Page 45 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame (Fated for Hael #1)

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 just not do 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?

‘The Prince is not with the Captain,’ Thelaema said quietly, reading her thoughts as the others arrived.

‘Good.’ Cahra updated Raiden’s trio as Thelaema made for the house, Wyldaern by her side, the Seers speaking frantically.

‘We must aid the Captain,’ Piet argued. The stern look on Siarl’s face said she agreed, while Queran withdrew two arrows from his quiver. ‘We cannot leave him at the mercy of Kolyath and Ozumbre’s armed forces.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’ Cahra watched Thelaema from outside the glass sphere of the Oracle’s round room, a speck of motion in the distance. What was she doing?

‘Then we must go,’ Piet insisted, broad shoulders turning with purpose.

‘Piet, wait,’ Cahra said, as the group looked to leave. ‘Wait for Thelaema to get back. If Raiden’s been ambushed, we need to know how, and how many there are, as well as where in the caves Raiden and his guards are fighting.’

‘She’s right,’ Siarl said. ‘The tunnels were pitch black. An ambush would be easy, not to mention traps. We need to avoid whatever waylaid the Captain.’ Her dark brows furrowed.

‘Agreed,’ Queran told them. ‘But therein lies the problem. If we move with a torch, they’ll sight us from a league away. Unless they’re in the midst of combat, which might help.’

Cahra looked up at the invisible moon again, still able to mark its location in the sky. ‘I may have a solution for that,’ she said, as Thelaema and Wyldaern rejoined them.

‘Where is the Captain?’ Piet immediately asked the Oracle.

‘Too far from the entrance to flee, too close for us to feel overtly comfortable.’ Thelaema glanced to Wyldaern. ‘I cannot be discovered.’

‘I will not let that happen,’ Wyldaern vowed, mouth set in a firm line.

Siarl interjected. ‘The sooner we reach the Captain, the less you have to worry. How many enemies? How did they ambush him? Do traps await?’

‘They breached a collapsed tunnel.’ Thelaema leaned heavily against her apprentice. ‘Your Captain’s men are outnumbered three to one.’

‘Traps?’ Queran pressed, red eyebrows taut. The Oracle shook her head, looking as if she was standing by sheer force of stubbornness alone.

‘We shall lead them from here,’ Piet told the Seers. He looked to Cahra.

She felt fastened to the ground. I thought I’d have more time—

‘I know,’ Thelaema murmured to her.

‘Go,’ Cahra told Piet. ‘I won’t be long.’ She couldn’t stymie her nerves as she waved Thierre’s detail away. Piet nodded, the group leaving to descend on the caves.

When they’d gone, she turned to Thelaema. ‘You know what I’m going to ask you.’

‘Yes,’ the Oracle said quietly. Wyldaern retreated, giving them privacy.

Cahra couldn’t breathe as she strained to speak the words:

‘How… how did they die?’

Thelaema didn’t answer right away.

‘Your mother and father knew the risks; their responsibility, once you were born and named Kolyath’s heir.

By then, your kin had been in hiding for centuries.

’ The Oracle paused to clear her throat.

‘And yet there were always threats, tragedies. Death. No matter where Brulian and Inana’s descendants went, it was as though someone, somewhere, always knew.

Your family became nomads, ever on the move to stay beyond the reach of their enemies. ’

Thelaema’s eyes fell, the slightest tremor in her voice as she carried on.

‘With the union of your parents, however, and after so long without incident, they decided that it was time to settle with those they trusted – to establish a real life, with you.’ The woman wavered. ‘But Ozumbre found you, and struck one final time.’

In that moment, standing in the dark of night, the thought pierced her like an arrow: Cahra didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to touch, didn’t want to mar, any inkling she’d ever had about her parents. The fantasy, that maybe they’d been happy.

That maybe things hadn’t ended with their blood.

But there was no time to turn back now. Hands trembling at her sides, Cahra asked, ‘What happened?’

Thelaema exhaled, a single, long, unbroken breath, her small frame shrinking as she prepared herself. Her voice grew quiet as a grave.