Chapter 18
Eighteen
I should feel empty after what I said. That Declan’s basically a to-do list. That we’re frauds. That he could never be my haven. After the way Declan looked at me like I’d ripped the earth out from under him and offered him nothing to hold on to, I should feel hollow.
But then the sand opened up.
And now I’m not empty.
I’m brimming.
Something timeworn and hot is coiling in my chest, pressurizing with every breath. Like the Tower planted its magick inside me the moment it cracked open. Magick that’s growing, expanding, aching to burst free.
At the center of the Tower sits a forgotten shrine.
It rises from the stone floor like the spine of an ancient beast. The pedestal is carved from obsidian, edges chipped and softened by time.
Ash clings to the base like a shadow while traces of red pigment bleed into the sunken lines and faded symbols etched into its surface.
A clay offering bowl rests on the podium.
It’s cracked down the middle and blackened by fire, its rim warped and melted.
Around the shrine, stone steps lead to a sunken circle—an ancient gathering space carved into the Tower. The floor is smooth beneath the drifting sand. Obsidian inlays glint faintly beneath the dust in jagged, interwoven flame-like patterns.
A deep bench curves along the circular wall, polished to a dark, oil-slick sheen. Nestled on the stone are cushions draped in rust-colored velvet and gold brocade, their fabric worn thin in places. Golden tassels glint beneath fine layers of dust, and thick fur pelts spill over the seats.
I follow the steps down, drawn to the altar, the magick in me recognizing the magick in it.
I trail my fingers over the faint veins of red etched into the smooth black base.
There’s a rhythm beneath the ash, a pattern I recognize.
Brushing gently, I hold my breath and coax the soot away.
And there it is. Revealed in fragments, but whole enough to understand: Naught but truth shall feed the sacred flame, and in so doing, preserve the realm it guards.
The words hum beneath my fingertips. The stone warms, almost pulsing as my hand moves over the weathered letters. The pressure in my chest intensifies—sharp, restless, hungry. It coils behind my ribs, alive with heat and wanting, burning its way to the surface, burning to be seen.
Fortune’s voice comes back to me all at once, crackling through my memory.
The Kingdom of Wands was forged in sacred flame. Its fires once stripped away illusion, burning for truth—for what was real, and only that.
Stripped away illusion.
Burned for truth.
“It wasn’t a metaphor,” I say aloud, my voice barely more than a whisper. “She meant what she said.”
Declan furrows his brow. “What who said?”
“Fortune… She knew.” I press my palm flat against my chest, trying to contain the blaze climbing beneath my skin.
“The Tower—this Tower—it brought us to this place, to Towerfall. She said I had to heal the realm. That the wheel would keep turning. That true transformation asks a price, and I have to be ready to be changed—even consumed—by it.”
The words tumble out, spilling faster than I can catch them. The air around me thins. The pressure behind my ribs spikes. Flames lick the inside of my chest. I gasp. Gulp in breath after breath but can’t get enough air. My body vibrates, pulses, runs away with me.
Declan’s hands close around mine. His palms are rough and steady, and the solid strength of him grounds me to the stone beneath our feet. To this place. To this moment. To him.
“Slow down,” he says gently, thumbs brushing my knuckles. “Breathe.”
I do. One slow inhale. A long exhale. Then another. My lungs stretch, and the blaze within me cools into an ember I can hold in the hollow of my ribs.
That he keeps staying, even after everything I’ve broken, shows me who he really is. And who I’ve been too frightened to become.
“Declan, I know I’ve said it before. I’ve apologized and then made the same selfish, hurtful choices. I don’t expect you to forgive me right now, but I am sorry, and I want the chance to prove it.”
He meets my eyes. “Then show me,” he says plainly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
My next exhale leaves me in a rush as another wave of magick funnels up through the floor like heat through a grate, and everything in me tilts. There’s pressure between my temples, a hot tightness behind my sternum, a rush of images and scents and voices that shove at the edges of my mind.
I crumple, and Declan catches me.
“Breathe,” he says again.
In the thin quiet between inhales, a parade of images flips behind my eyes, snapshots that are wrong and right at the same time.
A ruby-encrusted hand closes around a child’s small fingers.
That same gem-studded hand presses sigils into wet clay.
The hand pours oil from a pitcher into a bowl and sets it in front of an altar.
