The man set down, his feet gently crushing the dry grass as they settled. He took a step toward Winter and the seeds of panic took full root in the older man. Winter tried to scurry back, his long arms and legs brushing against the dried vegetation, sparking more pain from his burns and finding futile purchase in the dirt and plants as he tried to retreat—
The man grabbed him in one motion, seizing him by the burnt remains of his shirt, a lapel in each hand, and pulled him close. Winter felt the heat now. A blazing fire lit in the man’s eyes, a literal one, flames crackling as if he were a fire djinn of old. Smoke poured from his eyes like eyebrows of black that wafted toward the heavens. “I’m going to make an example of you. I need them to remember that I am a man apart from the rest of you. I don’t care what you do, what Omega does, what happens in the world around me. I need nothing from any of you, and I want no part in your foolish chess games or territorial pissing matches. I am nothing like you ...” His eyes flared, the fire blazing as if kerosene had been poured on the flames within. “ ... I’m better.”
There was something stirring now, a howling roar in Erich Winter’s ears that was louder than a train, those monstrosities that seemed to be taking over everywhere, showing up all over the map, knitting the world closer together. Winter felt his feet start to leave the ground, but the roar did not abate, it grew louder, and he looked away from the man. They flew high into the air, the cold wind whipping Winter’s cheeks as they ascended. A fire blazed below them, consuming the land. It was a wall of sheerest flame, a hundred feet high, and Winter could see it roaring, burning, snaking like a living thing as it thundered across the ground toward Peshtigo in the distance like a high wave crashing on the shore.
“The people ...” Winter whispered.
“Are going to die,” the man said, watching coldly. “It’s a shame; I didn’t mean for it to get quite that out of control. I let my anger get away from me. I had intended to scorch the ground around us, leave you in the middle of a smoking crater, but when people interfere with me, when they try to shake me down, take what’s mine, it makes me ... so angry.” Winter watched the scorched ground as the black smoke started to rise. The man shook him, diverting Winter’s attention back to him. “Listen to me.”
The man started to smoke, the clouds rising from below them. There was a blinding glow where the man had been only a moment before, and it took Winter only a second to realize the man was turning to flames now, his skin covered in the fire, and his hands burned through Winter’s shirt and caught him under the arms, like a baby. Winter could feel the inferno surrounding the man beginning to burn his flesh. He screamed, a long, agonized burst that drowned out the wind that was growing hot around him.
“You will tell them,” the man said, “you will tell them who did this to you. You will tell them that the mighty Erich Winter was brought low, was broken, was defeated, and you will tell them who did it if they ask. You will be my herald, to spread the word that any who interfere with my passage, who challenge me will end up as broken as you. Warn them not to defy me. I want no part of your world, but I will not hesitate to destroy any of you who interfere with mine.”
Winter screamed. “I will! I will tell them!” He felt the fire scorching his skin. “I will tell them whatever you want!”
“I know you will,” the man in flames said quietly, his voice just audible over the roar of the firestorm below. “There’s only one thing you need to remember when you land,” he said, and Winter felt his personal gravity shift, as if he was being lifted sideways. The pain was agonizing, taking away his breath as if his flesh was burning off an inch at a time. Even still, he could feel the world move, as though he was about to be thrown like a ball. “Remember my name. Remember ...”
The last word came out as a whisper and the man threw him, casting him through the air with ferocious speed. Winter did not remember the landing, just a vague sense of his flesh burning, of his own screaming, of incredible distances passing underneath him in a blur.
Three days later he crawled out of the scorched wreckage of a field of ashes in Chicago, his skin still scarred around his arms and chest from the burns that the man had given him. They remained with him as he trudged across the blackened earth, naked, still burned, and so did the name he’d heard whispered in the moment before he’d been released to fly some two hundred and fifty miles through the air.
Sovereign.
Chapter 23
Sienna Nealon
Now
Winter. The name chilled and burned all in one. I stood in the medical unit, just staring at my mother, then Ariadne, one after another, not saying anything.