Chapter Forty-Six

Elegy walked after the Cinder King as he stepped to the edge of Union, flying in an imperious way above the landscape, watching over the fallen people of Beacon.

Several men in white coats dragged Rebeke over as well. She was the only person of Beacon other than Elegy that the Charred had recovered. Elegy hadn't initially been certain why he'd picked Rebeke to spare. Now, however, she could feel his emotions, and she understood. He boiled with satisfaction. With the thrill of having such power over so many people.

His cinderheart glowed fiercely beneath his shirt, and he smiled with unbridled glee at the horror in Rebeke's expression. She fell to her knees at the side of the flying city, looking down at the huddled remnants of Beacon, gathered on the ground. Fewer than one hundred and thirty-five souls, surrounding the ruins of their once proud, rebellious town.

Yes, that was it. He was happy to have a deliberate kind of power over Elegy's family line, and its last living member.

In the distance, the sun rose. Light moved across the land as a sheet of flame.

Elegy stood with six other Charred. She was too new to understanding people to know for certain, but she thought that maybe she'd fooled the Cinder King. When the Beaconites had decided to surrender, she'd made a good show of lashing out at them too—in full sight of the other Charred who came to secure the place. They'd delivered her up to the Cinder King, who had touched her cinderheart with his fingers and spoken some words.

That hadn't done anything, but she'd pretended it had. She'd calmed, because she could still feel what he wanted of her, even if she didn't have to do it. She'd felt his pleasure at her immediate obedience, and she now stood quietly—as if completely under his control.

They hadn't searched her. Why would they?

So they didn't know about the sliver of a sunheart that Zellion had given her. She wouldn't, it turned out, need it for herself.

Rebeke knelt at the edge of the city, shaking. Elegy continued to find her weakness curious. Before being taken as a Charred, had Elegy been similarly fragile? Though she would not say it aloud, she was glad for what had been done to her. For the strength she now had.

"Please," Rebeke said, turning a tear-streaked face toward the Cinder King. "There's no need to do this. They can serve you well, great king."

"They will serve me," he said, oozing with self-satisfaction. "Your people will be the flames that carry my ships to conquer and unite even the farthest corridors. Once the other towns know the price of rebellion—once my people spread word of an entire city fallen to the sun—all will shrink and cower before me." He nodded, speaking as if only to himself. "This is how I will unify the world."

Rebeke slumped. Then curiously something changed about her posture. The Cinder King wasn't watching, but Elegy saw it. Saw the younger woman's hands ball to fists, her chin rise. She was going to attack him, wasn't she? Elegy nodded in approval. Though the act would be futile, it was bold. A better way to die.

Strangely, instead of attacking, Rebeke spoke.

"How did you know?" she asked.

Confusion from the Cinder King—Elegy could feel it.

"Know?" he asked.

"Know that I'd been leading Beacon all this time," she said. Then she pointed down to the rest of her people. The three old women knelt in the center of the group, deep in prayer before the advancing sunlight. "How did you know those three were puppets, used to distract you? After you took Elegy, we knew we needed to hide what I was. Yet you've obviously seen through the ruse."

"Yes, well," the Cinder King said. "It was obvious."

A lie? Why did he care to lie?

He doesn't want to be seen as ignorant, Elegy realized. How curious. But why was Rebeke lying? What was she hoping to accomplish? Now he'd be more likely to kill her, not less.

Rebeke stood up and turned away from the people to meet his eyes. "You've made your point, Cinder King," she said. "You have me, and you know what I am. I have bent before you. Collect the others, and I will tell them that I serve you."

He paused, cocking his head.

"What's better?" Rebeke asked. "The world knowing you can kill a city? Please—anyone could take the sunhearts from a group of straggling ships with no warriors. But if the world knew that even your greatest detractor—the leader who sought to overthrow you—eventually realized her power was nothing compared to yours… If they knew even she agreed to follow you, then nobody else would ever rebel."

What was this ruse? Rebeke was no leader; she was weak and soft. Wasn't she? Yet the Cinder King believed Rebeke's lies. Elegy could feel it.

And…and Elegy found that she believed them a little herself.

"No," the Cinder King said.

"Then kill me!" Rebeke said, stepping forward. "Bring the others here and make them watch me die! Think of the power you'll feel, holding my throat in your hands, crushing the life from me as my people watch. Is that not the ultimate show of strength? Why kill them when you can make them suffer?"

Elegy gasped, and then immediately hoped she hadn't betrayed herself. She couldn't help it, however, watching Rebeke—short, completely without strength of arm, face streaked with tears—confront the Cinder King and trick him. Yes, Elegy could feel how seductive he found the thought of killing her in front of the Beaconites.

Rebeke, safest of them all at the moment, sought to give away her life for the others. She could not fight the Cinder King, but somehow she was close to defeating him. If he rescued the others and killed Rebeke…

Shades. Elegy had been wrong.

This wasn't weakness. In this realization, Elegy felt a strange calmness. Something that forced back her desire to rend and move and kill and fight.

This was strength. Rebeke was stronger than Elegy was.

The moment held, with the sunlight advancing—slowly but inevitably across the landscape—and Rebeke didn't break. She didn't look back. She committed to her gambit.

Until, at last, the Cinder King smiled.

"You almost," he said to her, "persuaded me. But I can see pain in your eyes. You hurt so terribly to know they're going to die. I will not be swayed by you. To do so would give you power over me."

Then she went for him, hands going for his eyes—but one of the Charred caught her before she'd taken a single step. Rebeke struggled, ranting, screaming. Her ploy collapsing. Her frustration boiling out.

Still, it had been a valiant effort. A soldier on a losing battlefield using the only weapon she had left: her life.

"You shouldn't have told me," the Cinder King said, "that you were their leader. I was planning to keep you as a trophy. Now that I know you've been leading the dissenters against me…well, I think you'll make a fine Charred. First, you can watch them die." He stepped closer to her as she struggled in the grip of the Charred. "This is true power. The power over life and death. The…"

He paused. He squinted toward the advancing sunlight.

Elegy followed his gaze, and even his Charred—as always, sensing his emotions—turned to look. The moment caught Rebeke too, who was allowed to twist and search the horizon. What had he seen?

The sunlight was close to the Beaconites—and as it advanced, it set aflame the plants and even the sky: a wave of destruction, fire, and light. Moving slowly by the scale of ships, but still faster than a person could run. The Beaconites should have tried anyway. Instead they huddled together, not wanting to leave stragglers and the young—wanting to die as one, not as a field of running individuals.

In that moment, Elegy could see the strength in that too.

Together, they watched the advancing flames. A sky of red and orange, a brilliant death.

The fire undulated. The sheet of light rippled and changed.

Then a figure, high in the sky, exploded from the light, trailing fragments of fire and smoke, glowing like metal being forged. A living ember of light. Somehow, he'd lived through the inferno. Indeed, the very fire in the sky seemed to arrange itself behind him into the shape of some symbol Elegy did not know. Roughly triangular, point down, with wings extending outward on either side.

"It's him," Rebeke whispered.