Chapter Eighteen Kian
I am lying in my bed, thinking of Adela and how much more pleasure I want to give her, when I hear the first rumble of thunder. I look out the window. There is a storm raging. Lightning, thunder, torrential rain.
This. This is my chance.
A sudden, intense flash of light makes its jagged path across the sky, and thunder crashes almost immediately after. The storm is close, and so sudden.
I grab the dragon-fire candle.
I hope that I don’t run into anyone in the hallway. I’m not sure how I’ll explain carrying a lit candle into a storm. Not even the truth would be very believable.
I hurry out of the great hall. I see a few keepers crossing the village square, but everyone is running to their homes, getting out of the rain. They pay me no mind.
Thank the Spinner.
I hurry across the meadows and get to the rolling hill at the edge of the jackalopes’ territory. I can see the matching hut just sitting there, beckoning me, but I pause, remembering Ivo’s leg. The way the blood gushed, how deep and long the last wound was, how quickly he went pale and weak.
This needs to work.
There is a tug deep inside me to somewhere else.
The phoenix has been quiet recently; now he floods me with feelings and images, shoving them through me.
He wants me deep in the forest, in a clearing with a large tree that’s somehow important to him.
He presses me to go, more insistent than he’s ever been.
Is it a ruse? Perhaps he does not want me destroying his kin.
He shows me Adela, and I’m certain he thinks I’m about to make a mistake. To hurt her.
And he’s not wrong.
This path is harder now than before I arrived in the valley. Now that I know the people I’m hurting. Not the order—every year amongst them has made me believe more firmly that this is necessary. But the keepers. Another community that is being controlled, just like the working poor in Insborough.
With no masks to match, keepers will likely be cut off from their current supports—the goods that keep them alive.
They talk frequently about how harsh the winters are, how slow the spring thaw, how miserable the harvests.
And it’s not as if they can simply harvest some of their farm animals.
They don’t eat meat, and not even keepers can survive on cheese and eggs alone.
I will certainly harm them with this action. Adela’s family. Her friends. Her. But I have to trust their ability to adjust, because there won’t be another chance.
Magic is what gives the order their power, their influence.
It is what allows them to offer forceful favors and monstrous threats.
If I want to make space for the people of Insborough to better govern themselves, to break free of the inequitable tithes and unfair rule of the order, removing their access to as much magic as possible is the best way to do it.
I have to move forward, and I have to do it now.
I climb over the hill to set it down just within the border of jackalope territory.
Cecelia wasn’t exaggerating. Everywhere, jackalopes are mating.
Hundreds of them. So many more than I knew existed, and not one is concerned that I exist, let alone that I’m in their territory.
The candle flickers in the rain as I maneuver through them, but holds.
I’m careful not to step on any of the randy little beasts.
I stop before the porch of the matching hut. Like all the buildings in the valley, it’s so unassuming. Just a simple wooden hut, but it holds so much history and power.
If only the magic inside were wielded well. How much good the orders could do in the world.
I lift my face up to the pouring rain and think of my parents in the temple square, how even in the end, they held their tongues.
They didn’t give away the rest of the family’s operations.
They didn’t reveal whatever secrets they died for.
They stayed loyal to their principles. They were so good. So much better than me.
“I’ve loved you for more of my life,” I say to the weeping sky and toss the dragon-flame candle onto the wooden porch.
The flames rush up—virulent, an instant blistering heat unaffected by the rain. The dragon fire’s crackling flame rips through the wooden-framed building. Within moments, there are pops of oil jars exploding and the groan of a beam giving way.
The ceiling collapses, smoke pouring out into the stormy sky.
It’s all so fast.
The storm rages above, as violent and swift as the burning matching hut. Thunder roars as a spear of lightning shoots from the thick black cloud hovering over the valley, directly into the center of the hut.
The forest watches silently, an uncaring witness to the devastation, while the jackalopes continue to copulate, simply moving their activities away from the scorching heat.
Window glass shatters outward, and the lightning’s fire joins the dragon flame, a dance of hot colors mingling against the storm’s gray skies.
The walls of the matching hut creak and whine, then collapse, too.
The workbenches and shelves and floor of the hut are already gone, burned to thick ash, but I can see a pile of skulls, still vibrant and white amidst the flames.
Terror they will not actually burn slides through me, overwhelming me, until the skulls begin to darken around their edges.
Finally. My glee is almost immediately replaced with repulsion.
I choke back bile. The smell is staggering, the scent of burning creature bone so much worse than the bodies at the funeral pyre.
The wind of the storm howls, shifting the odors away from me and encouraging the hungry flame. It grows brighter and bigger.
This is what I’ve worked for, sacrificed a comfortable, familiar life with my family for. This is what I wanted. It should feel like victory. I’ve reached my first goal, crossed a line no one can ever recross.
There is no going back.
I expected to feel the shift deep within me, as if the world sat up and noted how much it had changed, but there’s no great transformation.
The late afternoon is wet and smells of smoke.
With nothing more to burn, the fire begins to peter out, as if it’s just an overly large campfire being allowed to die in the night.
Instead of any sort of delight or pride, I experience a slow, creeping ache that I don’t understand. And then immediately on its heels, a piercing horror pours into me.
Adela is in trouble. Adela is in anguish. Adela needs me.
The phoenix sends me images of the large tree in a clearing in the forest again. I have no idea where that is, nor do I need to.
I follow the pull of Adela into the forest.