“Stop right there,” Dantell cried, lifting the pearl and the storm clouds that encompassed it.

Ethan stood amidst a sea of charred bodies; not his doing, but the power that did it flowed through him. He was still a few dozen feet from the steps that led up to the raised altar, and he halted his approach.

“I didn’t want her to die,” the prince continued.

“You told these men to kill us. Don’t lie to me!” Fire burned hot in the young man’s eyes, and crackling could be heard in his throat.

“Because she rebelled against me. I wanted her to be my queen.”

Ethan wasn’t having it. “People can only rebel against authority. What gave you the right to exercise that over her?”

“I am her prince. Heir to the throne. And now, I have the divine right.” Dantell lifted the pearl high, and lightning crashed down on him.

Ethan was not impressed. “I am not a Tallashite and do not believe in the divine. What authority do you have over me?”

“Absolute power,” the prince responded and hurled a lightning bolt at the young man.

Ethan had no defense but to lift his sword. The electric attack flew into the blade as if sucked in by a cyclone. The young man didn’t flinch or stagger under the power absorption and even took several steps closer. Dantell threw a second, even bigger lightning strike, and the enchanted blade absorbed that one too.

The prince felt nervous. What was happening? He could have understood how the earth elemental could ground lightning, but how was Ethan doing this with fire? But he wasn’t using the ruby. It was clenched in his left hand, while the weapon in his right defeated the attack. The heart tamed the life Elemental, giving it purpose and will. Did the lightning come from the life Elemental or the natural one? He didn’t know. All of his research was theoretical.

As Ethan drew closer, Dantell panicked. He felt safe from the young man’s fire, assuming he could even figure out how to wield it. Natasha had needed years of meditation to gain that kind of control. But the sword was deadly. Or was it? He was immortal now, right? Though he had killed Jennifer easily enough with the spear last night. His mind swam with questions, and he needed answers. The prince knew the danger of being unbalanced with the Elementals, and now he felt his other components failing. But he knew how to fix it.

As Ethan climbed the few steps to the dais, Dantell turned around, dropped the spear, and scooped up the dagger. Running toward Emoyen, he spun around the woman, placing her between him and Ethan. The tip of the blade was nestled firmly under her sternum. “Don’t come any closer, or I will kill her.”

Ethan almost laughed at him. “And if I turn around and leave, you will just let her go? I’m not stupid. You need to kill her for your ceremony to work.”

“I need to kill someone,” the prince argued. “It doesn’t need to be her. There are dozens of mind disciples in this temple. Anyone would do.”

Ethan paused. He hadn’t contemplated that before. Would he be willing to trade Emoyen and Sera’s life for two strangers? And once this prince turned himself into a god, wouldn’t he just come after them anyway?

Emoyen saw that Ethan was seriously considering the offer and started to cry out in protest, but Dantell pocketed the pearl and clamped his left hand on her throat. “Quiet, wench,” he hissed into her ear. He also saw his argument might be making headway with the young man. “Just put the sword down, and the two of you can walk out of here.”

“Sera comes too,” Ethan was quick to add.

“Who?” the prince stupidly asked. He suddenly realized he didn’t know any of their names. Not that it mattered.

“Seraphima Donner,” Ethan said as if her full name would help identify her. He motioned to Sera with his sword, her slumped form barely giving this exchange any attention.

At the sound of the young girl’s name, Emoyen stiffened. “Seraphima,” she muttered to herself.

Dantell didn’t notice her reaction and slackened his grip on her throat as he gained confidence in his bargaining position. “Of course,” he said. “Neither of you have spent any time meditating upon the elements of your human nature. It would make far more sense to take one of the heart and body disciples upstairs.”

Ethan weighed the options, not knowing what to do. He could tell the prince feared how he had easily defeated his lightning attacks, and while he had no idea how that had worked, he also knew that if he ever figured out to throw fireballs, the prince would be immune to those as well. He looked at Emoyen for answers, noticing how she had initially tried to argue against the trade. But the paladin looked to be in a world of her own.

