Chapter 7
Flint
It’s happening again.
Every muscle in my body seems to tighten, shrink, then spasm out of control. Tremors ripple in jagged waves up and down my arms and legs. My heart hurts, beating too hard, too fast, my chest heaving, lungs screaming out for air – because I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
My skin is slick with cold sweat, and I wish I could just rip it off. I’m squeezing the nightlight so hard I’m surprised it hasn’t shattered into pieces in my hand.
I can’t explain what happened back there.
The desire to save my sister must have overpowered my terror, for in all these weeks I haven’t been able to summon so much as a single spark.
I tried my best to hide it. I made excuse after excuse, avoiding Blaze’s many questioning glances – all to keep my secret.
Because how could I ever confess the truth?
I don’t know how much time passes before my heart rate gradually begins to slow. Hours, days, an eternity – it’s hard to tell. But slow it does, and I come to as if waking from a nightmare, curled on my side, light-headed and trembling.
That was the worst it’s ever been. I say it because I can’t find the right words to describe what’s been happening to me almost every day since Ember –
My stomach roils with nausea. I exhale through my teeth and begin to count.
Seconds. Heartbeats. Pebbles skittering down the smoking pile of rubble. Even the bones lying littered around me. It helps, I’ve found. Counting things.
And when I emerge from the haze a second time, just as shaken but more alert, my first thought is – Blaze.
I heave myself into a sitting position and hold the nightlight aloft, illuminating the dust motes clinging to the stale air. The centre of the ceiling has caved in.
There’s no sign of my sister.
I crawl over to the towering pile of rubble, trying to find a way through. But this only dislodges more rocks. I jerk backwards as they tumble down, my spine slamming into the wall.
I think of those last moments before the explosion.
It all happened so fast. One minute Blaze was wedging a bone inside the mouth of that snake, and the next she was entirely disoriented, barely able to hold herself up.
If I hadn’t pushed her out of the way, she’d have been crushed.
But what if I pushed her too hard and she hit her head?
Or what if I didn’t push her hard enough and she’s now buried underneath all this stone? What if she’s …
‘BLAZE!’ I scream her name over and over until my throat is raw and my tongue coated with dust, but there is no response.
She’s not dead, I tell myself. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead.
My face is wet with tears. The salt stings my burns, and the pain, which was temporarily suppressed by panic, comes flooding back. My skin feels as though someone is rubbing it with sandpaper. My good eye smarts and streams, and as for the other …
I lean over and vomit on to a mound of tiny, delicate bones. Finger bones, perhaps.
When I’m empty, I reach for my satchel, then see that my belongings are strewn across the ground. I gather them up, counting as I go.
One – burn salve.
I yank off my shirt, turn it inside out, and use it to gently wipe my face. Then I take a glob of the cool, smooth gel and apply it to my burns, letting out a low groan as the jagged heat subsides somewhat.
Two – painkillers.
I rip the stopper out of one of the vials with my teeth and tip the contents down my throat.
Three – my waterskin.
Saliva pools eagerly in my mouth as I pick it up, but my insides turn to lead as I realize there’s barely more than a drop left.
No Blaze. No water. No way out.
Between the wall at my back and the debris in the centre, I have little more than a few feet of space. A tomb – that is what this is. I am literally sitting in my grave.
This time, when the panic descends, no amount of counting can stop it.
Memories plague me.
I’m standing in an amphitheatre. I can hear the roar of the crowd urging us on.
I can feel the heat from the flames raining down from above.
I can see my cousin, Ember, smiling. I can’t hold her off any longer.
She’s winning. She’s winning, which means I am losing.
I collapse to my knees but force myself to stand. I will not kneel. Not before her.
Worry not, cousin. I accept your surrender just as I will accept your fealty.
Anger and shame twist my insides out of shape. I was aware of it, even then – the knowledge that I was experiencing a moment that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Though it is a pity, Ember continues. It seems you’re just as pathetic as your sister.
Rage. Heat. Tongues of flame so agonizing I wished for death.
Then nothing.
I’m shaking so violently I hear bones break beneath me. My mind is filled with fire. Crackling, smoking, burning away my future.
Fire. My gift, now my curse.
Another memory surfaces. I see a wall of flame creeping ever closer as I try to make sense of my riddle.
I am something that is felt but never touched.
You will find me at birth, I am present at death.
Submit to me and I’ll hurt you.
Resist me and I’ll hurt you more.
If you use me, I can make you strong.
Learn from me and I can make you wise.
Numb me, fear me, conceal me, but never escape me.
You carry me with you every day of your life.
Tell me, Flint Flameborn – what am I?
The fire was close enough to blister when the answer came to me, a spark fizzling to life in the dark.
Pain.
Another surge of tremors takes hold and I squeeze my eye shut, my outstretched hand grappling for the nightlight.
A final memory reels me in. It’s my first trial this time.
I’m sprinting the circumference of the stone arena, collecting flames as I go.
If I’d broken my concentration, I would’ve scorched the skin off my palms. But I was Flint Flameborn, a son of House Harglade, Heir to the Ignitia throne.
I was playing with fire before I learned to talk.
Only now, that boy is gone.
He might as well be dead.