Page 107 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Cahra tried and failed to lift her head from the floor. She felt so cold—

How long would it take Hael to get free? Could he even break free if she had no physical hope of walking the path that would allow her to somehow enter his shrine alive?

‘We had an agreement!’ Jarett cried, sword clattering as he blocked Decimus’ cut.

The King’s grin was sharp as an assassin’s blade as he looked at the Steward’s corpse. ‘It has since expired.’ Then, in a graceful arc, he slashed Jarett’s throat.

The Commander fell.

Cahra glanced around, her vision clouding, narrowing, her desperation growing, when she noticed her puddle of blood, a well of it running beneath the double doors to Hael’s tomb. She squinted as that pool slowly began to drain.

As the final turn of cogs on gears sounded and the great doors of the weapon’s shrine slowly cracked to yawn apart.

As the seething silence was broken by a cavernous growl from the depths of the room Cahra had unlocked.

‘What is that?’ Decimus snapped, whirling on Grauwynn.

‘Didn’t tell?’ Cahra tried to laugh. Blood spattered onto her leathers. ‘Bad Oracle.’ Her eyes rolled to the King of Ozumbre. ‘Meet… the weapon…’

Only then did she see Grauwynn’s face, the High Oracle looking upon her with a cold disdain that jarred so much against Thelaema’s warmth.

You will die, and Hael will return to me,Grauwynn’s voice boomed into her mind.

Then the Oracularus vanished – one second there, the next, gone as if he never had been, the only evidence a blinding, fading light.

A tempest of ash and smoke burst from between Hael’s shrine doors, lashing through the gap in a black tornado of cosmic particles before materialising at Cahra’s feet to absorb the ghastly sight of her dying body on the floor. The Reliquus rose to face King Decimus and his speechless assembly of enemy guards.

Then heroared, the passage quaking with the wrath of a vengeful god.

Hael gathered Cahra into his arms and stood her on two feet at his room’s entrance, before retreating with her into the darkness.

Hael.The thought burbled up from somewhere, hopeful, grateful. But she couldn’t feel his arms around her any more, she realised.

And she wasn’t in Hael’s shrine.

She could see Lumsden’s smiling face, lined with years of untold stories, before her. Lumsden, the old man who’d taken her in and saved her from a short life and a quick death at the hands of the Steward and his dungeons. Lumsden, who’d taught her how to craft a sword, then any other weapon, giving her the freedom to explore her gifts. Lumsden, who’d tried to teach her to control her emotions, so she’d be equipped to live in Kolyath’s unjust kingdom. Lumsden, who fed the Quadrant’s strays. Lumsden, who forged belt buckles, sewing needles, kitchen knives, for people who had nothing, and never asked for more. Lumsden, Kolyath’s master blacksmith. A good, kind man. A father figure to her.

He was dead. Gone. It should have undone her.

And yet.

All her life, Cahra had feared the dark, because it had been her cell. But as she floated, after all her time with Hael in the darkness of his shrine, Cahra understood.

She could let it go, if she wanted. And she did want to, to surrender and pass beyond the veil and into death’s void, as Lumsden had.

Except…

She knew that voice. That sweet, unearthly voice, rising with unfettered panic.

‘Cahra!’

She wasn’t ready to let go of him, that voice that kept her tethered. She’d never be ready to say goodbye.

So Cahra held on, clinging to Hael. His darkness would bring her home.

PART FOUR

‘Then shall Hael rise again’