Page 44 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame (Fated for Hael #1)

Her eyes still closed, Cahra awoke to a strangeness in her own body.

It wasn’t the bed; every bed had felt different since Kolyath.

This was something else. She could feel, smell, the fresh linen of the sheets, coarse against her calloused fingertips as she grazed the flax fibres interweaving to form the fabric.

Hael, she could count those threads.

And she knew things. Like that Thelaema had just hobbled down the hallway and into the glass ball of a room at the other end of the house. Cahra heard the Oracle’s lopsided gait, the creaking groan of the wicker chair as she sat.

Wyldaern’s approach, however, was lighter, although just as distinctive, the Seer’s robe swishing against her sandals as she glided down the hall.

Cahra had never had hearing this good before, and hers was excellent. Was this all part of Hael’s powers, the ones she’d received from their rite?

She sat up as Wyldaern turned the doorknob, its strangled squeak louder than it should have been. The Seer froze when she realised Cahra was awake.

‘Oh!’ Wyldaern said quickly, ‘I didn’t—’

‘Wyldaern.’ Cahra figured they may as well talk, while the abreption strained to hold and her emotions weren’t all-consuming. She gestured for the woman to come in.

The Seer hesitated by the door, fiddling nervously, before stepping inside to shut it.

‘Cahra,’ she began, leaning heavily against the wood, ‘I am sorry.’

‘I know,’ Cahra said quietly.

‘Please, let me finish. If I had known the true scope of what Thelaema was to disclose, I would have revealed that which I did know. No one should be expected to bear what you learned today all at once.’ Her shoulders slumping, Wyldaern moved for the seat beside Cahra.

‘I am so sorry for your loss, and what you had to endure.’

Cahra could feel a crack in the veneer of her abreption’s perfect peace. ‘You don’t agree with your Oracle’s methods?’

‘I would have done things differently,’ Wyldaern admitted.

Cahra said nothing. ‘You can answer my questions now, can’t you?’ The Seer nodded. ‘The vision that led you to me. It was because I’m the Scion, not just a Kolyath Princess?’

There was guilt in Wyldaern’s eyes. ‘So, the Reliquus revealed all to you. Good.’ She fingered her Seer’s pendant. ‘Yes. Thelaema shared it, so that I may bring you here to learn your fate as the realm’s Empress.’

Cahra’s mood darkened at the word, but she let it be. That, she would address with the Oracle directly.

‘And the ‘tell none’? It was because of the white light?’ Frowning, she murmured, ‘Like the crack of light outside Hael’s tomb.’

Again, Wyldaern nodded. ‘If I had required any evidence that you were the Scion, that vision was it. We saw what lies beyond the void’s eternal darkness.

It was a confirmation.’ The Seer fidgeted with the bell-like cuff of her sleeve.

‘When I told you to “tell none”, that was because you travelled with others and I knew not how Luminaux’s royals – how Thierre – would react if he, they, knew your true role. I was trying to protect you.’

Cahra didn’t doubt Wyldaern’s words. But the trust between them…

‘I thought we were friends,’ she whispered. Another, bigger crack in her abreption. Piece by piece, her sense of contentment was slipping from her.

Wyldaern clutched Cahra’s hand. ‘We are,’ the Seer said adamantly, looking pained.

‘I did not want this, to upset you after you had already suffered so greatly, all in the name of some long-awaited, fateful obligation. Yet, it is as Thelaema said. I did not see all the facts. Had I told you one thing, and left out core facets that, with such context, would later have been perceived as untruth, would that have been more, or less, helpful to you?’

It was fair. But Cahra couldn’t help feeling tired of the secrets, the omissions, after everything that had happened with Thierre.

Unlike Thierre, however, Wyldaern had warned her, told her there were things she couldn’t say but that the Oracle would. That at least put the Seer above the Prince.

Was this her life now? Judging who was least false, instead of most trustworthy? She remembered what she thought after finding Thierre’s gift.

If I choose myself, I’ll never be betrayed.

‘I need air,’ she said, tossing off the bedcovers.

‘Cahra.’ Wyldaern’s face was drawn, the Seer sitting wearily in her small armchair. ‘Please do not go far. We are safe on these grounds, but…’ Wyldaern’s peridot eyes fell. ‘Cahra, I truly am sorry.’

