Chapter 20 #3
‘You have no idea how lucky you are,’ he says, as if reading my mind.
‘Cage men in the dark long enough, and they do turn to beasts. Only, to something more savage than rats. You wouldn’t last a night in the Necropole.
’ He laughs but there’s no mirth in it. ‘After a lifetime in that pit, and countless stints at its whipping post, one night under the stars deprived of a bedroll is hardly likely to faze me.’ His hand strays to his shoulder.
‘Is that how your back—’ The words tumble out before I can stop them. I look away, praying he won’t see the blanch of my cheeks.
His smirk falters. But only for an instant. ‘Ah, so you noticed the scars then, eh?’
‘No… That is… I…’
‘Care for a closer look, Sparkles?’
Sister save me, he’s lifting his cloak, unlacing his shirt with his free hand, shrugging his bare shoulder into the night.
Taut slashes cleave the elaborate inkwork on his arm, winking like silvered scales in the moonslight.
I drop my gaze, focus on the squelch of mud beneath my boots.
The low rumble of his laugh makes my stomach tighten.
Insufferable.
‘You better be fastening that shirt, Arcuri.’
He chuckles. ‘All decent, so you can spare me those maiden blushes. And just so you know…’ His voice dips, turns husky, almost caressing. ‘That’s not the reaction I usually get when I take my shirt off in front of a woman.’
I resist the impulse to slap him. Even manage to lift my chin. Meet his gaze. Instantly, I regret it. I’m staring into molten gold and can’t draw enough air into my lungs.
‘In answer to your question – yes. I earnt some of them at the whipping post. Others…’ Blayze’s eyes narrow. Darken. ‘Let’s just say my father wasn’t a gentle man.’
I swallow. Throat dry as the dunes of the famed Oralian Waste.
My mind turns to all the beatings I’ve received at my own father’s hands.
Perhaps I should be grateful he never left permanent marks.
The air seems suddenly charged, weighted with a strange tension.
As we face each other in the darkness, the gulf between us thins. Narrows to a hairline crack.
‘Is there anything I can do? To help get Serafine down, I mean,’ I say, changing the subject.
‘If she won’t listen to me, there’s little chance she’ll listen to anyone else. Especially you.’ There’s a bite in Blayze’s voice as he locks eyes with me, and I’m suddenly very aware that I’m only wearing a nightdress beneath this cloak.
‘Leilani, go back to bed. You’ll catch a chill standing out here. Make your ankle worse.’
I stiffen at the sound of Orthriel’s voice. In my surprise at almost bashing Blayze’s head in, I’d forgotten they were listening. Ugh! I can feel my cheeks blanching all over again.
My Guardian’s right, of course, I should leave. Go back to bed. And yet I don’t move.
I have the sense of Orthriel shaking their head, then feel them drift further away, as if they’ve closed the door joining our consciousnesses.
But the weight of my Guardian’s disapproval lingers, settles on my shoulders, as I watch Blayze circle the tree nearest to him, lift his lantern and rifle its branches, scattering a shower of residual raindrops.
‘If you’re staying, you can help figure out which tree she’s hiding in.’
‘I’ll carry this for you,’ I say, reaching for his pack.
But he wrenches it away. ‘Don’t touch my things.’
I start back from the force of his words.
‘Force of habit,’ he says, with a shrug. ‘You keep your things close in the pit, or they disappear.’
I follow after him as he searches the copse, shifting my weight onto my good ankle, and using my moonsight to scour the upper branches for the flash of crimson feathers.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Blayze says, after a few minutes of fruitless searching.
I stop walking and fold my arms. ‘What?’
‘That trick you pulled at Thawtide – with the light. Did it hurt?’
I wrap my arms more tightly around my chest. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’
Blayze shrugs and parts more branches. ‘I’m just curious. No Branded have been born to the pit for over a generation. The few conceived when my father was a child were ripped from their mothers’ arms. Left to die overground.’
