Page 35 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

‘What?’ he asked, caught off guard by both the tone and the ‘sir’.

‘You seem – as if you two were socially acquainted, before today,’ Raiden said. And he realised: this had nothing to do with Cahra.

‘You know!’ he accused Raiden, stunned. ‘When did Tyne reveal my parents’ plans?’ He could barely control the anger in his voice. ‘And why did you not tell me?’

Raiden’s face fell, guilt glinting in his eyes. ‘Today, at the house. A letter arrived, coded and messengered through our network. Commander Tyne never bothers writing to me, he leaves my reports to Sylvie’s aides,’ said Raiden. ‘And as for telling you, how could I? When you returned to the house, Cahra was in tow. And has been ever since,’ Raiden argued. ‘Then we fled. But she cannot distract you. Not only because we’re approaching Luminaux, but because you have a bride now.’

He bristled at the word ‘bride’, and at the intrusion of his parents into his personal affairs before he had even set foot in the kingdom. Yet exhaustion tugged at him and arguing with Raiden achieved nothing. ‘So my sister says. Do you know of her, this “bride”?’

‘I do,’ Raiden said.

He glared into the fire’s glowing coals. ‘As I wish that I did not.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

He kept staring at the embers. ‘Delicia is truly naive to think that I will stand for this. After so long and at such distance, has she found no other?’ He gazed in the direction of Cahra’s sleeping form, his distemper rising with his thoughts of home.

Raiden asked, ‘Why chance another, when she has you?’

‘She does not have me! She never did,’ he muttered, his fingers knit below his chin as he tried to strategise a way out of his predicament. For he would end this travesty.

‘Well,’ Raiden said, then stopped at the look on his face.

‘Yes, we courted, once, for a few months, years ago,’ he ground out. ‘And it ended when I chose to leave Luminaux.’ To serve it, in Kolyath. The simplest decision of his life.

‘Exactly,’ Raiden told him. ‘It seems Lady Delicia is picking up where you left things.’

‘Like Hael,’ he snapped.

Raiden gagged on his drink. ‘Thierre—’

‘I will not do it. I willnot!’ He was on his feet now, all noble bearing tossed aside. ‘She cannot compel me into such a union!’

Raiden stood, placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘She has no right. Unfortunately, however, your parents do.’ Raiden’s grey eyes were frank. ‘This isn’t Sylvie and her suitors. This is the Crown Prince of Luminaux, the future of the throne. Your kingdom.’

The words of his oldest, dearest friend fell heavy as Raiden said, ‘I am sorry, Thierre. But I don’t think you can win this fight.’

CHAPTER 16

The Scion.Hael could scent her in the darkness: the sweet musk of humans, the tart crispness of something like apple mead, and her essence – rich and treacly with a hint of spice, like the wildflower agrimony. Oh, the irony of the blossom and its tall yellow petals. In his time, agrimony had been a medicinal herb for the eyes.

His fires rippled in response, the flames in his sockets simmering as he waited for her. Hael remained cowled, knowing the sight of his gaunt face would terrify, more so than the fires that served as his first and second sight. Fortuitously, his tattered robes bared little flesh, barring his ashen, corpse-like hands. He let the cuffs of his sleeves fall, shrouding them.

Regardless, he had succeeded. He had called to her, and she had come.

He watched as she slept, rousing to roll from her back to her side on the dark slate. The tiles were cut to triangles that swept from the bone rubble girding him and the Scion, to the moat edging the room and up to its metal doors; his metal, Haellium, upon which the carved inscriptions had been spelled to contain him. Feeling for the ground, the Scion finally awakened and sat up, staring at him.

Hael had learned from their bygone encounters that despite her natural defiance, the inborn battle instincts and raised fists, she feared him. And so he stood, a tangible presence that she could see, hear and calmly converse with. For they would speak.

‘Please accept my apology. I did not wish to affright you when last we met,’ Hael appealed, attempting to explain himself. ‘I predicted peril.’ His eyes narrowed, perceiving the stiffness in one of her legs. ‘Was I correct?’

She continued to stare with two-toned eyes, brown and green, reminding him of trees. Not the trees of his city, their ebony bark and fronds and buds. The trees of the greenwoods, the realm’s ‘Wylds’. Of its roots and leaves, and browns and greens. Of life, the natural order. The one that he had supplanted as the weaponised Reliquus.

Even trees met their earthly ends.

‘Yes,’ she said finally, as if weighing his words. She looked up at him, a stretch as Hael towered above mere mortals. Or he had, centuries ago.

Hael pondered her upon the cold ground, then, as it had seemed to bother her before. He searched her with his occult eyes for an injury so ruinous that it could defeat her senses. But his flames only licked an aura of pain, acute pain, half-way up her leg. The tendon below her right kneecap; it was damaged.

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