Page 77 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

‘The restraint on his dark magicks shall cease and he and the capital will be restored. Once that happens, you shall have no need for such augments of your own. You will be under the protection of the Reliquus, as well as Hael’stromia proper.’

She turned from Thelaema to the stars. The moon was new and absent from the sky, but Cahra could just make out its position, the darkness where it would have shone silver. She shook her head in irritated silence.

‘A vision is why you sent me to Kolyath?’

Thelaema sighed, lowering herself to the metalwork bench next to Cahra. ‘Why else? I am not so cruel, despite what you may think of me.’ The woman’s next words were sombre. ‘I considered bringing you here. Yet, when the Seer who saved you brought you to my care… I saw what must be done.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper, words heavy with emotion.

Cahra stared at her. ‘You never thought to justnotdo what your vision told you?’

Thelaema’s pastel eyes flashed. ‘As a High Oracle of the Order of Descry? No.’

Cahra rubbed her face with the heels of her palms, knowing she couldn’t reason with the woman. But before they could argue some more, Thelaema spoke, not looking at her.

‘I cannot take back my actions, nor would I. However…’ Something like remorse contorted the Oracle’s wizened face. ‘I can apologise for their results. For your pain.’

It was all Cahra had ever wanted to hear, an acknowledgement of her suffering. Now she had it from the person who’d changed her trajectory, however, it didn’t feel enough. But after living with Lumsden, Cahra knew it was the best she’d ever get from someone of Thelaema’s years and prickly disposition.

Cahra blew out a breath and asked her, ‘What happens now?’

The Oracle was a conduit to magicks Cahra would never understand. But the woman also knew what came next, for the third omen and beyond.

Thelaema huffed a rueful laugh, no doubt marking Cahra’s failure to absolve her. ‘Now, it is time for your various questions.’ The Oracle craned her neck, eyeing the heavens. ‘You are here now, Cahra of Kolyath. I can tell you everything.’

So Thelaema did.

She told of how Hael’stromia’s Order of Descry was exiled 399 years ago, when the Oracles failed to foresee the Emperor’s assassination, then broke their neutrality by coming to the aid of his Kolyath royal family – all while Hael was trapped inside the falling capital. According to Thelaema, Emperor Brulian of Kolyath was slain by an Ozumbre assassin, his Queen Inana bundling their baby, Cahra’s ancestor, and rushing from Kolyath into the Wilds, aided by a court Seer. By the time Thelaema found them, she and her High Oracle counterparts had predicted the loss then resurrection of the capital in present times. She knew that without Hael, Ozumbre would not stop, so Inana was ordered into hiding. Never to return.

Cahra’s sharp intake of breath at Thelaema’s story caught half-way to her chest.Maybe it was why Thelaema hesitated with me as a baby. Her throat tightened. Ozumbre had outmatched the Seers before, and it had cost the realm its Emperor.

With its bloodline presumed dead, Kolyath could not forgive the Seers for their kingdom’s calamitous loss, and banished them, Ozumbre supporting the stance on nature worship and magicks before their involvement in the assassination was known. So the Seers were cast out, scattered to the Wilds like Inana and her child, doomed to roam a realm that didn’t want them. Until it would deem them and their prophecy useful once again.

In the interim, Kolyath’s nobles appointed a custodian, a line of Stewards growing in lieu of any royals. Unfortunately, with this act, a new wave of cruelty swept the kingdom, culminating in Steward Atriposte.

Thelaema sat, her back rigid as she hunched, hand gripping the bench’s iron armrest. ‘I was near Kolyath when Brulian was killed.’ She exhaled, the sigh of a woman who’d borne the brunt of 400 years of blame and internalised it. ‘To this day, I do not know why the Nether failed me, failed our Order, or why Hael could not escape.’ She looked up, away. ‘Why he did not come.’

Cahra was silent. After what she’d seen in their abreption, she knew Hael. He’d move not just mountains, but entire oceans, to protect any Scion in his charge.

Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

‘Brulian and Inana,’ Thelaema said, ‘were honourable rulers. Kolyath has not seen their like in an age. Yet Brulian’s undoing was failing to recognise and confront his rivals, and not deploying the Reliquus when he and Inana frequented Kolyath.’ Thelaema sagged. ‘And without Hael, they were not strong enough to defend the kingdom against Ozumbre’s forces. Brulian and his kingdom, your kingdom, paid for that ruinous mistake.’

She gazed as if through Cahra then, through her skin and bones and on to something else inside her, the way Lumsden used to. For the first time, Cahra felt somewhere within her crack an eye open and stare straight back.

‘Your task will not be easy. There is much to overcome, and not just from the current warmongering rulers and their sundry forces. Even once Hael’stromia has arisen, you will still face adversity, hard choices that will challenge you on a personal level.’ The woman paused, looking at Cahra. ‘You and Hael—’

Thelaema frowned, and something ratcheted up inside Cahra in palpable warning, moments before every candle in the Oracle’s house flared an alarming shade of crimson, the red haze sweeping like a forest fire through the chalet.

As Thelaema said, ‘Someone is here.’

‘What in Hael?’ Cahra grabbed Thelaema’s arm as the Oracle whirled, Piet, Siarl and Queran charging from the house, Wyldaern at their heels.

‘The danger is not here,’ Thelaema told Cahra. ‘It is…’ Her face went blank as the Oracle’s second sight withdrew between the veil and void. ‘It is the caves,’ she whispered, eyes on Wyldaern before nodding to Thierre’s guards. ‘Their Captain Raiden followed us. He and his accompanying Royal Guards were ambushed.’ Thelaema cursed under her breath.

‘What?’ Cahra repeated, the muscles in her body tense, every instinct primed to fight.

The Oracle’s pale gaze flashed to hers. ‘All tri-kingdoms are present.’

Cahra closed her eyes.Thierre?

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