My stomach hollows.
His face twists with that same expression of revulsion mixed with something approaching pity I noticed when he first saw my brand at the Council of Four.
‘After what Arden did, the Flameborn are considered unnatural by most, harbingers of misfortune. Abominations better off destroyed. My people are glad to believe them eradicated.’
At least I understand now. No wonder I disgust him.
The standing of the Branded is little better in Meissa, but at least I’m tolerated there.
Whispered about in corners, but not abandoned as a helpless babe to meet a cruel death.
I’ve always hated my magic, wished I could purge myself clean of it.
But the callousness of Blayze’s words shocks me, makes me defensive.
I shudder, remembering my father’s warnings in the Sanctuary, his insistence that only the privilege of my birth protects me, shields me from the full force of the prejudice against my kind.
I gaze up at the crenellated towers of Galtair. Fear claws my gut. What am I leading us into?
Serafine’s high-pitched shriek rends the night air. I start back. Blayze’s lips curve into the barest of smiles.
His gaze travels upwards. ‘Looks like we found her.’
He holds up his lantern. I can just make out a faint glow of burnt orange streaking through the branches, the silken susurrus of beating wings.
Memories of feathers dark as onyx, the blended stench of blood and bird, float to the surface of my mind.
I shut my eyes, ducking this relic from my childhood nightmares safely back into the depths, before turning to Blayze.
‘Has Serafine always been your Guardian?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he replies with a dismissive wave of his hand.
‘Oh, so you’re the only one allowed to ask questions?’
He laughs. A deep, throaty sound – surprisingly warm. Though whether he’s laughing with me or at me, I’m not quite sure.
‘Technically, you didn’t answer mine,’ Blayze says. ‘But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you.’ He pauses to draw breath, runs a hand across his stubbled jaw. ‘Do you remember I told you a moment came that forced my father to change his mind about the succession?’
I nod.
‘Well, my record in the fighting pits was one part of that.’ His fingers clench around his left bicep, tracing the inkings that circle his arm.
I counted over twenty of the strange markings in Meissa, back when Blayze was still in the grip of his aversion to clothes. Most are red, but a handful are stark white. He tugs his hand through his tousled, flame-kissed hair. The memory is clearly making him anxious.
‘But Fifi was the key,’ he says at last, shaking the branches again in an effort to dislodge her. ‘How much do you know about conditions in Oralia?’
Shame knots my stomach, but I answer truthfully. ‘Not much.’
‘Not exactly a priority in the royal curriculum, eh?’ Blayze frowns.
‘Long story short, my people have been reduced to living in the Delves – underground mineshafts, a warren of tunnels we call the Necropole – for five generations. No palaces or jewelled libraries for us. Not anymore,’ he says with a wry smile.
‘We rely on ignastium, the sacred ore forged in the belly of the Burning Mountain – the core of Oralia’s Flame-Aether – to fuel the Necropole and power the Dark Farms. They don’t produce much, but it’s enough to keep people from starving. ’
Again, that dragging sensation in my gut.
The same I felt when we passed the Gaspings, when I stood in the ruined starfruit fields.
Realisation of the devastation the Sickening’s wrought.
This is why the other members of the Quaternity agreed to put their lives on hold and leave their loved ones when I offered them the promise of the Starlight Staff.
I sold them hope. Worse, I lied. Or, at least, withheld the truth about our chance of success, the obstacles we’ll face, my true motivations and intentions.
‘Around six scorchings ago, reserves of the ore were running low. My father dispatched clansmen to the Smelts, molten rivers that flow from the Burning Mountain, to bring back what they could, but they returned empty-handed, or else didn’t return at all.
It’s still possible to survive the Over for short periods, but temperatures have risen so high, and the air’s so thick with volcanic gas, the Waste destroys most foolhardy enough to brave it.
And if those conditions don’t kill you, the choking sandstorms, showers of needle-sharp volcanic glass, and raging wildfires, soon will.
