Chapter 13
My eyes narrow. “Your what?”
A second fireball shoots through the air, and I dodge it in time for it to slam into a tree trunk behind me. Fir needles crackle and drop to the ground—singed to ash.
The flames sputter out, but wisps of smoke curl into the sky.
“Nicole,” Julian says, hedging a step closer to her. “None of this is Briar’s fault.”
“Not her fault?” Nicole scoffs, glaring at me as she stalks closer. A breeze twists through her shoulder-length hair. “I’d say it’s all her fault.”
Her lip curls back, and she growls, shooting another ball of fire. I duck, narrowly missing it, but a second whizzes past my head, singeing the tips of my hair.
Red clots my vision, and anger coils in my stomach—red hot. Beneath my skin, a blazing heat travels over my shoulders, down my biceps and forearms, and gathers in the palms of my hands.
“Briar,” Elias warns, but his voice is swallowed by my pulse thrashing in my ears.
Flames engulf my hands, and as I step forward, my vision tunnels on Nicole.
She rolls back her shoulders, revealing the beginning of a tattoo at her collarbone. With a scoff, she smirks. “Funny, I wouldn’t really consider you her type.”
“And what’s that?” I growl, the heat in my palms unbearable. Scalding.
“I can’t quite put my finger on it.” She tilts her head, the right side cropped close to her scalp. “You seem…weak.”
I bare my teeth and throw out my palm. A rope of fire whips toward her, but she smirks and steps to the side, avoiding it. A strangled breath comes from my throat, followed by a low growl.
“I’d expect the infamous Princess of the Sea to be a little more practiced at wielding power. Or perhaps a better shot?”
Fire spikes from my fingertips like talons, growing and spreading, licking the tips of the blades of grass as I shorten the distance between us. “Queen.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Flames shoot from her left hand and harden into the form of a sword. “I don’t think I heard you. Repeat that?”
My jaw clenches, and the blaze at my fingertips grows so hot it shifts to a deep indigo. “I’m a queen.”
“Julian,” Elias hisses from behind me, barely loud enough to register.
“No. She needs to see it for herself.”
Heat licks the bones of my ribcage and climbs my throat. Untethered, Kressa’s power courses through my veins, boiling the blood and saltwater gathered there. My chest expands, as if steam is billowing through my lungs—the fire at my fingers begging for release.
“Hard to be a queen when you have no court to rule over.”
My hands curl into fists. Black coats my vision like thick smoke, and the flames lapping the underside of my skin threaten to smother me. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out as it claws at me, devouring me whole.
“And then there’s the matter of your crew that I’ve heard so much about.” Nicole scoffs. “To put it simply—you can’t call yourself a queen if no one will follow you.”
I combust.
A flare of light bursts from my hands and chest, blinding me. It envelopes the clearing, and the grass erupts—a wildfire tearing across the area, racing toward the circle of trees on the outskirts.
My heart races, and I close my hands into fists, reigning in the power the way I would the sea.
Nothing happens.
Fire continues to stream from my fingers, and smoke billows into the sky, blotting out the rising sun. The flames put off an unbearable heat, and I fall to my knees, digging my hands into the soil.
I pull in a breath, but soot shoots into my lungs. My throat closes up and I double over, gagging and coughing. Forcing my eyes open against the sting, I search the area around me, but the smoke is so thick, so cloying, that I can’t find a way out. Even the treetops are engulfed in—
The flames disappear.
The smoke lowers then vanishes, as if drawn into the earth. I swallow against the hoarse ache in my throat and rub the ash from my eyes.
At the other end of the clearing, Nicole stands with her arms crossed over her chest. Her feet rest in thick, green grass, and right before her—a clear line of where the wildfire ended, as if stopped by an invisible force.
She raises a brow. “It’s worse than I thought.” Her attention flicks over my shoulder, where Elias and Julian stand, also untouched by the blaze. “No control whatsoever.”
I force myself to my feet, steadying myself, and my gaze traces the near perfect circle that the fire destroyed. “How is that possible?”
Julian steps closer, over the line. “I’m a shield. That’s why Kressa sent me to be here with you—so you wouldn’t light us or the forest on fire.”
