Chapter 15: The Pull

Phlegon's POV

I could not burn the sentry, and I could not burn Myrrha.

Anything I threw would go through Helia first.

I knew it, and my father-in-law had said it aloud, and I still lifted my hand.

It stayed there, shaking, with the fire I had carried for twenty years standing at the back of my throat.

Helia's head dropped.

The crown was drinking her.

I could see the pull in her, a thin gold thread rising off her ribs and running up into the band.

Her lips went grey.

"Helia, look at me."

She tried.

Her amber eyes found my face and slid off it.

The mark under her ribs was fading through her robe, dimmer by the breath.

I had spent twenty years refusing to say that mark belonged to me.

I understood in one second that it didn't.

It was hers.

The crown would take whatever it found, and she would be the empty cup.

Unless it found something better.

I crossed the floor in three strides, ripped my shirt open, and put both my hands on the crown.

The metal bit me to the bone.

"Phlegon!" My father-in-law's voice, behind me. "You'll be emptied."

"It wants a borrowed fire," I said. "I'm the one who lent it."

I opened myself.

The thread running up out of Helia snapped back into her chest, and a new one ran up out of mine.

It hurt.

It felt like being pulled through a keyhole by the heart.

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