“Seraphima,” she said under her breath again, her mind swimming as knowledge flooded into her. The dagger’s tip was still pressed into her skin beneath the thin gown she wore. The elemental inside was drawn to her like the magnet of a compass yearning to leap out of its shell and travel north. “Seraphim . . . many angels.”

Named in beauty, angelic in form.

“No,” she muttered under her breath and then continued in her mind. The name is angelican form. A beautiful name in the form of many angels. It’s her.

Filled with passion from love newly born.

Ethan loves her, she thought after repeating the line from the verse. He needs to fill her with passion.

“Ethan!” she shouted. “Don’t. You need to-”

Dantell choked her off. “Don’t listen to her. She is still convinced her angelic sisterhood should have the-”

Now Emoyen cut him off. She KNEW what to do. Only secured by her wrists, she still had full range of motion with her upper and lower body. With the knife still pressed into her chest, she jackknifed at the waist and brought her right knee up hard. The knife moved down with her torso, Dantell’s arm straightening, and when her knee hit the decorative handle, the blade shoved violently up into her.

Pain shot through her more than she could have expected from the desperate move, but so did the power of the Elemental. It coursed through her, racing around inside to consume her life force and then rush into the prince. But the paladin was ready. She separated her mind from her body, as she had done so many times in the past, giving her a clear head apart from the pain, and called down divine healing power. As the Elemental rushed into Dantell, she managed to keep some of her life back, and with it, a tiny portion of the Elemental. In the same way that an upturned oil jar dumps the vast majority of its contents immediately but then slowly drips as the layer coating the sides gradually succumb to gravity, Emoyen also managed to cling to life desperately.

And with her tentative connection to the Elemental, she could do two things. First, she controlled the flow of knowledge to the prince. As soon as the shock of the transfer happened, he fell to his knees, releasing the hold on the dagger. That contact was no longer needed for the transfer, and power consumed his mind. Emoyen dumped every book she had ever read, every language she had ever learned, and every philosophy she had ever studied into his mind all at once. Any mortal man would have gone unconscious at the flood of information, but Dantell was immortal, and the other Elemental kept him awake. He was awake but on his knees and would be useless for several moments.

Ethan was shocked by the paladin’s desperate move and then encouraged by the prince’s apparent defenseless position. He readied his sword and prepared to charge in and strike, but he felt buffeted by a sudden wind as he tried to get close. He saw the air elemental, a blue sapphire vibrating visibly just in front of the prone man, and understood that just as Jennifer had endured a surge of natural power when taking on the life elemental, Dantell was now too. Still, he felt he could fight through it if he . . .

NO!

The cry sounded in his head, and he recognized the voice of Emoyen. Except it hadn’t really been a voice. He just knew she had said it. His eyes went to the dying woman, her mouth open in a desperate gasp with the knife sunk into her chest. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and she looked only seconds from closing them forever, but still, somehow, she was holding on.

Leave him!

He heard it again in his mind and knew she had said it. She was a mind disciple; perhaps in her death throes, she was capable of empathic communication.

Go to Seraphima.

“But what can I do?” he shouted at her. The windstorm was growing, and he felt his words carried away from him as soon as he had said them. He didn’t need to talk. Emoyen could hear him think.

Love her. The paladin felt confined by the limitations of the spoken language, especially since she didn’t need to talk to communicate. It was like being given the gift of flight but being forced to navigate a narrow tunnel. Love was its own language, so she filled his mind with it.

Ethan stood suddenly straight and KNEW what he had to do. He had asked Emoyen on the road if there was any way to get rid of the heart elemental, and she had told him there wasn’t. In order to get rid of something, you needed to desire to do with it, and since you had to abandon your desire, you got stuck in a self-contradiction. But as Natasha had died in his arms, she had given him the answer. Love was a desire that did not come from the heart, or, at least, it didn’t have to. The dead woman had desired him, but she had only done so with her heart, so she had not loved him. Love came from heart, soul, body, and mind. With only the heart, all you had was lust.