I nod toward Elias. “And him?”
“The mind reader is here to make sure I behave,” Nicole says, picking at her nails. “Or to scour my mind and report back to his sister.”
Elias tilts his head, studying her. “I’m not entirely sure she cares what’s in your mind.”
A fireball shoots through the air, aimed at him, but Julian lifts a hand and smothers it midair.
“Someone with your power shouldn’t be living,” Nicole spits at Elias. “You’re an abomination.”
I whip around, facing her. “Then what are you? Serinos is gone, along with the Fire Court. And you—”
“You do realize where you are, correct? Whose land your feet are resting on?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you the one who sent the wyverns to attack us?”
A soft chuckle comes from her. “How naive of you to think I have any control over what the wyverns do.” She opens her palm, and a small flame hovers over her skin.
“I’m here because Kres sent a letter, asking if I would help train a prisoner she brought back from Sarenia.
It wasn’t until Julian payed me a visit the other night that I found out she failed to mention the prisoner was also her bonded. ”
My molars grind against the way she says Kressa’s name—the way her nickname rolled off her tongue. “So the Fire Court isn’t gone?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think you have earned the right to know anything. I didn’t agree to train you so I could give you information.”
“Then why did you?”
Silence thickens the air, and Elias steps up beside me. Under his breath, he mutters, “She did it for Kressa.”
“Stay out of my head,” Nicole hisses, flames dancing in her eyes. “I don’t care if you’re her brother or not. Julian might be able to protect you from my flames, but not much else.” Her hand hovers over a blade strapped to her belt line.
Julian strides to my side. There’s a weariness settled into the creases of his face. “We know that you’re blackmailing Kressa into sneaking you on to the ship with her. I hope you understand the gravity of what you’re asking her to do.”
I press my lips into a tight line.
He blows out a breath. “As you can see, you have no control over the fire power. If you’re on the ship, and your anger gets the best of you—”
“Poof,” Nicole says, her white teeth glinting as she strides to a nearby tree stump and perches on the edge of it. “The masts go up in flames. The deck caves in on itself. You’d all drown, if the fire didn’t kill you first.”
“I’d be able to put out any flames,” I say, a plea in my voice. “I can stay calm.”
Elias gnaws on his lip. “You’ve done a decent job of keeping me out of your mind, Briar. But I don’t need to read your thoughts to know you have as much control over your anger as you do the fire power.”
I ignore the concern in his tone. “Then it sounds like Kressa should be the one in rhodium.” My voice is little more than a growl, throat still rough and aching from the ashes I inhaled.
“If she gets caught sneaking you out of the castle, she very well might be,” Elias says.
I press my tongue into my cheek. Nicole watches carefully, studying me in a way that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
Something slick and oily slithers into the space between my ribs, but I shove it to the side.
Kressa and I mean nothing to each other.
I shouldn’t care about who Kressa was with in the past, or who she could be with now.
I swallow, digging the toe of my boot into the dirt. “Fine. If I have until sunset to get this power under control, I don’t want to waste any time. Where do we begin?”
Nicole pushes from the tree stump and closes the space between us—her strides long and sure. Her eyes seem to darken the closer she gets, a deep burgundy by the time she comes to a stop in front of me. “Hold out your palm.”
She hovers her hand upward, and the tattoo shifts on her collarbone, as if it’s a living thing. It slithers across the divot at the base of her neck.
She clears her throat, catching me staring. “You have about three seconds before I decide this isn’t worth my time.”
I blink and hold my palm up, the lines of my hand pale against the morning sky. “Now what?”
“You’re used to wielding the sea, correct?”
A shiver crests down my back, and the memory of being unable to release the wave shudders through my mind. The brink of burning out my power—it could have killed me. But still, I nod. “It’s been a while, but yes.”
She searches my eyes, as if she can read the uncertainty in them. “Where does it live inside you?”
I furrow my brows and close my eyes. “My chest. Burrowed deep beside my heart.”
“Good. Now, tell me where you feel the fire.”
“It’s everywhere,” I breathe. “The bond is insufferable, like there’s no escape from the heat.”
