Metrol was under siege.
Flame stood at the map of Khorvaire murmuring softly with Princess Marhya, considering the options to shore up defenses, to push against the invaders, to evacuate the city if needed.
They could not squash a small flare of relief that Glove Spectre was in Thrane on a mission he really should have sent a subordinate on. The last time Metrol had fallen to siege, the head of espionage had been thrown off the Royal Vermishard.
Starrin appeared, arms full of blueprints as he rushed to speak with the Queen. Flame ignored him—WX-5 was already on the field, and if he had another idea to help that was pertinent to them, Dannel would share it.
Probably.
Flame had few illusions about their queen’s state as the war went on, but at the end of the day she fought for Cyre. And Flame perhaps also had few illusions about the flaws in that, but they had chosen their loyalty knowing those flaws.
They worried sometimes, about those they thought might have made that choice without truly seeing those flaws, about the idealists. Spectre, with his shining belief of Cyre’s justice. Glove Songbird…well, Songbird was another matter entirely, wasn’t she?
Flame glanced at the woman who looked like an elf as Marhya proposed a redistribution of forces. Songbird’s growing distress was clear to see for anyone who knew her as well as Flame did. Her exhaustion, her fading hope and belief. If you believe in something perfect, something righteous, seeing its cracks can break you.
They should talk to her. After the siege was over, sit down and talk about how you come to terms with something you hoped for being less than what you’d hoped.
Glass shattered around Flame, and they flashed into motion even before they registered the source, the metal-masked figures tumbling through windows. The symbol of the Order of the Emerald Claw blazed on their cloaks, and Flame felt a deep disgust bloom in their chest as they shoved Marhya towards her mother, the guards already gathering around them. Karrnath could talk about separating itself from their terrorist forces all they wanted, but clearly that extended only so far as necessity.
Flame had few illusions about what war did either.
Lia was already moving forward, her double scimitar keeping the assassins back to give Flame room to work. They snapped their fingers and sent half a dozen motes of flame among the assassins, knowing exactly how to thread every bead of fire around Lia’s motions. How had the attackers gotten past the guards? They would have to put some Black Gloves on figuring that out after this.
“Careful Flame, poison,” Lia called back as she parried three blades at once with a single spinning motion, then cartwheeled back towards them.
“Got it.” Flame’s mind was already working as they crouched to give Songbird a platform to leap off of, allowing her to kick an assassin in the face and whirl to engage another. The knot she’d been fighting before was now open, and Flame pointed, sending another mote of flame into their midst—this one bursting into a roaring fireball. A small smile flitted across their face as they stoked the fire in their blood ever-hotter, until the heat coalesced into wings at their back and long, vicious claws. The heritage of Fernia’s monsters, the balors and demons that embodied its need to destroy. It burned hot enough to melt any silly poison, hot enough that even streaking her fingers near an assassin’s face sent them crumpling with four smoldering lines burned in their throat.
Flame and Songbird had overextended themselves, too far away from the knot of royals and guards, and they began working their way back towards the center, Flame calling a fiery whip to aid in the fight.
The whip tore a helmet free from one of the assassins, and Flame hissed softly as they saw the dead eyes underneath. “Fucking Karrnath and its fucking undead,” they growled under their breath in Primordial.
But the dead burn as well as the living.
Flame and Songbird had been fighting together a long time. Flame knew how she fought almost as well as they knew Spectre’s fighting style, and they easily moved around Lia’s illusions even as she automatically kept out of the way of their flames. But something was wrong.
The assassins weren’t targeting the queen—they were swarming Flame and Songbird, corralling them away from the relative safety (or at least entrenched position) the Cyran guards offered. Slowly, they even broke the two spies apart, and Flame only caught flashes of Songbird through the battle, her double scimitar separated as she desperately held off half a dozen assassins.
Flame had their own problems. Assassins crowded in on them, and they weren’t accustomed to fighting alone in close quarters. They called to Fernia, more than they ever had before, and Fernia replied, wreathing them in flames. A firestorm flickered around them, stoking blades so hot that their wielders were forced to drop them, searing dead flesh, igniting their blood so hot that even the blows that landed, made their dealers scream.
It wasn’t enough.
Flame’s blood spattered the floor around them and something dark and cold was moving through their veins, no mundane poison that Fernia could burn away. Their vision flickered.
It wasn’t enough.
They grabbed the amulet at their throat, and mouthed a silent plea to Naja Ash, to the demons that had watched their dreams since they were born, to the Sea of Fire itself and all its blessings and curses.
They felt something white-hot stir in response.
