Chapter 32
Somehow, Lucien has impossibly created fire again with just a flick of his hands. The flames begin several feet from each stake, burning in thin trails across the snow as though someone poured gasoline over the frozen ground and struck a match.
For one suspended second, we all freeze. Six bodies remain chained upright, each of us looking from one to another as though someone else might understand what Lucien has set in motion.
Then the flames begin to move.
Slowly.
They creep through the snow toward us, inch by inch. I realize, with horror, the fire isn’t simply burning where Lucien started it.
It’s coming for us…
At first, it’s manageable. Unpleasant, but distant, like standing too close to a fireplace or holding your hand near a match long enough for instinct to tell you to pull away.
Except, I cannot pull away. The chains hold my shoulders and waist tight against the wood, the iron around my wrists biting deeper when I test it again.
The flames continue to crawl closer.
Unlike the woman Lucien murdered just moments earlier, our fires don’t erupt high enough to kill us immediately.
They snake along the narrow trails through the snow with patient precision, consuming the distance between us, while the heat steadily builds.
Sweat gathers at the nape of my neck despite the brutal cold, my heartbeat pounding against the chain crossing my chest, hard and frantic.
Each breath becomes shallower as smoke begins to rise around us.
Across the circle, Lena twists against her restraints. Wren has started crying. Rowan jerks repeatedly against his cuffs, his jaw clenched so hard I can see the muscle flex. Even Georgina’s composure is cracking at the edges, her eyes fixed on the line of fire steadily eating its way toward her.
Only Silas does not move.
His eyes are closed, face rigid with concentration. Despite the fire gathering closer, his breathing is measured and slow.
How the hell can he be so calm when we’re about to be burned alive?
The flames reach the bottom of our stakes and the wood brightens with a dull orange light, then catches all at once, thin ribbons of flame licking across the soles of my boots.
Pain flashes upward with such sudden violence that a scream tears out of me.
The bottom of my feet feel as though the skin is being pressed against an open stove, heat pushing through leather and fabric until there is no barrier left between the fire and me.
I am not going to survive this.
The certainty arrives with astonishing clarity.
This is not a test I can out-think. There is no hidden passageway, no bells to follow, no rope to pull, no pattern or symbols waiting to be interpreted correctly.
Lucien has tied us to stakes and set us on fire and the only thing I can think of is that the Veil has decided it doesn’t want any of us anymore. There is no other explanation.
They are going to kill all of us.
Fire reveals who you truly are.
Lucien’s words circle uselessly through my head.
What does that even mean? Because my “true” self is terrified and one poorly timed wind gust away from being roasted alive. If Lucien expects some great spiritual revelation to happen, he is going to be sorely disappointed.
The fire spreads around the base of my stake, and I yank desperately against the chains until the metal tears into my wrists, drawing blood, but still the bindings do not loosen.
The smoke thickens, filling my mouth with ash and bitter heat.
I cough hard enough my ribs scream, then look at Silas because some treacherous, instinctive part of me still expects him to have an answer.
He is watching me.
Whatever mask he’s worn since the first day I met him is gone. There is no arrogance in his face, no cold amusement, no carefully maintained indifference. His dark eyes hold so much pain that, for a moment, I forget the fire.
He looks as though he’s trying to tell me something. As though there are words trapped somewhere behind his teeth, and he cannot figure out how to set them loose.
Then I see the water. It forms at the tips of his fingers, barely more than condensation at first, tiny beads gathering against his skin despite the heat. They tremble, then grow, drawing moisture from the air until thick streams of water coil around his hands.
My breath catches.
No.
It isn’t possible. Magic isn’t real. It doesn’t exist.
Except…
I think of all I’ve seen since I arrived in Salem’s Fall.
I think of the tunnels first. Of the slab of stone that should’ve crushed me but instead hung suspended above Silas’s raised hand, water dripping from the cracks, shaking as though held by something I couldn’t see.
I’d told myself it was just adrenaline. A trick of dust and bad lighting.
