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HESTRA, GOD OF HEARTHS, FELT THE FLAME OF HSETH ’ S coming. A flesh beyond her flesh, a fire beyond her fire. Hseth was no longer a god of burning heather for the herds to graze, nor a god of furnace and forges. The fire god had been reborn for blood and brass and bone. For war.

And as the weeks passed, Hseth’s power grew, feeding from fury and fear as the Talicians came over mountains and waves to claim Middren for their own.

Hestra, with her dwindling power, could sense the hearths of Daesmouth crumbling and falling as its people tried to hold off the sea invasion.

She could feel the stones that had once been carved with her ancient symbols in the north, which cracked and cooled as Middrenites fled down the Bennite Mountains ahead of the Talicians’ flaming raids.

They left behind their homes, those few places that still held Hestra’s twig-and-moss figurines buried beneath the hearthstones in return for her blessing.

So few still remembered that the hearts of their houses held fire god shrines.

And that did not stop them burning.

From the shadows of fireplaces, Hestra saw clouds of smoke rising over burning groves of ripening fruit.

She saw wells blacken with the blood of the people who had drunk from them.

She saw the poor folk who were caught. Their livestock, their children, dragged to be sacrifices at the feet of a god who would not remember what love could feel like when freely given. Not taken with blade and flame.

And Hseth’s fire priests were happy to burn rich lands if it meant they could claim them more quickly and without a fight.

They did not care that their own fighters were choking on their flames, their bellies empty and their clothes threadbare.

They did not care that gods were not supposed to be used as weapons.

Hestra wondered if she should go to Hseth, speak from hearth to flame and remind the Talician god of the promises she had made. Remind her that she had been wise once, that she had known when to let flames burn, and when to let them die.

She did not. Hseth would not hear her; all she heard were the voices of her priests, and the screams of her victims.

There was only one person who wanted Hestra to speak, and she had no words for him.

‘Will you not talk to me, hearth god?’ Arren whispered in the rare moments he was alone, now he had negotiated himself free from confinement by the rebels and used his banner to summon armies to their defence. ‘Will you be silent till all of our people are ash and dust?’

Our people?

‘The Vittosk lands to the east are overrun, Hestra,’ Arren pressed, the use of her name like a tug on her heart.

What she knew by sight he learned through letters, pleas for help, promises of soldiers, guards, supplies.

She could feel his voice in her twigs, in her body.

She could feel his fear as if it were her own.

‘They took Blenraden and hung its pilgrims and guards from the walls, like totems, flayed with fire.’

Hestra burrowed deeper into his heart, wishing his words could not find her.

Burning faithful, delighting in pain; that was not what she wanted.

Hestra wanted people to turn away from their bright cities and gods of fortune.

She wanted them to leave their coin and silks and spices, and to come back to the hearth, come back to her.

To seek out her warmth for fear of the dark.

‘She has forgotten you, my heart.’

Hestra knew. Of course she knew. All promises had been broken with Hseth’s death. Now, she was left to wonder if the other deity of fire had ever meant them at all.

Was it so wrong to help her? She just had to do one thing, rescue one little boy-king, gasping away his life on a stone floor, and manipulate him into her power, connect him with Hseth and her conniving. They had hoped to take root in the space where Middren’s gods had been torn out.

It had been good, for a while. Hestra had gained life and strength, suffused with colour, in her binding to him. So many hopes, dreams, so many promises he gave to her.

All now on the brink of destruction.

Arren’s fortress had been shattered and invaded, his beloved had tried to run him through, and he and Hestra both had been choked almost to death by the demigod, the Craier girl. He was a king of little, now. Lost pride and a losing war.

He had no power to offer, and she had nothing to say to him. Gods could hold the silence of centuries, and only the first boon she had granted him, etched black in his flesh, kept them together.

The promise to keep him alive.

Could she leave? She had used almost all of her old power to take Arren’s double with his army to Lesscia, and then the rest bringing him back again to the fortress with his precious knight, the little god of white lies and the halfling girl who slipped with them to her hearth.

Her prayers were so sparse now, so faint, her will so weak that if she left the king she was afraid she would lose her form, her shape, her very self.

She would be nothing but nameless power, a malevolent spirit, a breath on the wind.

Perhaps she should do it. Disappear. What else was there? Staying in a land of the faithless, half-throned king, harassed by flames she could not command? Caught in the chest of a man who wanted all the love, the worship, everything for himself?

Our people.

‘Will you leave me here alone,’ said Arren, ‘like everyone else?’

He spoke as if to himself, staring out of his window into the starry sky above the city of Sakre.

Was he truly speaking to her? Or was it Elogast in his mind?

She kept her thoughts close, giving neither comfort nor pain.

He wanted love, like her. And power. War had caught them both between two worlds: flame and a future, a king and chaos.

God and human.