Treasure of the Fire Kingdom (The Elemental Phases Book 4)

by Cassandra Gannon

  Through the clouds, the afternoon light shone briefly, reflecting off the plastic polka dot headband she wore. The unwelcomed sensation of lust returned as Kingu watched the golden strands dance around her sweetheart face. In this world of blood and sand, she was so… decorative. Small and curvy.

  But then, why wouldn’t she be?

  Kingu gave his head a shake. She’d never had to fight for survival or food. Never been chained to a wall and tortured. She wouldn’t know how to defend herself, because someone else had obviously done all the work to keep her alive. She was useless. Bred for a life so completely outside his experience that Kingu couldn’t even imagine how she’s survived this long in the world.

  For millennia, his existence had been a relentlessly, utilitarian loop of servitude. Meanwhile, this woman probably spent her days picnicking in fields of flowers and painting her toenails cotton candy pink. She belonged someplace full of poetry and carousels. Some place free of gods and monsters. Someplace that Kingu would never be welcome.

  She wouldn’t do.

  Not at all.

  She wasn’t beautiful in the obvious, overblown way of the women Zakkery had brought to him, but she was somehow even worse in her colorful, petite foreignness. Clean and fresh and… sparkly.

  And so damn pretty he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

  “She isn’t the one.” He infused his tone with absolute certainty, even as his powers whispered something very different.

  Zakkery swore. “Just give her a chance.”

  “Ladeeeees and Gen-tel-men! We have an exciting event scheduled for all of you todaaaaay!” Over the loud speaker, the announcer’s voice radiated enthusiasm and a hell a lot of reverb. “For the first time ever, a human has attempted to infiltrate our home and attack our worthy collective. Now, for your viewing pleasure, she will pay the ultimate price for her pitiful simian t-reach-ery!”

  Loud, enthusiastic booing ensued at the word “human,” nearly drowning out the rest of the words. They weren’t a popular species. Of course, maybe they would be if more of them looked like her. With her crazy rainbow clothes and cherubic features, the woman was… appealing.

  Too appealing.

  His eyes kept traveling back to the pale mass of curls, sort of intrigued by its utter lack of style. Zakkery’s sales pitch must have been getting to him, because it occurred to Kingu that a woman who wore her hair like that, who chose clothes of such obscenely clashing colors and patterns, couldn’t be all that interested in her appearance. Maybe, eventually, she wouldn’t be all that interested in his, either.

  It was a stupid, hopeless thought.

  Kingu was staring fixedly at her rosebud mouth during the announcer’s rant, so he saw it fall open as if she was shocked by something. The woman’s head whipped around, finding Zakkery by the edge of the box’s railing.

  Kingu couldn’t hear her over the noise, but it was easy enough to read her lips and her outraged expression. “Would you tell them I’m not human, please? And you said you had some kind of idea, so anytime you wanna ask him to do something…”

  She stopped short when Zakkery gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. Not a denial, but a sharp “shut-up” sort of gesture like he was afraid of what she might say.

  What was that about? Ask who to do what? Kingu’s eyes narrowed, staying in the shadows so the woman couldn’t see him. Why the hell was Zakkery so interested in Snow White? Was she part of his rotating harem?

  A slow burn started in his gut at the idea of the Smoke Phase touching this woman.

  “This vile and deceitful bitch has been working with Job and the Council, trying to infiltrate our home.” The echoing voice spewed out propaganda like this every day, but the venom being hurled at the woman seemed especially harsh. She’d definitely pissed Galen off. “Her only desire was to bring us down, with her base humanity and cunning. But her low seductions were pitifully easy for Enforcer Galen to see through and he has rightfully decreed that she will pay the ultimate price for her heinous crimes against our people.”

  Blonde eyebrows soared. “That’s not true. Me being here was a total accident! I swear, I just have bad luck!”

  Everyone ignored that.

  The announcer was reaching his crescendo. “She’s about to learn that no one threatens the safety of our new homeland! No one challenges our authority! Now, she’ll regret the day her chimp of a mother birthed her into the world. Now, she will face Richter, Jom, Ghames, Vessar, and… Lycus!”

