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KISSEN REACHED THE ISLAND FIRST, WADING THROUGH the slick river, dragging her metal leg through the water with a pain that felt as if the increasing current was trying to rip it off her.

Commander Peta’s hands were still on the sword sticking out of the king’s chest. The other knights were in shock, frozen, unsure what to do. But terror grew on their faces as the god-king’s flames dwindled, then disappeared.

Kissen dragged herself onto dry ground, pulling out a throwing knife and flinging it spinning towards the sour-faced Commander Peta. It went through her neck, sending her spinning into the mud, but the cleric didn’t seem to notice.

‘Fireheart!’ Methsme cried, her eyes on the king as he stumbled to his knees, cloaked in stormlight. She dropped too, her hands out before him, as if welcoming him into an embrace. ‘The king who must die, so the god can live!’

‘You fucking lunatic!’ yelled Kissen. ‘What have you done?’

Methsme did not hear her, and pointed her shaking fingers up at Hseth. ‘Fire god, be gone!’ she howled. ‘Be gone before the true god comes to kill you.’

The king fell on his side in the mud The nubs of velvet antlers were poking through his hair. It had worked. He had almost managed it through will alone. To become a god. Powerful enough to face Hseth. Powerful enough to kill her.

But his own faithful had decided it wasn’t enough.

Hseth stared, baffled by this little cleric who did not seem to realise she had just had her ‘true god’ destroyed.

‘He was too tied to the world!’ cried Methsme, beseechingly at anyone who would listen, though her voice was beginning to falter.

No one did. Some knights had realised that all was lost, and began struggling past her, away from the flame.

‘To his loves, to his flesh and bone. Gods do not need affection; gods do not take lovers! Gods love their priests and commanders! Gods—’

Kissen should run. It was too late now. She had no more tricks, and there was nowhere to run but the water. Nowhere was safe. And Hseth smiled because she knew it.

‘Let me show you,’ she snarled, ‘the power of a true god.’

She reached down, pouring flame across her arm towards the earth, and the cleric screamed as it struck her.

Methsme’s antlers caught fire first, her hair all rushing up in a burst of heat and flame.

Then her skirts, her skin. Her very voice was burned to smoke, and then she was songless.

In an instant, all her attempted power, all her hopes, were ash.

Kissen threw herself back into the water to avoid the fire, and saw a blaze of light, heard the screams. Felt the heat.

But it was not the heat that came to kill her; it was the thudding of fleeing knights and their frightened feet.

She tried to push herself to the surface, but the crack of a boot on her leg forced her back down into the water.

Another. Kissen tried to yell as she was forced down, but only bubbles blew out of her mouth.

Where was her staff? Her strength? She had no grip on anything.

Another knee hit her head; a hand pushed her away as she tried and failed to grab a body to pull herself up.

They didn’t care. In their terror, they didn’t notice her at all.

Water was in her nose, her throat, as she struggled to rise against the crush. She was weakening, her lungs straining, and her vision swam, darkened. She had tried to kill Hseth by drowning, and now she was suffering the same fate. What a shitty way to die.

Then she felt a hand grab her cloak, pull her up. She surfaced, gulping for breath, retching water.

All the world was aflame. The water was hot on her face, and she found herself clinging on to Lessa. The lady had found her by her green cloak, and wrenched her to the surface.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

Kissen didn’t answer. She was not fucking all right. None of them were.

And ahead was Elo, a shield raised against the flames, throwing himself back onto the island, towards the fallen king.