FIRE ATE AT the logs, growing higher and hotter. Fast, destructive, aided by dry wood and lamp oil, it filled the sky with thick gray smoke. The courtiers and peasants watched the body burn, and not one shed a tear for him. Saran didn’t expect them to. No one liked Keleir, not really, save those who thought of him as a god. Brother Povish, the Ekaru priest, waited eagerly near the fire with his hands clasped, praying feverishly for Keleir to rise from the dead. If any satisfaction could be found in his death, it was that they would find no joy in seeing Keleir become the Vel d’Ekaru.
The new queen, regal next to the rebel leader, stood serene as she watched the blue linen wrapped around her dead husband catch flame. She fixated so maddeningly on it that she barely noticed a bloody hand wrap around hers and draw it from her side. Saran blinked at the sweating figure, who’d seemingly appeared out of thin air next to her. Rowe held her hand firm and pressed the smallest of keys into the Bind lock.
He twisted the key, too angry to care about his violent grip, and the thin metal manacle fell from her wrist to clatter against the stone stairs. It rolled down step after step, each fall providing a sharp ringing echo in Saran’s ears.
The world came back in one overwhelming rush. She hadn’t noticed it before, when she’d severed her hand. The agony of that act had blocked the feeling of being reconnected to the Core. Nothing blocked it now. She felt everything anew and multiplied, even down to the weakness of her anemic form. Her knees buckled under her. She reached out and grasped hold of Rowe’s arms, steadying herself as the world settled back to normal. Tears of relief burned her eyes.
Her skin tingled with a familiar and impossible hum. It had been so long that it took her a moment to place the sensation. Shame washed over her for forgetting. The Time Mage straightened and turned her attention to the fire, where the linen burned away but the body remained. Immediately her left hand felt heavier by a fraction, and she looked down to find the fourth finger of her hand wrapped tight with a gold wedding band. Without the Bind, the marriage spell finally completed.
“He’s alive.”
“What?” Rowe muttered, not quite hearing her.
Saran shoved past him, nearly tumbling down the stairs in her dress. The Lightning Mage seized her, half falling and half running to the bottom, where he held her fast before she bolted for the flames.
“He’s alive!” she cried, tugging her arms against Rowe’s grip.
“Saran, he’s dead!”
Saran shook her head and pulled harder. She turned and beat at Rowe. “He’s alive! I feel him! I feel him, Rowe!”
Rowe wrapped his arms tightly around her and held firmly in place. “If that is true, the fire will not hurt him. But it will hurt you. We will see when the fire is gone. If he remains in the ashes, then he lives.”
A startled cry rippled through the crowd, followed by horrified gasps, as the dead body on the platform sat up in the flames. The Ekaru priest fell to his knees, lifting his hands to the sky with a loud thankful wail. The body rose to stand naked upon the burning wood. The fire wrapped around him, tender and loving as it licked harmlessly against his flesh.
Saran struggled to escape Rowe’s arms and, in the Lightning Mage’s distraction, she managed to wiggle free.
The figure standing in the flames looked out over the crowd and stepped off the crumbling altar. He sauntered lazily down the steps, the fire moving with him like a river. It washed down the pyre, out and away from him, into the crowd, where the flames caught on those closest. Their screams stopped Saran short. The courtyard broke with panic, and people scattered in chaos, like ants from a crushed mound. They knocked each other down and stomped over the bodies to escape the fire.
“That’s not him,” Rowe called. “Saran, that’s not him!”
Saran watched Keleir slowly make his way down, him watching her in turn. He looked like Keleir, but he lacked the softness in the eyes. This Keleir wore a pointed glare of hate. A cruel smile sprouted on his lips. The darkness in it caused her to take an involuntary step back. She could almost read his thoughts, could almost see the terrible things he longed to do to her. The Ekaru priest kneeling before her jumped to his feet and sang the praises of his god, even as the fire swallowed him whole.
Rowe drew her back, the fire washing up around her feet. They moved swiftly enough that it had no time to catch on her clothing. He pulled her toward the castle stairs. “We’ve got to go!”
“I can stop him,” Saran argued, pulling him to stop.
The Lightning Mage shook his head. “There isn’t any time to stop him. He’ll kill you!”
Saran’s eyes lit white with light. “Don’t argue.”
“Keleir told me to protect you. I’m not letting you get killed because you think you can stop him. He’s dead, Saran. There is nothing left of him to save.” Rowe’s blue eyes burned into her, searing in a truth that tore her heart in two.
She shook her head. “There is a piece of him in there, I know it. I can feel it.”
Rowe’s shoulders slumped, like a beaten man. “You won’t ever give up, will you? You won’t ever stop trying to save him … You’ll die, you know that?”
“I love him,” she pleaded.
Fire filled the courtyard, wrapped around the stairs, and surrounded Saran and Rowe before they could make their escape into the castle. The heat singed their skin.
Keleir emerged, naked, standing at the edge of the flames and letting them curl around him. Rowe hugged her tighter, burying his face in her curly hair. “I won’t let you kill yourself. The Three need you. I need you.”
Rowe pressed a hard kiss to her forehead, a static charge sparking off their skin in a flash of blue light. Then he gave a violent shove to her chest, sending her falling back down the stairs toward Keleir. A crackling blue Gate swallowed her before she met the stone.
Rowe turned a bitter glare on his brother, and the fire closed in around him.
TO BE CONTINUED