Firestorm

my wrist. I still banged a bruised knee painfully against a stone step, but the pain barely registered as I looked up to see who had hold of me.

Imara. Bruised, bloodied, but not beaten.

My daughter gave me a slow, lovely smile, and reached down to take my other hand in hers. 'One more step, Mom,' she said. 'Just one more.'

There was always one more.

I raised my foot, trembling, and set it on the step. Imara pulled, and with her help, I raised myself up.

One last step.

And then I was at the top.

Ashan stood between me and the door. Imara still had hold of my hands, and she was smiling so sweetly, so luminously, that tears flooded my eyes. Oh God she was lovely. She was all that was good about me, about David, and I barely knew her, I wanted to have time to understand her, who she was, what she meant…

'I love you, Mom,' she said, and let go.

Ashan lunged at her from behind. He took her in both hands, snarling with raw fury, and snapped her neck with a dry, terrible crackle. I saw it happen, right in front of me, and I saw her eyes go wide, the pupils spreading.

I saw my daughter die.

He threw her down the steps as if she was nothing. As if she wasn't worthy of respect and love and devotion. A broken doll thudding down those steep concrete stairs to flop limp and shattered at the bottom, small and human and mortal after all.

I didn't scream. I had nothing left to scream with. I stared at Ashan. He was primal. He'd defeated everything and everyone who'd come against him, from David to Venna to Rahel.

But none of that mattered now. He'd killed my daughter. And I was not backing down.

'No allies?' he said, and grinned. 'No Djinn to rescue you? No Wardens to fight on your side?'

'No,' I said raggedly. 'No one.'

He'd kill me if he could. If there was even the slightest chink in whatever was holding him back, it would break now, and my blood would soak into these thirsty, eternal stones, and it would be over.

Just… over.

I extended my right hand and walked toward him with deliberate steps. He snarled, and it was such a low, vicious sound that if I'd still cared about living or dying, I'd have stopped. But it was all or nothing, now. David had put my feet on the path. Rahel and Venna had defended me. Imara had pulled me when I couldn't make the last effort, and she'd—she'd—

My turn to sacrifice all, if I had to.

My hand was in his space. I waited for the blow that would snap my neck and send me to my death, but it didn't come. My fingers reached, moving forward, then flattened against his chest. His shirt was ripped, and my fingertips registered the difference between hot skin and cool fabric.

We were close enough to be kissing.

'You don't understand,' he said, and suddenly I was talking to a man—an entity, anyway—not just a force of nature. Someone with flaws and fears and longings. I heard them trembling in his voice. I saw them in his inhuman eyes. 'We were gods. We were kings of this world. Then you came, and we were slaves, slaves to you. You took our birthright. You took away our place.'

As if he wanted me to understand. Forgive. Wind blew cold over us, swirling the rags covering him, tossing my hair back in a banner. The Chapel of the Holy Cross was ten steps behind him, and the doors were open.

'The Mother forgot us,' he said softly. 'Heat. Pain. Birth. A slow and quiet cooling. We were her children, but she forgot us.'

'She remembers you now.' I looked over his shoulder at the open doors, the glow of light through the huge expanse of glass window at the far end of the chapel. It was a simple place, with polished wood benches, a plain altar. I could hear the whispering again, stronger now. A union of voices. The Oracle was within. 'You've killed your own, right in front of her. I don't think she'll ever forget you again.'

He couldn't get paler, but I think he might have, at that. 'Nature is selfish,' he said. 'Sacrifice is meaningless. Only survival matters.'

I couldn't think about Imara, about sacrifice. 'I'm not fighting you anymore.'

His eyes filled with a silver sheen of tears, and he pulled in a sudden breath. 'No,' he said. 'I choose this. I choose to stop you, now, here.'

'Don't.'

'I choose!' He screamed it, and reached out with all the power that was inside of him to destroy me.

Stop.

It was a pulse of intention, not a word, and the world froze between one pulse beat and the next, waiting breathlessly. I thought it was Ashan's doing for a second, but I saw the wild fury and fear in his eyes, and I knew.

I turned. The air dragged at me, slow and thick as molasses.

The Oracle was doing this. She was giving me a chance, and I knew it was my very last one.

I walked into the chapel.

Chapter Ten

The Oracle was sitting on a bench, facing the glorious sweep of glass that looked out on the stunning vista. It really was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I'd looked into the eye of more than one storm, and seen the complex, mathematical beauty of it; I'd seen most of the most savage, gorgeous, violent faces of nature.

But this was different. Deep and slow and silent. There was no math to it, no science. Only spirit.

Unlike the other Oracles, this one looked… normal. A woman, with generous curves and a lived-in face, with lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She was wearing a dress the color of the rocks outside of the window, brick red, with a subtle patterning to it, like the creases and shadows and textures of the sandstone. It had flowing sleeves and a loose drape, and it pooled around her feet, into shadow.

She was no race I could identify—coffee-and-cream skin, with a faint golden glow underneath; slightly upturned eyes, but not enough to make her distinctly Asian. Full lips. Beautiful bone structure under a soft mask of flesh. Her hair was dark, shot through with wide swathes of gray, and her eyes reflected back the light from the chapel's windows so strongly, I couldn't tell what color they were, at least not from a side-on view.

She was sitting with her hands neatly folded in her lap. Rough, scarred hands. Hands that had seen a lot of work, and little gentleness. She looked tired, poised on the knife-edge between middle age and growing old.

Her head slowly turned, and then she was looking at me. Seeing me. I can't describe what that felt like, except to say that it was beyond terrifying. As if the stars had come alive in the sky and were weighing me, judging me, finding me wanting. I felt small and dirty and ridiculous, a clumsy freak of nature with no business here, no business at all. The Oracles barely recognized the Djinn. Humans were beneath contempt.

And yet, she was looking at me.

I got to my knees. I did it instantly, without thinking, because I knew I was very close to something greater than the furious energy of the Fire Oracle, or the menace of the Air Oracle.

The Earth Oracle was closest of all to the Mother.

She tilted her head slowly to one side, considering me like a particularly interesting piece of abstract art.

'Please,' I said. The sound washed over us both, meaningless in this place. Talking wasn't going to get me