I think of the Second Trial and the bridge, the wind that wrapped around me exactly when I should’ve fallen, cradling me instead of letting me drop. I’d thought it was just luck.
And the night at the harbor during the Third Trial, the water undoing my jammed locks and then folding itself around Silas and me, pushing us to the surface. I’d believed I’d imagined it, that the cold and the panic had made me see things that weren’t there.
I have spent months making excuses for everything my eyes saw that my brain did not believe.
But tonight, I have watched Lucien raise his hand twice now and set things on fire without a match, and Silas is five feet away from me, quietly pulling water out of the air like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I can no longer deny the truth.
Magic is real.
Silas stares down at his hands, and something changes in his expression. Not surprise. Understanding. He inhales deeply, the smoke making him cough. When he looks at me again, I somehow know what he’s going to do even before he moves.
The water in his hands lashes outward in a single silver arc, crossing the space between us so quickly, I barely have time to turn my face.
It strikes the flames around my stake with explosive force, steam erupting in a white cloud.
The fire collapses beneath me with a violent hiss, my chains snapping open as though some invisible mechanism has been released.
I fall forward onto my hands and knees. Cold ground. Frozen dirt. Melted snow soaking through my palms. Best of all, no fire.
My relief is so complete, I half laugh, half sob as I drag air into my lungs. I am alive. The flames are gone, the chains lying broken behind me. I’m the first one free.
I’ve won!
For one glorious moment, victory is all I feel. I let it flow through me, bright and intoxicating, sweeter than I even imagined it would be.
I survived. I won the Fourth Trial.
I’m one step closer to the boon, one step closer to Josh. Everything I’ve sacrificed to get here finally seems worth it.
Then I turn to Silas.
He’s still chained to his stake, fire spreading around his boots, snaking dangerously close to his ankles. He watches me through the smoke, his face tight with pain, and then… he smiles.
The truth begins to take shape, but my mind recoils from it.
“What did you do?”
“I think you know,” he says, his breathing labored now, strained.
I stumble toward him, stopping only when the heat underneath his stake becomes unbearable.
“Stop the fire. Save yourself too.”
“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head once. “Only enough magic for one.” A strained trace of his old arrogance touches his mouth, though pain has hollowed his face. “Those are the rules.”
Something inside me gives way, and I understand all at once what he has done. He has surrendered his chance at The Rites. The leadership he was raised to claim. And his life. He has given all of it up… for me.
The tears come before I can stop them, hot and useless.
All the things he said, all the moments I dismissed as manipulation, rearrange themselves in my memory with heartbreaking precision.
The warnings. The silences. The way he always appeared when I was in danger.
The violence in him that never turned toward me.
When he said he had feelings for me, that he cared about me, he meant it.
He’d always meant it.
I was such a fool.
Around us, the others slowly begin to break free from their chains.
Rowan tears a current of air through his flames, the wind twisting around his stake until the fire is driven back and his chains release.
Lena pulls earth upward in a wall of black soil that smothers the base of her stake.
Georgina follows with a burst of air sharp enough to scatter sparks across the clearing.
Only Silas and Wren remain.
Wren is screaming now.
Silas is not.
“You let me out too soon,” I sob, the tears streaming down my face. “I could have saved myself. If you had just waited—”
He shakes his head, and the sadness I see there is somehow worse than the fire.
“No,” he says. “The Fourth House never had an element to wield.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“You were never useful to me because of your House.” He coughs hard, his body folding as far as the chains allow before he forces himself upright again.
“You always thought I had some ulterior motive, but I didn’t want to be your partner to use you.
It wasn’t to keep tabs on you or to sabotage you.
I only wanted to keep you safe. To protect you. ”
The fire has completely engulfed the ground below him now.
“I only wanted you close,” he continues, the words breaking apart between ragged breaths. His expression softens in a way I have never seen before. No defenses. No cruelty. Nothing hidden from me anymore. “I only ever wanted you.”
“Silas, no.” I reach for him and recoil when the heat scorches my palms. “You can’t die.”