Chapter Thirty-Eight
Samara
Raphael wasted no time getting us out of the palace the next day. Ansel and Lettie met us at the door shortly after dusk.
“I know we have a deal, but I really don’t want to do more training today,” I muttered to Raphael as we descended into the city proper. Memories of last night still sat heavy in my gut, even if I’d managed to reconcile my actions.
I’d let Raphael reassure me, and I felt better for it. On the one hand, he was the last person it was safe to seek comfort from. But there was also a logic to trusting his assessment—he was an expert in monsters. If he said I wasn’t one, then who could know better?
Not that he knew the entire truth.
“We’re not. Though I’d remind you that training helped save your life.”
I could’ve argued, but a day let out of training was a win for me.
“It’s the day of new beginnings,” he explained. “One of the things Skyflame is named for. At the midpoint of the festival, people let go of their pasts and seek out new futures. You’ll understand more when you see it.”
We reached the main square of Limanos after a few blocks. Normally, it was filled with shouting vendors, performers, and more. Now, there was just a steady murmur of the crowd as people milled throughout.
Twelve large flames were held in massive iron braziers, glowing violet, cyan, yellow, and black in repeating order. Ashes and scraps of paper littered the ground, the air painted with smoke and the distinct smell of freshly drying ink.
I picked up one of the papers from the ground.
I am a sailor.
Another read: I am free of my husband.
I picked up a handful more. Raphael watched while I read them over.
I have a companion waiting for me at home.
I will find another love.
I am studying art, not alchemy.
“You wanted to see new life. This is it—thousands of new lives,” he explained.
“Why did they write these?”
“This is only half of what was written, the chosen future.” Raphael pointed to the flames. “The other half, the past, gets tossed into the flames. Purple for a past you mourn, cyan for one you hold fondly, yellow for one you were neutral on.”
“And black?”
“Black is for the one you hated. It tends to be popular.” He held out his hands, and I offered him the parchment. “So the companions to these might have read, I am studying alchemy because my father wants me to. This one perhaps, I have no one, and this: I am engaged.”
Thousands of papers like these formed a sea around us. I studied the crowd, wondering who each parchment belonged to. Some wept, some were grinning widely. Several embraced.
Raphael led us closer to the flames. “Most of it happens during the day,” he explained.
“But the festivities continue all night long. It’s more the symbol—this day knows more betrothals and separations than any other in the year.
People leave the city, people arrive. All kinds of new beginnings are sacred. ”
New beginnings. There was something seductive about the phrase. I wondered which flame my past would belong in.
“Parchment? Quill?” someone asked us.
I looked down. A boy no older than twelve held out scraps of paper and a fistful of quills primed with ink.
Raphael handed over some silver and gave me two scraps of my own. To my surprise, he took two as well.
“What if I don’t know what my future is?” I asked.
He arched a brow at me. “Skyflame isn’t about turning anyone into an oracle. It’s about choosing for yourself.”
He took out his quill to demonstrate, scribbling something across the paper on his palm. He crumpled the paper before I could see and let it disintegrate into purple embers. Then he wrote another. His new future.
“What does yours say?” It wasn’t written in the common tongue.
He let it fall to the ground. In another moment, it would be impossible to find again. “No cheating. You first.”
I held the quill, uncertain. There were so many things I could write. Pasts I mourned, ones I hated, ones I still wasn’t sure what to think of. But nothing felt quite right.
Raphael easily read my indecision. “You can think about it. There’s more to see.”
I slipped them into the pocket of my dress and wandered until some yipping caught my attention.
“They have animals here?” I led us over.
On the far edge from where we’d entered, several pens of animals had been set up.
Not livestock, but domesticated creatures: dogs and cats, some old, some young, some with split tails or wings, some utterly ordinary looking.
A winged cat with glittering turquoise pearlescent fur and wings stared at us from atop one of the kennels. “Are they all exotic?”
“They’re mutts, mostly.” Raphael bent to pet one of the animals, a fat dog that barely reached his knee. “Some decades ago, someone realized the night of new beginnings made people want to welcome more companionship into their lives, so many began to adopt. It’s said to be a lucky thing.”
“That explains why it’s so empty.” While there were still easily a dozen animals, the space was large enough to fit closer to a hundred. I sank to my haunches and offered a hand to the pup that kept nosing around Raphael. “She likes you.”