  The crowd roared its approval at the final name.

  Kingu couldn’t imagine why. He’d met Lycus. The man was an asshole.

  Zakkery let out an aggravated breath and looked back at Kingu, continuing his pro crazy woman spiel. “I know the hair’s wrong, but look at her clothes. You know someone who dresses like that is gonna be interesting to talk to. And she’s not breakable. She’s in a fucking death match, right now.”

  “She hasn’t won it, though.”

  “Well, she hasn’t lost it, either.

  “Yet.”

  It was only a matter of time before she fell. The woman wouldn’t survive. The plastic manacles prevented most Elementals from using their powers offensively in these fights, so it wasn’t even her lack of energy that would doom her. It was so much simpler than that. She was just too small to stand up to these men. Too fragile. Even puny beings like the Phases would be able to strike her down.

  And yet, Kingu’s crimson eyes stayed fixed on the woman.

  Richter and Jom, of the Energy House entered the ring, condescending smirks on their faces. The brothers were both huge men with crew cuts and loincloths. Richter carried a mace. Jom had a five foot long sword. They towered over the woman, their unnaturally muscled bodies dwarfing hers as they waved up at the cheering crowd.

  The girl looked paler than ever.

  Against his will, Kingu stepped closer to the railing. He watched the two men stalk towards her and willed her to move. To take a defensive position. To stop Richter and Jom from surrounding her.

  To at least raise the fucking sword.

  Apparently the woman was immune to psychic prodding and common sense because she stood there frozen while they toyed with her.

  The gladiators were clearly enjoying this, relishing her obvious fear and playing to the crowd. Jom sliced his sword at her, deliberately missing her skin, but cutting into the sleeve of her tie-dyed sweater. She jerked to the side, narrowly missing a swing of Richter’s mace designed to crush every bone on her arm.

  Both men chortled in amusement as she scampered backwards, instead of attacking. Maybe retreat was her best option at this point, given her utter lack of skill. Maybe she could just run from them until they got tired and took a fucking nap or something.

  Except, somehow during her hasty withdraw, the girl tripped over the untied shoelace of her sequined tennis shoe and stumbled to the ground. She hit the dirt on her side, the sword sailing from her hand, blonde hair coming free of its ponytail and trailing in the sand.

  Kingu’s jaw tightened, some emotion filling him. He couldn’t exactly identify it, except it was trying to get him to move to her aid. He had no idea why. What was one less Phase in the world?

  “You see?” He said flatly. “I told you she would die.”

  Zakkery cringed, his forehead coming forward to bang against the railing.

  It seemed, in less than twenty seconds, the battle was over. The crowd screamed with laughter. Richter and Jom moved to loom over her prone body.

  The woman raised her head and shook back the golden curls, either oblivious to her certain death or else insane. She wasn’t screaming for mercy or praying to Gaia in her final moments…

  Instead, she was swearing.

  Kingu still couldn’t hear her, but –crazily-- he saw her mouthing some of the most creative, X-rated cursing ever uttered. Usually, only warriors and chefs had that kind of talent. His eyebrows soared in stupefaction.

  Jom and Richter hesitated like the stream of o
aths surprised them, too. The crowd grew quieter. Not even the gladiators used language that florid and they swore the air blue. Who was this girl?

  Then, Little Bo Peep winced and muttered, “Great. And now, I lost today’s round of the game. Hang on.” She sat up and brushed at her clothes like she expected some kind of do-over.

  …And Jom actually moved back to give her space.

  Richter glanced away from the woman long enough to give his brother a frustrated shove. “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t listen to her! Stop letting a nice ass distract you.”

  “Bite me.” Jom shoved him back even harder. “I just don’t want to kill this girl, yet. We have another full minute before Vessar and Ghames come in, so we have to drag it out until the last second. Think! Do you want the crowd to be disappointed in the show or do you want to raise our standing? Huh?” Most of the gladiators sought the approval of the crowd as a way to secure better fights and win their freedom. “We have to make it just a little bit interesting, don’t we?”

