Chapter 54
Blaze
Fox and I tumble together through the churning portal, swept along by a powerful current.
I can’t breathe, or hear, or speak, but I can see.
Images appear like mirages through the crystal-clear water – the steel gates of Harglade Hall, the rocky cove beneath Bartell Manor, the sprawling front steps of the Golden Palace.
Yet none of them is the place I’m searching for.
The thing is, I’ve never actually been to my destination. I’ve only glimpsed it once, fleetingly. But it lodged itself in my mind, a safe haven coloured by memory. Fox’s memory.
I hold on tightly to his hand, scared that if I relax my grip even a little I’ll lose him. That’s if I don’t manage to drown him first.
Focus, I tell myself.
My chest grows taut and my lungs scream for air. As I screw my eyes shut, I think of nothing else but where I wish to be, and will myself to go there with everything that I am.
It works.
The portal spits us out on to solid ground, then melts away into the earth.
I’m flung on to my stomach, still clutching Fox, who lies sprawled on his back, Scout tucked under his arm, blinking up at the canopy of trees above.
Chinks of honeyed sunlight filter through the branches, which sway gently in the warm breeze, casting dancing shadows across the forest floor.
The air smells of damp wood and pine needles.
Birdsong mingles with the babbling of running water and the soft tinkling of windchimes.
‘You did it,’ Fox says.
‘I did,’ I agree, a little breathlessly.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I assure him, letting go of his hand and flexing my fingers. ‘But what just happened? How did King Balen discover where we were?’
‘One of the stable boys, by the looks of it. He knew you and Flint were missing and sold the information to a Ventalla spy. It seems all loyalty can be bought.’
I grimace. Grandmother’s never had much tolerance for turncoats. I imagine Caleb is now nothing but bones and ash.
‘Once my uncle realized you weren’t at a safe house, he began his search. Perhaps he knows of your connection to River. Perhaps, like me, he believed you may have sent the Eye to Brava. Regardless, he figured it out. Then he used the wind to spy for him.’
A shiver runs through me.
As Fox props himself up on his elbows, his gaze lands on something behind me. He stiffens in surprise. Slowly, I turn round.
I know at once that we are in Thorndale, a small, forest-wrapped province near the Wildlands border. I know this because there, nestled in the clearing with a moss-covered thatched roof and a faded buttercup-yellow front door, stands the Calloways’ cottage.
I feel myself clam up, suddenly nervous as I try to predict his reaction. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. This place is personal to Fox. It might dig up old grief he’d prefer to keep buried.
I’m so busy worrying that I may have overstepped the mark that I don’t notice the horse emerging from the trees, his dark mane still threaded with small braids.
‘Cedar!’ I exclaim. ‘What – I mean, how –’
‘I told you he knew where to find me again,’ says Fox.
‘So you were always planning on coming here?’
‘Yes, I was.’ His voice is light with incredulity. ‘But I didn’t realize you were.’
‘Are you angry?’ I ask tentatively, as Scout fixes her beady green-gold eyes on me.
‘I …’ For once Fox seems at a loss for words. ‘I presumed you were taking us to the Lagoon,’ he says at last.
I shake my head. ‘Too obvious. Besides, you were right about there being a stronger connection to the past. You took me to Brava, so I … I thought I would bring you here.’
Fox gets to his feet. He rests his forehead briefly against Cedar’s, then walks away from me towards the cottage.
I curse myself. This was a mistake, a foolish misjudgement. If only I’d –
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Fox calls over his shoulder.
I exhale deeply, relieved.
As I get closer, it becomes clear the cottage is no longer lived in.
The varnished wood is chipped and crawling with rampant ivy, and the door is so swollen with damp that Fox is forced to slide Silverclaw along the length of the frame just to prise it open.
Several of the crooked windows are cracked, spidery veins spreading out across the panes, which are made from stained glass in varying shades of green, violet and sunset orange.
A narrow path snakes through the overgrown grass towards a tiny outhouse I recognize as Fox’s grandmother’s workshop.
Behind it, dangling from the overhanging branch of a tall oak on the bank of the Creek, are two rope swings. My heart twists painfully.
Fox shoulders open the door and the wood groans in protest. ‘After you.’
The inside of the cottage is as quaint as the outside, filled to bursting with handmade furniture.
The largest room contains a soot-blackened hearth, mismatched lace curtains and an oblong table surrounded by spindle-legged chairs.
Slightly threadbare rugs carpet the wooden floor, and the whitewashed walls are lined with dozens of willow-patterned plates, each covered in a thin layer of chalky dust. The sun pours through the stained glass, bathing everything in kaleidoscopic light.
Fox is looking at me, his expression guarded, as though half expecting me to sneer.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I tell him earnestly. ‘Your grandfather really built all this?’
He nods and sets my dagger down on the table as Scout curls up in an armchair. A column of horizontal markings has been scored into the wall beside it. Above the notches someone has etched two names – Fox and Freya.
Fox sees me looking. ‘She never grew much taller than that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.
‘My sister was happy here. She adored our grandparents. We both did.’
‘They must’ve loved you very much,’ I say quietly. ‘When did they …’
‘My grandmother died a year or so after Freya, and our grandfather a few months later.’ A ghost of a smile flickers across Fox’s face. ‘They could never bear to be apart.’
I’m overcome by a desperate wave of sadness as I think of my own grandparents, bound by fate, divided by circumstance, forced to love one another from afar.
‘River,’ I say suddenly. ‘Is he –’
‘Hold on.’ Fox reaches up to grasp the Eye round his neck, his forehead lined with concentration. After a minute or two he seems to resurface. ‘He’s alive. It looks like the Ventalla retreated soon after we disappeared through the portal.’