Raphael lowered himself next to me. He scratched under the dog’s chin and her tail thumped, the white tip a little beacon in the dark. “Does she?”
The king of vampires, bending to pet a dog. How was this the same male who so easily spat vows of violence against his enemies? I couldn’t help but smile at the gentleness of his touch.
Another hound pranced over to me. His interest was, similarly, mainly on Raphael, but since Raphael’s attention was occupied, he settled for me.
“I had hoped I’d be a zoamancer when I was a little girl,” I admitted. “It wasn’t prestigious, but I thought there could be no greater pleasure than getting to talk to a pet.”
“That’s not often a well-regarded gift,” he noted.
“You’re right about that.” The greatest divide in the Witch Kingdom was between those who had magic and those who didn’t.
But within that, there were gradients of classes.
Disguise magic was practical and common enough.
Decent, if not prestigious. Creation magic was among the rarest and most cherished.
But communicating with animals? Not practical for anyone but a shepherd, my mother would say.
“But I wished for it all the same. One of the mousers had a kitten, and I managed to… secure one, once it weaned. I tucked scraps in my skirts after each meal for it. The little thing, with dark black fur, purred like you wouldn’t believe.
Just from the little bits of affection I was able to slip it.
For a brief time, I had a friend. She slept on my pillow late at night. I would fall asleep to her purring.”
Raphael was still petting the dog, but all his attention was on me. “And then?”
There was always an and then. All good things ended.
“And then one day the kitten died. I cried for an entire day and night until my mother had enough and put a stop to it. So then I only cried at night. I kept her little bones in a box, under my pillow where she’d slept, until my mother found them there and declared it too morbid.”
Raphael parted his lips, as if about to say something, then shut his mouth so hard his teeth ground together.
When he tried again, his voice was soft.
“Would a pet make you happy? We could take this one with us. With enough cheese and cookies, I imagine you could win her affections before we even returned to Damerel.”
“You can’t replace the past that easily.” The tiny scraps of paper suddenly weighed heavy in my pocket.
“No. But you can choose to have a future, Samara.”
I looked at the dogs. I imagined a future they would fit into, in a cottage somewhere safe and peaceful, where I could have a simple dog. It was a future leagues worse than my mother’s worst nightmares, yet now such an existence seemed like the height of luxury.
And I could not afford it. The path I was on didn’t leave room for bonds like that. “They’ll have a better life with someone else. Besides, it seems cruel to take them from sunlight and keep them underground in Damerel.”
Raphael let the matter drop.
The festival continued through the night. While I’d first thought there were no merchants out, several had set up tents on the fringes, down side streets. One caught my attention, a strange smell of ink and copper.
I pulled Raphael closer, and he obliged me. A couple left the tent as we got closer, giggling, pointing at matching black marks on each other’s arms. I pulled the tarp back and went inside. Raphael followed, while our guards set up posts at the entrance.
A fae male with coifed dark blue hair, dark skin, and matching eyes looked up from where he was bent over a notebook. “Ah, long nights, warm blood, all that. Looking for some ink?”
“For paper?” I asked.
He grinned, bright white teeth gleaming. He had slightly pointed canines, but nothing like a vampire’s fangs. “For the body.”
Rows of vials were set on temporary shelves around the tent, dark sparkling liquids of black and blue and gold and every other color. A smattering of half-finished sketched designs covered the notebook in front of the fae.
“Are they permanent?” Witches used disguise magic, but it all wore off after a time.
“I give a three-century guarantee. But it’ll hurt like an ogre,” the artist warned me. “For vamps, we have to cut the skin with cursed copper.”
Impulse clasped me. Three centuries? It seemed unlikely I’d live that long.
But I’d survived everything that had been thrown at me in the first two decades.
I kept surviving, even when it had seemed impossible.
I didn’t want to forget that. Didn’t want to forget there were choices I could make even if others—vampire, necromancer—had been foisted on me. “I’d like one.”
I slid a glance to Raphael, waiting for him to object. A pet was too permanent, but this isn’t? he’d say, and I’d retort, This only affects me. Or maybe, Masochism isn’t a virtue, and I’d remind him I wasn’t virtuous.