Ethan turned to Sera, also remembering the last question he had asked Emoyen on the road: What if I found a new way to desire something without using the Elemental? And so he did. He looked at Sera, still tied to a post, barely registering the wind that whipped her hair, and he knew he loved her. He had known from the first moment he had seen her walk into the blacksmith shop years ago. He had known it from the first time they had sparred in Gerhold’s backyard and from the first time they had traded sarcastic quips.

But more than that, he knew he loved her physically too. The way she moved enchanted him. The sound of her voice hypnotized him. Especially in the past few weeks, with the Elemental inside of her, he had a physical need for the woman that went far beyond any hormone-induced fantasy. He needed her touch. He needed her soft breath on his face. And he needed the touch of her lips on his.

He dropped his sword as he stood before her and gently lifted her chin to kiss her.

At that moment, he understood that he loved her with his whole life as well. Whether this act of heartless devotion would be enough on its own to strip the Elemental from him and give it to her, or if it would still take his life, he didn’t care. He would freely give up his life – his very existence – for this woman, even if it meant he wouldn’t be alive to be with her afterward.

And so, despite a heart that still clung to its home, the Elemental passed from Ethaniel to Seraphima, and the young woman with an angelican name, filled with passion from love newly born, finally awoke from her stupor. Ethan slumped to one side as Sera stood up. It had not taken his life to transfer the Elemental, but it looked like it had as he lay listless beside her. She brought her hands before her to pick him up, not even noticing that they were shackled, the chains snapping as if they were made of wet paper.

“Oh, Ethan,” she cried, feeling in her heart what he had just done for her and how she had been without passion or purpose for so long. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know where I’ve been. I’ve just been . . . lost.”

Ethan didn’t have the strength to answer, and as much as she just wanted to hold him, she felt an ominous presence before her that demanded her attention. As she laid him down gently, she saw the ruby roll from his hand and quickly picked it up. Fire coursed through her, and the knowledge of how it worked that Ethan had absorbed from Natasha now rushed through her. Men could wield the powers, but women were naturals. It also helped to be the Savior.

Sera stood up from the ground, way up. Now that she had two Elementals, she felt their union waking up power within her. Her body stretched, and just as she had seen Persephone alter her appearance, Sera changed hers until she was standing over six feet tall and as sturdy as Ethan usually was. Before her on the ground, she saw the earth elemental, a giant diamond, and she merely summoned it to herself with a wave of the hand, and it leaped into her palm. With her bare feet on the stone platform, and two powerful gemstones in her hands, she felt at one with the earth, and the two natural elementals became a part of her body such that when she opened her hands a moment later, the stones were each embedded into her palm. She smiled and looked across the circle.

Prince Dantell was struggling to his feet, his head finally done swimming with all the new information. The flood of data had been paralyzing at first, but with that flood came the knowledge of how to deal with it. He intuitively understood how to compartmentalize his mind to handle conscious and subconscious thoughts. He could file away 99% of the data into his mind for later recall, even as more of it came in.

Emoyen wasn’t dead, Dantell knew this without looking, and he did not have complete control of the mind Elemental, but he had enough. He also beckoned to the sapphire on the ground before him, but it took a gust of wind to carry it up to him. He also pulled the pearl out, and with the two powers in his grasp, he felt invincible.

Both Sera and Dantell knew that they were walking a dangerous line. Both sets of elementals were designed to check each other and keep them in line. The human Elementals could create undesirable characteristics within individuals if not adequately controlled. Ethan and Sera had already discussed the inherent conflict of combining heart and body, but knowledge and immortality were even more volatile. Together they created the worst kind of megalomaniac. It was bad enough when an immortal intent on world domination thought he knew everything. But when he actually did know everything, it was even worse.

The natural elements were no different. They were designed to cancel each other out, to balance each other. But combined in the way they were now, with air and water, you had the potential for a hurricane, and with earth and fire: a volcano.

Sera stood before her adversary, rooted to the ground, more solid and powerful than she had ever felt before, with a fire burning in her soul and a new purpose in life. Prince Dantell did not stand before his foe but floated in their air, wind buffeting him as lightning flashed between his limbs.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

Sera attacked.