Something in Cahra softened. Then she turned and walked away.

Throwing the front door open, Cahra exhaled a lungful of air, breath misting, and stepped from the Oracle’s mountain cabin into the midst of the chill starry night, late as it was.

She remembered her vision. And thanks to Hael and their abreption, her pain and anger didn’t overwhelm her.

She didn’t suffer. But she felt disappointed, in so many people she shouldn’t.

And while she still felt disconnected from it all emotionally, rational in a way she rarely was, and she saw what the Oracle had tried to do, and why…

Cahra would never have subjected a child to her poverty-stricken upbringing in Kolyath.

Yet Thelaema had got what she wanted. Cahra was a survivor, the trait scribed into her very blood. She’d never be a courtly high-born; where others used artfulness for gain, her talents were brute force, resilience, weaponry. Now she had the most deadly weapon of all.

And his powers were coursing through her.

Cahra could feel everything Hael had spoken of – his stamina, speed, strength, agility.

She’d moved from the cottage to the central garden in what felt like a few quick strides.

Even senses like her sight, she thought, peering at the purple clusters of night blooms that bordered the Oracle’s long garden.

Under nothing but pure starlight, details leapt out at her: the snowy sprig that housed the flowers’ pollen, dotted and ridged like a minuscule tree trunk.

She could hear the squalls and wingbeats of owls she couldn’t see and taste the icy winds of faraway rain on her tongue, which she couldn’t begin to fathom, for there were no clouds in the late-night sky.

Cahra spun in circles, delighting in the exquisite sensations.

Is this what it’s like to be Hael?

She heard Thelaema’s footsteps before the Oracle had reached her own front door, despite Cahra being half-way down the grounds.

But she didn’t turn. Instead, she sat on a bench overlooking the garden’s pond, bright orange fish darting and swirling beneath a sky mirrored in their pristine waters.

Cahra stared at the small ripples the fish made, their fins rocking and rowing to churn the glassy surface.

‘Did you conclude the second omen’s rite?’ Thelaema was puffing. It wasn’t exactly a short stroll to where she was.

Cahra turned to face the Oracle. ‘You mean the one you didn’t tell me about, forcing Hael to enlighten me instead, along with his other grand revelation?’ Glaring at the woman, she felt another shard of anger seep back from someplace. ‘Your Empress says yes.’

Thelaema was indifferent in the face of Cahra’s scorn. ‘I would have informed you, had he not. Your actions necessitated an interlude.’

‘ My actions?’ Cahra stormed. ‘You doomed me to a life of suffering!’

Thelaema’s eyes were as cold as the night air. ‘Ozumbre doomed your parents, not I. Your village was razed. You were not safe there.’

Cahra twitched, desperate to hold onto the abreption’s simple ease, her self-control.

‘And I was in Kolyath? Why not bring me here, to this spelled, magickal safe haven, where you’ve apparently dwelled for centuries?’ she shot back.

‘Because I am no proxy for that which you required: a hard education.’

‘The hardest,’ Cahra said, grinding her teeth. ‘It’s a good thing I didn’t end up here, with you, if it meant becoming such a heartless crone.’

Thelaema’s flinch at her words would have been imperceptible, if Cahra had been without Hael’s preternatural sight.

‘You will learn, Cahraelia of Kolyath, that difficult decisions care not for your emotions, only for the end’s results,’ the Oracle muttered.

‘My name is Cahra. ’ She was on her feet now, squaring her shoulders as she hurled: ‘And what are your emotions telling you about this particular result?’ The abreption, and the peace she’d felt with Hael, was completely gone.

And something else was burning in its place…

‘That the vision instructing my actions did not allude to a capricious adolescent!’ Thelaema snapped back, then froze, staring at Cahra. Right into her eyes.

Cahra looked down, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the pond, waves of heat rippling in the air above her curled fingers.

Her eyes were glowing .

She gasped, hands flying to her face. ‘What’s happening?’

‘It is the omen’s rite,’ Thelaema warned her. ‘Your tether with the Reliquus runs taut. You will reap the powers that he has granted you, which shall fade before your next vision. That is, until you free the weapon in Hael’stromia.’

‘And when Hael’s out?’ Cahra said, still staring at the water.

‘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?’