Page 103 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

I have lost the battle, but not the war. Not yet.Cahra forced herself to think the words. But the despair, the rancour in her felt otherwise, rattling the ribs of her lungs like a cage. Like a cell. Her eyes lowered to the blood-soaked sands.

That’s Lumsden’s too.On the sand. On her hands.

She closed her eyes. Grief burned behind her eyelids.

So, back to option one.There was no other choice.

Atriposte pointed the tip of his blade at Cahra. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded her, the word laced with cruelty, an undertone to match the vicious sneer that crawled across his face.

And then the Steward paused.

Her wide eyes flashed to the male High Oracle. Did Grauwynn know?

Did Atriposte recognise her at last?

Fighting her thirst for vengeance, for Lumsden, before Steward Atriposte took his own, Cahra bent and placed her head and hands to the matte sands, prostrating herself.

I will take them to the Reliquus. Because it’s like I said to Thelaema:

With any luck, Hael will escape from his tomb and rip their heads off.

When Cahra was finally permitted to rise from the coarse ground, she smiled. Then Jarett’s Kingdom Guards grabbed her arms, hauling her roughly to her feet and through a crowd of soldiers to Hael’stromia’s gnarled gate.

Atriposte jerked his chin at the bars. ‘The Key.’

Jarett’s own sword was at the ready as Cahra slowly fished the Key from her pocket, Kolyath’s guards shoving her up against the gate.

She exhaled through gritted teeth, imagining Hael skewering them all.

The Key snug in her palm, Cahra pushed the inscribed eye of the black relic to the strange warding mechanism of the lock before her. As a smith, she knew a little about how keys and locks worked, but wherethisKey’s pin was – or if it had one – she had no idea. The only sense she could make of it was its etched centre, the eye, which was most likely to be where the Key would fit, she decided. So that’s what she inserted into the lock.

Gears whirred and clanked, the noise reverberating in her head, amplified by Hael’s elevated hearing. She yanked the key free and stepped back, watching as the gate swung not inwards, but inched into the air, the dire spikes that penetrated the sands yielding to gradual extraction. Cahra stared as the spikes at the gate’s base – a man’s height by the time they’d lifted – continued to rise higher and higher into the air, the gate finally risking a gap big enough for someone to slip through. After four centuries, Hael’stromia was open.

‘At last…’ There was reverence in Atriposte’s voice as his amber eyes beheld it, taking his first steps into the fallen capital, King Decimus of Ozumbre at his heels.

Jarett snatched the Key and pointed his sword at Cahra, gesturing to the faraway black pyramid. ‘Walk.’

Cahra glared at the order but complied.

If I had just killed Jarett first…She couldn’t finish the sentence.

I could kill him right now, Cahra thought as she stalked towards the palatial temple. Hael’s speed, his strength, still flowed inside her. She could easily knock Jarett from his feet, wrench the sword from his hands and sever the man’s head, then hurl it at the Steward, because he would be next. After everything those high-born tyrants had done to everyone in Kolyath, Lumsden would be avenged. And so would she.

But to do that, she’d be sacrificing the very people she was trying to keep safe. Kolyath and Ozumbre’s forces still numbered 20,000, which was more than she’d seen Hael fight in that vision during the second abreption. She may have some of his powers, but she was no ultimate weapon. She sighed. For now, she let Jarett command her.

It was the only thing she could do, the only thing she could hold onto. Until she got to Hael. You may have won the battle, she thought darkly at Atriposte, Jarett, Decimus.

But Hael and I will be the ones to steal your war.

Moments later, as Cahra was taken away, a horn sounded, and Commander Diabolus ordered Kolyath and Ozumbre to attack.

CHAPTER 40

Cahra crept quietly through Hael’stromia, her senses, her body, primed as though she was awaiting an ambush. The all-encompassing silence jangled her nerves.

Once a flourishing city, Hael’stromia was now a wasteland. Atriposte and his men edged past another ancient relic of a building, a palpable heaviness to the air. Not surprising, given the years of nothingness here, she thought. But no plants, no weeds? And no animals, not even the momentary flap of wings. As if an invisible shield hovered low over the city, keeping it from the reaches of the outside realm. Because apart from the capital’s buildings – like nothing she had ever seen, the black limestone structures as vast as Luminaux’s palace, projecting both power and indestructibility – the only evidence of bygone life were the chaotically strewn logs that had long since petrified into stone.

What had the city been like, before all had been lost? She couldn’t imagine a time where the kingdoms of Kolyath, Luminaux and Ozumbre weren’t trying to kill each other. There’d been too much bloodshed as it was, she thought, swallowing back all thoughts of Lumsden and the tears, the grief, that threatened to spill from her like so much blood.

---