Page 112 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Thelaema bore no sign of her thoughts. Yet Grauwynn was right. Soon, the All-seeing would return the Oracles to their state of oneness, their unity of mind. Once that happened, she and Grauwynn would be able to divine each other’s every move. She had to strike. Now.

Thelaema took a step forward. ‘If I asked for truth, would you offer it?’

Grauwynn stood, robe stark against the black steps of the temple. ‘Would you listen?’

Thelaema chanced another step. ‘I would.’

If only to know, before she killed him. Aptly, Grauwynn failed to see her thoughts.

‘All that we had prophesied has transpired,’ he said, hands clasped in his robe’s cuffs. ‘The Reliquus has arisen. All that is left is the capital’s rejuvenation.’ Like hers, his gaze had fallen to the garden at the base of Hael’s statue.

Thelaema waited. ‘And?’

‘Once again, your shrewd mind,’ Grauwynn repeated, laughing and cocking his head. ‘And, my Oraculine, when it has, I shall conclude what I began. The Nether-magicks of the Reliquus will finally be conferred.’

‘To whom?’ Thelaema asked slowly.

Grauwynn, the male spiritual leader of their Order, smiled. ‘Why, to myself, of course.’

Thelaema stilled. ‘And the Reliquus?’

‘Andruit? The boy has lived far longer than any mortal,’ Grauwynn said dismissively. ‘He shall return to the dust from whence he came.’

‘His immortal existence is but a consequence of the Netherworld magicks that we, the Order of Descry, augmented him with,’ Thelaema argued. ‘A course of action that I warned against more than once. Now you wish to strip the Reliquus of his blessing – worse, his life? You have not the power to do it nor the permission.’ Tenebrius would never stand for it, she thought. Hael, or Andruit as he had been when alive, was Tenebrius’ chosen vessel.

Even Grauwynn would not court angering the God of the Netherworld.

‘Oh, but therein lies the beauty,’ Grauwynn said. ‘For I indeed possess the power.’ The Oracularus revealed a shining dagger.The flash of silver.

Thelaema froze. It was the blood-blade with the falcon handle from Hael’s ritual that had reanimated him and created the Reliquus. Such an idol, on the day of Hael’s resurrection, could be enough to end him. And Cahra would be next, she thought.A capital coup.

Grauwynn continued. ‘Hael’stromia’s defences cast our Order out, after I tried and failed to draw the darkness from the Nether, and all while the Reliquus failed in his duty of protecting his Kolyath Emperor charge. I have had four centuries to discern my mistake.’ Raising the dagger, he went on, ‘It is this: I should have killed Hael first. Then, perhaps, our Xan would never have detected me. And never had to die in vain.’

Thelaema’s heart faltered, and she stumbled as she cried out, ‘You killed Xan?’

Xan, as Oraculant, was more than their fellow High Oracle. Xan completed the triad as the crux of the Order of Descry, the great harmoniser between Thelaema and Grauwynn’s temperaments, maintaining an equilibrium so that no single Oracle exerted control.

Their beloved Xan had died during the fall of Hael’stromia, a wound that had never truly healed for her. Grauwynn’s confession ripped it open, hanging in the air like a ghost.

She rapidly blinked away the tears, her breaths shaking as she grieved.

I should have killed Grauwynn!But at least, with her passing and his, the realm could usher in a new Oraculine, Oraculant and Oracularus. Starting with Wyldaern.

A new era of the Order of Descry, she thought weakly. A better one.

‘Such a course of action I cannot allow,’ she whispered, the weight of her sorrow grounding her as she prepared to do battle. ‘You know this.’ Thelaema lifted her eyes to his. ‘Why, then, did you not simply kill me?’

Grauwynn’s gaze cleared just a little, to the warm violet that had enamoured her younger self, as he murmured with finality, ‘I so wished to hear your voice.’

With a sigh of regret, he pointed the dagger at Thelaema and unleashed a sizzling bolt of black fire.

CHAPTER 44

Hael had been the Reliquus for a thousand years, deathless for fifty-fold longer than his human life span. In that time, he had watched as the realm’s Scions, Emperors, rose and fell, sovereigns of political – and personal – fate and failings. Not once had Hael entertained the comical notion that a being such as he might chance upon the phenomenon known as ‘love’, that his Masters either chased with unflagging ardour or decried. Such bonds eluded Hael, even in his mortal life.

But now?

Impossible, implausible, utterly illogical.

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