Page 66 of The First Spark (Dynasty of Fire #1)

“What the hell are you doing here?” Kalie cried. She thrashed against the legionnaires, trying to break free and run to him, to help him, but their grips were too strong. He’d been safe on the ship, they couldn’t have seized him, unless?—

Oh, gods.

Unless he’d turned himself in.

Zane glanced at her, and his face turned ashen. Kalie’s pulse thundered. Legionnaires shoved the Dalian guards aside, seized him, and marched him into the throne room.

His expression closed off as he turned to Iliana.

They were speaking, but the words were a thick sludge, like she was hearing it all underwater.

Formalities, maybe. The legionnaires tried to shove her out the door, but a muted voice rang out—Iliana’s?

—and again, hesitation, uneven breaths and tightening grips, before they stopped trying to push her.

It was truly a scene from her worst nightmares.

Zane strode down the carpet, escorted by legionnaires, with dozens of others aiming pulsers at him.

Dalians, too. Dalians who’d been on the guard with him, who’d probably cracked jokes and eaten in the lounge with him.

Zane kept walking, with his hands shackled behind his back.

Kalie’s jaw hung open. Her eyes were so wide they hurt, and the heat had drained from her body, leaving her cold and hollow. Mira had promised to stop him from doing this. But here he was anyway, ready to throw his life away in a duel he couldn’t possibly win.

The sound of her name broke through the veil of silence like a sudden pop, and she could hear again.

Zane’s back was to her as he spoke. “I’m asking you to end this. Stop Carik from destroying our fleets. No more Dalian blood should be shed over Dalian soil.”

“I was trying to do that when you so rudely barged in,” Iliana said. An attendant scampered across the dais and stooped down, whispering in Iliana’s ear. She was too far away for her features to be clear, but the atmosphere in the hall darkened as legionnaires hissed sharp questions to one another.

Iliana’s baffled voice rang through the hall: “Your fleets contacted the Prime Minister’s to surrender.”

Kalie gasped. No, no. If Nadar was surrendering, it was over. She glanced at Zane, but he wore a look of lazy indifference.

“Perhaps you were unaware, but Kalista and I already came to an agreement.” Iliana sat up regally, but her shoulders drooped and her expression was tense.

“Carik is sending her body double here now. I’m going to release Grant, and Carik’s going to call his fleets home as soon as she’s in his custody. ”

Zane’s carefree mask slipped. As he scanned the pulsers surrounding them, his panicked expression was more severe than it had been during the battle, or even during his confession about the woman he’d loved and lost. His throat bobbed, and he looked down.

Seconds ticked by, and when he raised his head, his calm mask was in place.

No , she wanted to beg. Please, don’t .

She couldn’t speak.

“Your solution isn’t a solution,” Zane said.

“If Kalie dies, that’s Dalian blood shed on Dalian soil, right off the bat.

Our fleet might surrender, but then what?

You’ll make Kalie a martyr, and someone will go to war for her, like we did for Marcus Pool and your sister.

The Dalians have already turned on you. They won’t recognize your legitimacy, and then… ” He shrugged. “More blood.”

Iliana scowled. “Since you seem to have a solution, what exactly do you propose?”

“Oh, it’s simple. There’s only four lives at risk, and no one can argue it isn’t fair. In fact, it’s one of the most ancient traditions we have.”

Kalie’s breath caught.

“Duchissa, have you ever heard of Fallé di Azura?”

“No!” Kalie lunged for him. His eyes flickered to her, just for a moment, then his jaw clenched and he looked away. “You can’t do this, I won’t allow it!”

The legionnaires gripped her arms and pulled her back.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of it as the Test of Faith? It’s an ancient tradition. Each of you puts forward a champion, and they duel for your right to the throne.”

A legionnaire was upon him before Kalie could cry out, striking his back with the grip of a pulser.

Zane crashed to the ground. As he stayed down on all fours, Kalie’s chest tightened, and she fought to get shallow gasps of air.

Surely one blow couldn’t have taken him down.

For Azura’s sake, he’d been shot and he’d still crossed an entire sector to save her.

A legionnaire crouched beside him, gripping his chin. “You should listen to the girl. It’s not happening. Carik’s already won, so there sure as hell won’t be any duel.”

“Release him,” Iliana snapped. “I’m interested in hearing what he has to say.”

“Your Majesty, the Prime Minister will never?—”

“This is my palace, and Wells is right.” Iliana pointed towards the ceiling. “Those are not my forces. Your master can funnel troops here until I die, but when he martyrs Kalista, she’ll have won the battle in the hearts of our people. ”

“And if your man kills me, Azura’s spoken—you’re the true Duchissa. No one would dare challenge you then.”

