishes quickly. Two of our ships are beyond repair. We’ve moved everyone onto the remaining eight, but there is not room for them all inside, so some sit upon the decks. Waiting.”

“We’ll have the sunhearts divided into parts by the time we arrive,” Zeal said. “Have everyone ready to go. We’ll be there in…a little over half an hour. Hopefully.”

“May you outrun the sun, Zeal,” the old woman whispered.

Rebeke took out her knife to divide the sunhearts, and the killer stepped up to her. “Can you spare one of those for me?” he asked.

She stared at him, then at the stolen sunhearts, clearly mentally calculating what Beacon would need. She met his eyes and nodded, handing a full sunheart to the killer. He walked away, holding it up near his face. Then the light of it faded, and his eyes seemed to glow for a moment.

He did have his own cinderheart inside. It simply wasn’t visible.

“I watched you fight,” Elegy whispered as he settled down nearby.

He glanced at her.

“I want that,” she said. “I want to do what you did. I want to be able tokilllike you killed.”

He thought for a bit before speaking. “I’d hoped,” he said, “that spending time with your sister, with this people, would make you start to want the things they have. Not the things I do. The old Elegy—”

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