A collective gasp went through the crowd.
He can’t survive it, Adare told herself. It’s impossible.
Il Tornja looked skeptical. “It’s not a flame.”
Uinian shook his head in scorn. “This is the pure kiss of Intarra. If you doubt her power,” he continued, stripping the amice from his shoulders in one fluid motion and hurling it into the light, “observe!” The cloth caught flame in midair before landing in an ashen heap on the stone. A stir of excitement ran through the mob. Adare thought she might be sick.
“No!” she shouted, stepping forward. “The regent is right. This is not a flame. The man has demanded Trial by Flame. Let there be a flame.”
“How little the princess understands,” Uinian sneered, “of the nature of the goddess. Of the many forms she may take. When I step into her burning sight and do not burn, the world will know who is the true servant of Intarra. Your family claims descent from the goddess, but her ways are ineffable. Her favor has shifted. And without her favor, you are what? Not divinely ordained protectors, but simple tyrants!”
The heat lapped at Adare’s face, and sweat slicked the flesh beneath her robes.
“You dare call us tyrants,” she spat back. “You? Who murdered the rightful Emperor?”
Uinian smiled. “The test will tell.”
He will fail, Adare said, repeating the inner mantra again and again. He will fail. But the man had mocked and manipulated the entire process thus far. That searing heat was not a flame, and the smile had not left his lips.
“I will not accept this,” Adare insisted, raising her voice over the growing noise of the crowd. “I do not accept this trial.”
“You may forget, woman,” Uinian replied, his own voice vicious, scornful, “that you are not the goddess. Your family has ruled for so long that you demand too much.”
“I demand obedience to the law,” Adare raged, but someone was already taking her by the shoulder gently but firmly, drawing her back. She struggled to escape, but she was no match for the hands that held her. In a fit of fury, she rounded on the person. “Release me! I am a Malkeenian princess and the Chief Minister of Finance—”
“—and a fool if you think you can change anything here,” il Tornja murmured, voice low but hard. His grip felt like steel as he held her back. “This is not the time, Adare.”
“There is no other time,” she spat. “It has to be now.” She writhed in the kenarang’s grasp, unable to free herself but turning back toward the priest nonetheless. A thousand eyes fixed on her; people were shouting and yelling, but she ignored them. “I demand your life!” she screamed at Uinian. “I demand your life in return for the life of my father.”
“Your demands mean nothing,” he replied. “You do not rule here.” And then he turned and stepped into the light.
Uinian IV, the Chief Priest of Intarra, the man who had murdered the Emperor and taken her father, did not burn. The very air ran liquid with luminous heat, and yet the priest himself merely spread his arms, raised his face to the radiance as he might to a warm rain, letting it wash over him. For an eternity he stood there, then stepped, finally, from the rays.
Impossible, Adare thought, slackening in il Tornja’s grip. It’s not possible.
“Someone killed Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian,” Uinian declared, triumph writ large across his face, “but it was not I. The Goddess Intarra has declared me unsullied by sin, just as she once declared Anlatun the Pious, while those who thought to bring me low—” He stared pointedly from Ran il Tornja to Adare. “—have been checked, and humbled. I can only pray to the Lady of Light that they remember this humility in the dark days to come.”