  The woman used their distraction to scramble to her feet. She still didn’t have her sword, though. She frowned prettily and --honest to God-- mouthed, “Oh dear.” Her head went right and then left, scanning for it on the ground.

  Kingu had killed so many people, he’d lost count, but he’d never wanted to strangle someone more. “Damn it, woman! It’s behind you!” Although it seemed pointless to bother, he pointed to the weapon and bellowed the order so she could hear him. “Right there! Pick it up!”

  Instead of driving for her sword, like any sane person would have, she turned to look right at him. Somehow, she met Kingu’s gaze across the huge expanse of the arena.

  Midnight Blue.

  Her eyes were midnight blue and, when they locked on him, he felt his heart stop. She’d been wearing sunglasses before, so he hadn’t seen the color. Now he wished he’d left it a mystery, because they seared through him. It was like looking straight into the heaven he would never be allowed to see.

  For a full second, he was transfixed. He didn’t have a soul, but this tiny, hopeless Phase certainly did. He peered into the crystal clear depths of it, the mesmerizing swirls of velvet blue pulling him deeper than he wanted to go. This woman could make him a slave all over, again.

  No.

  She stared up at him, no fear or revulsion on her face. Instead, stepped closer to his box. Closer to him.

  No.

  Panicked, Kingu pulled back with an oath. “It can’t be her.” He moved away from the railing, desperately shaking his head. “Anyone else, but not her. I don’t want this girl.”

  She was… dangerous.

  This woman with the haunting eyes and silly clothes could finally break him. In that split second, he believed it and still he had the overwhelming temptation to claim her.

  “Bullshit. I can fucking see that you want her.” Zakkery snapped. “You haven’t looked away from her once since we got here and you never even bothered to glance at the other women I brought you.” He hesitated, his gaze quickly shifting to the girl again as if willing her to survive for a few more minutes, and then back to Kingu. “Listen, this woman is special. I give you my word.”

  Kingu believed him. That was the problem.

  “I won’t have her.” It took all of his willpower, but he turned away from the arena. “Find me a different girl. One without those eyes.”

  ****

  It didn’t take years of Fire House training to realize she was losing this fight.

  If Hope didn’t get her stage fright under control, she really was going to die. For once, it wouldn’t be her bad luck that ruined her day, but her useless panic. That couldn’t happen. It would be humiliating if she didn’t at least kill one or two of her attackers.

  She tried to calm down and focus. Tried to remember Frankie’s training.

  Tried to remember where her sword had gone.

  Unfortunately, her mind was a whirling, chaotic mass of anxiety and self-doubt. Hope looked around for the weapon in the dirt while the two gigantic gladiators argued with each other. Okay, where the heck did she lose it?

  “Oh dear.” Why did she always lose things? It was like her belongings fled from her, hiding in self-preservations. Once she’d lost her favorite hairbrush for two weeks, finally finding it inside a VCR. She had no idea how it got there.

  “Damn it, woman! It’s behind you! Right there! Pick it up!”

  The infuriated bellow broke through her foggy confusion. Hope was used to bellowing. She lived with the world champion bellowers of all time. Alder and Djinn didn’t even know how to speak below a dull roar and the rest of them weren’t much better at using their indoor vices. This man’s volume was comfortingly familiar.

  Hope’s head swung around instinctively looking towards the sound.

  The monster was glowering down at her, his beautiful flame colored eyes judging her performance and deciding she was unworthy. Whatever people he’d once been a god of, they must have been really obedient or really smited down. There wasn’t a lot of give in this man.

  The rest of the audience was watching this fight.

  Kingu was watching Hope.

  His eyes stayed fixed on hers like he could see straight into her soul.

  Hope had never had any tangible powers, but she could suddenly feel… something. Something new. Something she couldn’t explain. Hot and glittery, kind of like a sparkler was suddenly lit inside of her.

  Rule number two of being a Fire Phase: When you meet your Match, you’ll know it.