Kalie squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to shut out the image of a blade ripping through his neck, spewing blood across the ground.

“It’s the best possible solution.” Zane’s eyes flicked between the glowering legionnaires and the Dalians. He rose to his feet calmly, but tension laced his rigid shoulders. “One of you will prevail, and like a phoenix rising from the ashes, you’ll have a glorious reign.”

“Carik won’t allow it,” a legionnaire spat.

Distantly, Kalie registered that the legionnaires were taking every opportunity to undermine Iliana—she could use that, drive the wedge deeper, turn them against each other—but she drowned him out.

Her eyes hovered on the side of Zane’s head, and as his gaze flicked to her, his words echoed in her ears.

“A phoenix rising from the ashes.”

The phoenix was Father’s symbol, and she’d sent him that same code before they’d attacked Dali. If Mira had let him come here, knowing she could lose him… surely there was a plan?

Zane met her gaze. She searched his face, looking for a clue.

“We’ve delayed this long enough.” He spoke slowly, stressing the word delay .

“The battle for the throne is between you two alone. It’s not like another fleet—” he raised his eyebrows— “is going to show up and fight for you. You can’t run from this. ”

Delay. Another fleet.

Kalie’s head pounded. He was trying to delay for another attack. But Father was under siege, and even if he could break through the stargate and muster troops against the Federation, he would never abandon his empire for her.

She didn’t want to delay, she didn’t want to fight, she wanted to save Ariah…

The corners of Zane’s eyes crinkled in that way she liked so much, and his message was clear: Trust me.

Kalie swallowed thickly. She did trust him. She would follow him through Azura’s Arch into whatever lay beyond, if he asked her to.

A hush swept over the hall, and Zane’s smile widened into a triumphant grin. Footsteps and murmurs tripped over one another, and above it all, there was a slow, uneven gait—a shuffling step, a pause, a thud, another step.

Ancient, rattling breaths filled the hall, and the hairs on the back of Kalie’s neck stood on end as every Dalian in the room dropped to their knees. The Dalian guards touched their foreheads to the floor. Even Iliana knelt, with her mouth gaping open.

Above it all rose those rattling breaths and that uneven rhythm: tap, pause, thud, tap .

Trembling, Kalie turned.

Then, stifling a gasp, she fell to her knees.

Despite the oaken staff supporting her hunched, slender figure, the aged woman hobbling into the hall carried an air of nobility.

Wisps of white hair floated around her lined face.

A nurturing aura radiated from the gentle folds of her worn, cream-colored cloak and tabard.

Intricate azure designs wove across the fabric, resembling a peacock’s wings.

“They said,” she rasped, and multiple voices as ancient as time issued from her lips, “that there was to be a challenge.”

Kalie was paralyzed. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth.

Though no one had ever seen her and her name had been lost to time, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this was Azura’s Speaker.

Crystalline silence hung in the hall.

A purple aura pulsed around a gem hanging from the Speaker’s neck.

The light glowed and guttered. Kalie couldn’t stop staring.

It looked vaguely like amethyst, but a distortion of it, like someone who’d never seen amethyst had created a replica.

Glowing and fading and glowing, in a mesmerizing loop.

Someone scoffed. “Who, exactly, are you?”

“Silence!” Iliana thundered.

Kalie tore her gaze from the violet stone.

Still kneeling, Iliana glared daggers at a legionnaire. Her glare faded to an expression of awestruck reverence as she turned to the Speaker. “Your Supreme Holiness, your presence here is an honor. ”

“Azura commands you to rise, daughters,” the Speaker called in her myriad voices, shifting her golden eyes between them.

As Kalie pushed herself to her feet, Zane arched his eyebrows as if to say, Do it .

But she couldn’t make her lips move. In her twenty cycles as Duchissa, Aunt Calida had never seen the Speaker. Nor had Grandmother Madeleine. Rumor claimed Duchissa Coriana had known her identity as a child, but that was a century ago.

Kalie turned to the Speaker, but her gaze caught on Mira.

She skulked in on the Speaker’s heels, keeping her head down as she fidgeted with her ring.

Kalie did a double take. Mira never skulked.

She sauntered, she smirked, she parted crowds with a look.

Mira’s skittish eyes flitted to the towering windows, then to the nondescript exits behind the golden dais, then to the doors between the tapestries in the aisles, as if she was sizing up all the exits.