But I was young, cocky, and desperate to prove my worth to my father, so I resolved to get the ore myself.
Felt it was my calling.’ Blayze clears his throat, scans the overhead branches again.
The lantern flickers, casting his face in dancing shadows as he bites his lower lip. Hurt and anger harden his features.
I recognise that look – that pain.
‘For whatever reason, the Sacred Flame warmed to me. I managed to reach the Smelts and retrieve the ore.’ Blayze chafes at the torc around his neck, tugging as if it’s too tight.
I’ve a feeling he’s glossed over something important. I reach for the silver threads of my magic, try to push against the barrier of his mind, to discover what he’s not telling me. But the threads won’t curl around my fingers. I still can’t read the Clanschief at all.
‘It was a proof my father couldn’t ignore. I’d superseded my brother’s birthright.’ Blayze’s eyes burn with something like triumph. ‘Especially as the ignastium wasn’t the only thing I brought back.’ He cranes his neck again, his eyes softening to rich, liquid gold as he searches the branches.
‘Serafine was in bad shape when I found her at the foot of the Burning Mountain. A runt with a broken wing.’ His voice is gentler too, somewhere between a croon and a choked whisper.
He’s talking more to himself than me. ‘The flock must have judged her unworthy and cast her over the crater. She was a scrawny bundle of bloodied feathers, but something inside me took pity on her. I carried her all the way back to the Necropole, nursed her to health. I’d never looked after another living creature before, but I became both father and mother to Fifi.
Emberwings are never seen anymore. One used to serve each of the five clan leaders, but they can’t abide the darkness of the pit.
When we were forced to make our home there, they left.
Returned to their mountain nests. But Fifi stayed…
My having an emberwing bound to me – even a runt – was further evidence of my right to rule.
She matters to me. She’s the only creature in this world I’ve ever…
’ He stands straighter, conscious of my presence again. ‘She’s important to me, that’s all.’
There’s a long pause while I try and reach for the right response. Blayze fills it by tossing a piece of dreamroot into his mouth, grinding it between his teeth.
He’s the most bewildering person I’ve ever met.
Scarcely a word since we met, save for jibes, then two emotional outpourings in the past few moonsrisings.
He’s talking to me as though we’re friends instead of enemies, yet I know he can’t stand the sight of me.
He thinks I’m a… What was the word he used? An abomination.
He makes my head spin, but he’s a loose thread I can’t help but pull at, a book I can’t read, a future I can’t scry, a puzzle I can’t solve. And yet I want to understand. I want to decipher. I want…
I don’t know what I want.
Why did I ask him about Serafine in the first place? Why didn’t I listen to Orthriel and return to my tent once I realised there was no danger here? Why did I stay out, shivering in my nightdress looking for a bird that hates me? A bird I’m sure would relish clawing my eyes out.
As if in answer to that question, bloodcurdling cries shred the silence. Bronze flashes across the sky as Serafine swoops down and comes to roost in the neighbouring tree. The flap of her wings as she glides overhead snuffs out the candle in Blayze’s lantern, plunging us into darkness.
I’m relieved. This puts an end to the search – to this whole awkward encounter. Though the hollow ache that spreads through my chest as Blayze stalks away to his own tent, after escorting me back to mine and admonishing me not to leave it till morning, doesn’t feel like relief.
This time, I’m not sure I can pass it off as cramps, or an after-effect of too much flamead. And I’m glad the door between my mind and Orthriel’s remains firmly shut.
It’s all very well for Blayze to chide me for being reckless, but though my boots and cloak are dank after wandering the hills, my resolve is not dampened.
If I am possessed, it’s because of the remembrance garden. Those little lost souls haunt me. I carry them in my heart now, as surely as I carry the starstone around my neck.
Come first light, we advance to Galtair and whatever awaits us there.
For too long I’ve been led. Now it’s time to lead. I’ll let no one get in my way.