Flame barely had time to whistle a warning to Songbird before fire erupted through the room, a pillar so hot and bright that Flame knew it had come from the heart of Fernia itself, the deepest depths of the Sea, howling through the throne room in a brief instance of incomparable heat and light and violence.
When it faded a moment later, only one assassin remained, coming in a final desperate rush.
Flame whirled and plunged their claws through his chest, the last of Fernia’s blessing raging through the blow.
The assassin turned to ash.
Flame swept a gaze across the room, saw the still-standing Queen and her entourage, the surviving guards, and Songbird, soaked with blood and a little singed despite dodging the pillar of fire, but all alive. All intact.
Good.
Flame smiled with relief, and then the thing the assassins had left in their veins rose up and sank teeth into their heart.
They were on the floor, the world flickering around them. There were arms around them, and for a moment they thought it was Spectre, thought they were back on the Thaliost riverbank with Couatl’s Rage screaming through their blood, but the voice was Songbird’s, because Spectre was far away from here. “No no no no no no, not you, Flame, not you. Please.”
Flame offered Songbird a weak smile. “We can’t win ‘em all, Song.” They’d always hoped it would be Spectre’s arms they’d die in, but Songbird’s were good too, a grip that had kept Flame on their feet more times than they could count, now holding them like a knight fallen before their queen in a painting. The poison was making its way along their bones, finding each flickering mote of fire in their blood and snuffing it out. Something dark and cold and quiet. Flame had never been any of those things, and yet it felt somehow, horribly familiar.
Songbird’s voice changed, horror bleeding to fury. “How dare you?”
Songbird had never struck Flame as someone who yelled at dying people. “What?”
“She's taking advantage of your weakness, she's trying to take you again.”
Flame was about to ask who when they realized why the feeling was familiar. They’d felt it at Stormreach, when the Lady in Shadow’s warlock had called upon that cursed blade to…
“Ah.” They searched for a pithy, witty, clever thing to say, something in the face of being dragged by a vengeful archfey to who knew what fate in their dying moments. “That bitch.”
Things were getting awfully dark.
“She can’t have you.” Songbird’s voice was ragged, desperate, determined.
“I don’t think you can stop her, Song.” Twice Flame had foiled the Lady, and they had thought perhaps it was for good…but archfey were very stubborn.
“Flame, I've lied to you. I'm not who you think I am.”
Oh, Songbird. Precious, wonderful Songbird, who thought she kept her secrets so close, as if Flame couldn’t see the way the world shifted around her, the way she moved as if life was a story. Who thought that those who loved her would not see the toll the world’s failure to measure up to the tale took on her. “May’ve put some of that together, Lia.”
“No, you don't understand. Lia isn't my name. I'm not an elf, Flame. I'm from Thelanis. I've been to her court, and she will know me if I intervene, but she cannot have you.”
No hexblood, then. Something else, something greater, and that meant…
“Lia, if that's true, you need to live. You're a thousand times more important than me.” Flame wanted to say more, but the poison stole their breath, the Lady smothered more words in shadow. But they hoped they could convey it with their eyes—Flame had always known what they were. Always known what Cyre would consider them. They were a tool of the nation, a weapon and a soldier, and soldiers died. They died in service to their nation. Flame could only fight this war—Lia, perhaps, could end it.
“No, please don't say things like that. Flame, you're important to me.”
Idealist. Wonderful, foolish idealists, who went to war with their hearts laid bare, open to wounds from all sides.
How Flame loved them.
Songbird was whistling a soft tune, pain scraping through the tune, lending it a terrible, razor-edged beauty. Flame could feel the shadows receding, could feel their blood starting to warm again-
“Songbird.” It was Dannel’s voice.
Flame was hardly conscious, but pieces of the argument floated to them. Dannel’s order. The quick, simple prioritization, ruthless and easy. She was right, of course—Flame had known the risks. Flame had chosen to be willing to die for Cyre long ago, even knowing it would not be willing to die for her, had made peace with it.
But Songbird had done no such thing.
Idealists.
Wonderful and beautiful and fragile, if you touched their hearts, and Dannel had Songbird’s now, crushing it in an iron hand.
Songbird’s scream split the air, sent glass raining down, and Flame gasped, feeling dark claws sinking into their heart. She abandons you now. Leaves me to you for her vengeance.
They sent a silent prayer to Boldrei who had always burned bright for them, that Spectre’s heart would survive this.
Songbird’s eyes fell to Flame, wide with shock and terror, her hand reaching out, pleading, the last hope for someone sinking into waters dark and deep.
The claws twisted, and darkness devoured the last flickering bits of Flame.