  She couldn’t have a Match, but she’d never felt anything like this before. Everything in her was saying this man was hers. She knew it. Knew him. Hope took an unconscious step in Kingu’s direction and was surprised when he retreated deeper into the shadows. She hadn’t expected a god to retreat from anyone, let alone her.

  Was he leaving?

  Hope didn’t even process Richter and Jom stalking towards her. Her eyes stayed locked on the box high above her head. The monster was no longer visible.

  He was going away. She was being left behind, again.

  If Hope had one panic button, it was the idea of being abandoned. The fact that she’d feel so bereft about a complete stranger’s departure was ridiculous, but then so many things about her day had been. Her heart rate accelerated to humming bird speed, a familiar tightness seizing her throat. She suddenly couldn’t get any oxygen, the breath wheezing from her body in a jagged rush.

  Asthma.

  Her larynx swelled and it seemed like her chest could no longer expand far enough to let in air. Not only was she basically the only Elemental in constant need of Weight Watchers, she was also one of the few who suffered from asthma. Was it from the stress of seeing the monster abandon her? That might have triggered it, but something else was making it worse by the second. Usually it was related to her allergies, so what was contributing to the attack?

  Her gaze went to the spikes of Richter’s mace.

  Wait… Had he smeared those spikes with red frog juice? The creatures themselves were poisonous, so sometimes Phases smeared their sticky skin along weapons to make the blades extra lethal. Obviously, Hope reacted badly to poison. Everyone did. But, unlike most Phases, she was also extremely allergic to the smell of the frogs. Just being in the general vicinity of their slimy miasma sent her into fits of wheezing.

  Damn it, she didn’t have time for this.

  Hope dug into her pockets for her inhaler. In that moment of struggling for breath, she was instinctively more worried about getting air than dying in combat. From the depths of her leopard print skirt she pulled sheer lip gloss, an orange flavored taffy, a handful of random human coins, two mismatched earrings, a lighter shaped like an electric guitar, and a lucky pink rabbit’s foot that Missy had given her as a joke.

  At least, she said it was a joke.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Zakkery shouted. “Concentrate on the fight!”

  Hope ignored that. All of the debris from her pockets go
t dumped to the sand as she searched for the inhaler. Desperately sorting through the mess and coming up empty, her gaze swung around the ground. Darn it, had she lost it, too?

  She stepped back, scanning for her medicine, and the heel of her sequined shoe came down on the hilt of her fallen sword. In response, the blade levered up a sharp angle. Which really wouldn’t have been a big deal –just her usual clumsiness and the expected Newtonian response of an equal and opposite reaction-- except Jom was coming up behind her at that exact moment.

  His sandal clad foot came down on her fallen lip gloss, the tube rolling and knocking him off balance. He legs shot out from under him. As if in slow motion, he tried to steady himself and overcompensated. Jom toppled forward…

  …Right onto the lethal length of the blade.

  Hope turned in time to see Jom inadvertently impale himself on the sword. It sliced clean through his neck, coming at the other side in a geyser of arterial blood spray. Not even a Phase could live through that. Especially not when gravity and Jom’s own weight sent his body sliding off to the side and severed a huge section of his throat.

  He died instantly.

  Hope’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh dear.” It came out as a wheeze. “Sorry! Wow, sorry about that.”

  The words were basically meaningless, what with Jom being dead and probably not in a forgiving mood. They echoed around her as the arena went eerily still. For an endless moment, silence reigned. No one could quite believe what had just happened.

  The hundred-to-one shot had just won the first round.

  Kind of.

  Total accident or not, Hope still felt kind of proud of herself. Mostly because she knew Oberon would have been thrilled with her accomplishment. Plus, she wasn’t dead, yet. Maybe she could win this fight.

  “She did it!” Zakkery’s whoop of unmourning broke the trance. “That was a neck shot. Did you see that!? That counts as decapitation on the point spread.” He pointed at her in triumph. “Thank God, I actually bet on you, you adorable little killing machine. Do you know what the odds were on decapitation?”