“I didn’t tell you to focus on the bond.” Her tone is sharp, biting. “Follow it to the root—not where it’s tethered to Kressa, but where it’s tethered to you.”
A swallow works its way down my throat, and I squeeze my eyes shut, biting back the heat scouring the underside of my skin.
I focus my attention on the space in my chest where Kressa’s power lingers, picturing it in my mind.
Cords of power emanate from it, but there’s one glowing brighter than the rest, coursing with heat so dense it’s blue.
Breathing in a centering breath, I follow it, weaving through my body and directly into—
“It’s in my core,” I whisper, blinking my eyes open.
Nicole nods, her gaze boring into me. “Does it feel like it’s woven into your being?”
I feel the weight of Elias and Julian’s stare on the space between my shoulder blades—expectant.
A moment passes by, weighted, and I nod. “Yes, like it’s tethered to me.”
“When you wield fire, you have to tap into that tether.” A tiny flame appears on her palm, hovering over her skin.
“It’s tied directly to your emotions, and it’ll react to what your body feels.
Like anger.” The flame rises, morphing, coating her skin like a glove.
“Or anguish.” It shifts, and the flames sputter, lowering.
“But if you can’t harness the emotions you feel, the flames will be as out of control as you are. ”
My stomach churns. Over the past decade, it’s been easy enough to put a mask on my emotions—to set my face in indifference and hide what’s going on inside. But in me? Burrowed deep between my ribs, in the unchartered space of the emotions that run rampant? That’s never been mine to control.
“How do I call upon it?” I say.
The flames on her hand fade to a single pinprick of light. “Think of a moment of happiness, a small one.”
I drop my gaze to my hand and bring to mind an image of myself on The Twelfth Night, my crew sunbathing on the deck under a clear blue sky. A flame—no larger than the tip of a matchstick—appears in the center of my palm.
A laugh bubbles from my throat, but the flare grows, shifting—the tip of it thrashing as if blown by a gust. It engulfs my hand, climbing up my forearm and dripping to the ground. I clench my jaw, trying to reel it in, but it doesn’t work. My breaths quicken, panic seizing my muscles.
“Julian.” Nicole barks.
The fire disappears.
“What happened?” I level out my breath, turning my hand over. “It was a happy memory.”
A drawn out sigh comes from between her lips. “What was it?”
“My crew on my ship, on a clear day. The happiest I’ve ever been.”
She shakes her head. “But is that memory tied to anything that can be associated with anger? Fear? Betrayal?”
I turn my face away from her, her words spoken as if she already knows.
“Try again,” she says, any sympathy leeched from her voice.
Swallowing, I pin back my shoulders and hold out my palm, scouring my mind for a memory only surrounded with happiness. I bite into the flesh of my cheek. Everything that should bring happiness—my mother, my crew, my ship—it’s all tainted with death, agony, pain. Anger.
Nicole shoots a blast of fire into my chest, singeing off the loose threads of my shirt.
“What in the fates was that for?” I bare my teeth. “I wasn’t ready.”
“You think, when you’re at the front lines of war, they’re going to wait for you to be ready?
” She steps closer, her lip curled as she glares down at me.
“I’m not here to coddle you, Briar. I don’t give a shit about you, or that court you call yourself a ruler of.
I’m here to make sure that when Kressa takes you on that ship, you don’t kill her. ”
“Haven’t you heard?” I give her a saccharine smile. “We’re bonded. I can’t kill her. Trust me, I’ve already tried.”
Her eyes flare, and her hands curl into fists—fire shooting up her forearms.
“Careful,” I whisper. “Watch your anger.”
The fire snuffs out, and she turns on her heel, pacing a handful of steps away from me. She spears a hand through her hair and looks over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes.
“Again,” she says.
I fold my arms across my chest. “I don’t have a memory that isn’t associated with something negative.”
“That makes two of us.”
My eyes soften. “How’d you do it then?”
“You make something up.”
My lips part, and a chasm widens in my chest. The power Terra bestowed on us isn’t governed by emotions or whether or not they can be controlled. But whatever this power from Serinos is—it’s unbearable.
Nicole rolls back her shoulders. “Again.”