Page 112 of Red Tigress
Yuri yelled and sprang, his hands closing around Seyin’s neck.“Give her back!”he screamed.“Drop your bullshit illusions!”
Seyin gave the barest of nods, and Yuri let go. When he turned around, she was there again, small and hunched against the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” Seyin rasped. “I didn’t want you to…” He trailed off.
Yuri closed his eyes. It felt as though there were a fire burning inside him, the flames threatening to consume his soul. His breaths came hot; his palms glowed red. “Why did you come here?” he demanded without looking at Seyin.
There was a pause. “Novo Mynsk has fallen,” Seyin whispered. “Shamaïra’s been taken. I believe the Red Tigress is responsible for her capture; while I waited here for your return, I received a note from her pleading for our help.” His lips curled.
The flames inside Yuri flickered hotter, higher. A strange sense of detachment descended over him. He drew a deep breath. When he exhaled, fire sparked in the air before him. He could feel his hands catching on fire, his hair beginning to singe. “Seyin,” he said calmly. “Get out.”
The fire poured from him like lava. It snaked across the floor, jumping onto chairs and tablecloths and crawling up the walls. Yuri breathed in deeply as his Affinity climaxed, and for a moment, he looked in a broken shard of glass and saw himself afire: a twisting, writhing mass of reds and oranges.
He bent down and kissed his mother’s cold cheeks. Yuri smoothed out her hair, the beautiful, bright red curls he’d inherited. He removed his cloak and tucked it carefully around her, the way she had tucked him into bed before he’d gone to the Salskoff Palace as an apprentice.
He touched a finger to the cloak and set it on fire.
Seyin was waiting for him outside. The entire street had transformed. Crimson and shadows danced on the gray-bricked walls and frozen streets like the flames of the hells themselves.
A movement in the skies caught his eyes, and Yuri looked up. From the moonlit night, a shadow descended swiftly upon them. The light of the burning dacha tinted its black feathersred.
Yuri held up an arm, and the seadove alighted. Its talons dug into the thick padded sleeves of his coat. A note was tied to its legs. Yuri removed it and unfurled the scroll.
The letter consisted of a single sentence, as vague as the way things had been left between him and the sender.
Prepare for war. The Red Tigress returns.
Seyin read the note and looked up. “War with us, or war against us?” he asked.
Yuri did not answer. He gripped the note so hard that his hands shook. He’d come back to find an entire town massacred at the whim of a monarch. He’d seen what happened when empresses clashed for the throne. For in the great games of kings and queens, it was the innocents, the pawns, who suffered.
Enough.No more sympathy, no more friendships. Those were weaknesses that had cost him his mother’s life.
Yuri would wipe the board and create a world in which the pawns ruled.
The tips of his fingers were glowing, and within moments, the note was on fire. Yuri watched the flames consume the scroll, eating away at it until there was nothing left but ashes.
He held out a hand and let them fall to the ground.
“Send out snowhawks to all of our forces,” he said. “We begin the revolution. The monarchy must fall, and its followers with it.”
Seyin watched him behind cold, clouded eyes. “Dak,” he said slowly. “And the Red Tigress?”
Yuri met his gaze. “You’ll finish the job you started,” he replied, “as my Second-in-Command.”
Behind him, his home for nineteen years burned. Before him, the trail of bodies pooled the streets with blood. The colors blended, searing through his vision, and the world was awash in red.
Yuri spread his arms, and the fires at his palms roared to life, curving up his sleeves and flaring behind his shoulders like wings.
“I will remake this world to be right, no matter the cost,” he said. He would burn it all down, to rebuild it the way it was meant to be. Fire and blood, death and destruction. “Let it be known that this is the end of their crimson reign.”