I sag into a chair, rendered boneless with relief. ‘And the rest of the Singers?’
Fox grimaces, and my stomach churns. ‘Most survived.’
Most, but not all. I ball my shaking hands into fists.
He sinks into the seat opposite, his face twisted in anguish and dappled with soft violet light. ‘I should’ve stayed. I should’ve killed my uncle while I had the chance.’
‘And what if you’d got yourself killed?’ I challenge. ‘You saw what those Demari were capable of.’ I shudder as I recall the shadow flame burning ink-black, the dead soldier moving disjointedly like a puppet on strings.
‘If I’d managed to take Balen down with me, it would’ve been worth it.’
‘Not to me,’ I tell him.
His eyes are so full of warmth that when he glances away I realize how cold I am.
‘Here.’ Fox fetches a slightly moth-eaten blanket and drapes it round my shoulders, then sets to work building a fire in the hearth.
My thoughts return to River and the Rain Singers. If only I’d achieved what I set out to, I could have prevented this. How many were lost in the attack? How many more deaths am I responsible for? And what if it’s all been for nothing?
Suddenly I feel impossibly, painfully small. Useless. Tears prickle, threatening to spill. A cloud of drizzle forms over my head, hazy droplets kissing my cheeks.
Fox turns instinctively, sets aside a box of matches and kneels in front of my chair.
My breathing is jagged. ‘This is all my fault.’
‘No, it’s not,’ he says, blotting a tear with the pad of his thumb.
‘I’m the one who threw the Eye into Queen Hydra’s portal. I’m the one who failed to find it again. Because I can’t, all right? I can’t find it. I can’t stop your uncle. I can’t save Hal.’
Fox arches a brow. ‘Really, Storm Weaver, this defeatist attitude doesn’t suit you. The Blaze I know wouldn’t give up so easily.’
I sniff pathetically. ‘And who is she exactly, this Blaze you know?’
‘Let’s see now,’ he muses. ‘She’s stubborn. Impatient. Impulsive. Occasionally hot-tempered. Incredibly cutting when she wants to be.’
I open my mouth in indignation, but Fox isn’t finished.
‘She’s also resilient. Thoughtful. Kind. Clever – almost frighteningly so. She’s brave too, not to mention distractingly beautiful. And I’d follow her anywhere.’
My heart stutters. ‘You would?’
‘I would do anything for her,’ Fox says simply. He smiles a little, then amends, ‘I would do anything for you.’
For you.
The words stick out to me, hovering in the space between us – the echo of a memory. Two ordinary words, and yet, when put together, undeniably familiar.
‘It was you,’ I whisper. ‘The gifts in my chambers, the notes. It was you all along.’
Drizzle clings to Fox’s eyelashes. He makes no attempt to deny it.
I sit there, stunned. Even when I began to doubt they were from Hal, I never considered the alternative. Or perhaps I just hadn’t wanted to.
I make a list in my head, sorting through each gift in turn, starting with the curved leather sheath designed to fit a dagger.
My dagger. I think back to that conversation in the library when Fox confessed to watching my first trial.
He’d been impressed with the way I had fought that beast, wielding the pain it inflicted like a weapon.
Even before Silverclaw was used to kill the Council, I’d considered it a twisted souvenir from the arena.
But now I realize it’s so much more than that.
It’s a reminder of what it felt like to win.
To triumph over hatred. To defy the odds, even when they were stacked against me.
Then there was the mask – the one I wore to the masquerade ball, the one I was wearing in the maze. It can’t have been a coincidence that it was shaped like a dragonfly – the symbol of the Rain Singers. Such a thoughtful gift. Meaningful. Intimate.
And finally, the burn ointment. I remember how instantaneous it was: the cool salve leaching the heat from my skin, expertly crafted by Healer’s hands. Except …
‘Hold on,’ I say, puzzled. ‘You weren’t there that day in the Keep. You weren’t even in Ostacre. How could you have sent the ointment?’
Fox smiles mysteriously. ‘Oh, I have my ways.’
‘But how did you even know I’d been burned?’ I press.
He reaches up and gently taps the talisman round his neck.
‘I see.’ I try to sound accusatory. ‘Perhaps I’ll overlook the spying, just this once.’
Amusement glints in those green eyes, then it’s gone, replaced by something earnest, almost soul-baring in its sincerity.
‘I meant it when I said it was unintentional, Blaze,’ he says. ‘I didn’t search for you. You were always just … there. Like you were waiting for me.’
He brushes his fingertips lightly against mine, and an image floods my mind – a girl in a blue dress, sitting by the window in Harglade Hall, a book propped open in her lap.
Me.
‘At first all I got were glimpses,’ Fox continues. ‘Fragments of you. I’ve spent years trying to piece them together.’ He smiles again, softly. ‘You see, I’ve known you for a long time. It just took a little longer for us to meet.’
My heart threatens to burst out of my ribcage.
No one has ever looked at me the way he is.
At that moment wildflowers begin to sprout up from the cracks between the floorboards, filling the room with purplish, thimble-shaped blooms – foxgloves.
I don’t remember leaning forward, but all of a sudden his lips are on mine and I melt into him. The kiss is slow. Tender and deep. It seems to say everything I can’t.
Fox pulls me off my chair and into his lap. He doesn’t let go, not even as he lights the fire.
It’s not long before weariness comes to claim me. I fall asleep on his shoulder in front of the crackling hearth, and as I drift off into dreams, I find myself thinking that never have I been held more gently than by the same pair of hands that tore apart the world.