They aren’t memories, exactly, but they feel like echoes of something I once was or might one day become.
Fortune’s voice rides under each image. Fragments of words at first, like someone yelling in a windstorm. Then they stack on top of one another until they’re a chorus, loud and urgent in my head.
“Slow down! I can’t understand you. I can’t—” I bury my face in Declan’s chest, cover my ears, and pinch my eyes shut against the noise.
The Tower thrums beneath my bare feet, a low metronome that steadies the noise in my skull until I can make out the shape of the words forming.
The flame eats not the prettified offering. It consumes the true thing given without costume. Present truth, and be fed.
Fortune’s voice arrives, and I can breathe again. My head is clear, and the images recede.
“I get it now,” I murmur against the hard planes of Declan’s chest. “The Tower doesn’t want perfection. It doesn’t want handpicked rituals or performative strength or some carefully crafted illusion of healing.” My throat is tight, heart thudding. “It wants what’s real.”
Declan lifts my chin, runs his thumb along my jaw. “And what’s real, Amanda?”
The moment I open my mouth to answer, the Tower groans. A sound like the earth exhaling. Wind rips through the chamber like a beast unchained, whipping sand into a spiraling column of smoke and dust.
Declan folds his arms around me, using his body as a shield. I curl into him. Sand lashes my exposed skin, and even with him holding me close, grit stings my eyes. I bury my face deeper into his chest and try to breathe, but the air is a furnace, every inhale a scrape.
He holds me tighter and presses his face in my hair. “Are you doing this?” he shouts, straining to cut through the roar.
“No!” I yell back, my words nearly swallowed by the wind. “I have no idea what’s happening!”
On the altar, the offering bowl trembles. Its broken edges draw toward each other, seams knitting themselves together until the cracked vessel re-forms into a massive, seamless vessel.
A jet of fire lashes up from the center of the bowl in a sudden explosive column of flame.
The blast rips us apart and flings us in opposite directions.
I fly backward, skidding across sand-covered stone.
I slam into the ground with a breath-stealing crack that sends pain streaking up my spine.
Heat washes over me in a scalding wave. For a disorienting second the world inside the Tower is a smear of light and smoke.
Across the altar Declan hits hard, the sound of him striking the stone muffled by the roar of wind and flame.
Plumes of dust and smoke rise in choking clouds around us. I cough until my eyes water and my throat feels raw. I shout for him, but the cyclone and the crackle of fire answer instead, swallowing my voice whole.
Flames continue surging from the mouth of the bowl, snaking up into the spinning vortex of sand and smoke.
The fire grows, stretches, a serpent of orange and red that twists higher and higher.
It coils inward like a clenched fist, and with a thunderous crack that ricochets off the columns and vibrates through the stone beneath my feet, it slams down into the offering bowl.
A wave of heat tears outward, thick and shimmering, warping the air. The burn licks my cheeks, races down my arms, slips beneath my wrap, and scalds my skin. I brace for more, for flames to engulf us, for the Tower to crumble, but nothing comes.
The cyclone unravels. The wind dies. The flames settle. The roar dwindles to a hush.
When the dust clears, the fire has changed.
Flames peel out of the bowl above the altar and stretch into moving pictures of firelight. Movies drawn in fire.
First, a row of tents forms in the flames.
Then, the images of people appear. The fire figures pin sheets across lines, flames of laundry fluttering against the backdrop of the night sky.
A man kneels to lace a child’s sandal while another child blazes past, barefoot and shrieking with laughter, a comet trailing sparks.
Tables appear in silhouette, heat-rippled heaps of bread and roasted meat rendered in shimmering orange. The whole caravan blooms in ember and smoke.
The vision inhales and exhales, growing and contracting like a living thing as branches of light arc from the bowl.
Trunks of fire knit into trees, their leaves tiny tongues of flame.
The canopy lifts and arches until the tents are crowned in fire-forged shade.
Flames lay themselves out like rivers, long braids of fire that thread through the camp.
Glowing bridges arch over channels formed of heat ripples.
Orchards bloom in sparks, fruit rendered in orange fire—a garden of light that once held the whole kingdom.
From the other side of the altar, Declan’s breath ripples through the fiery image. “It’s the kingdom.”
“But from the past,” I add. “Like Tarek said. When the Everspring covered the whole desert.”