by Bree Barton
The muscles in Quin’s jaw tautened. He willed himself calm. What did it matter if Toby guessed the game? He had still succeeded in teasing out the pressure points and weak spots among the Embers.
“Let me ask you this,” Tobin said. “I know you think that once you have what you need, you will strike. But are you really ready to use violence?”
Quin set his jaw. “I am.”
“Even against those of us who oppose you?”
“From where I sit, the opposition diminishes every day.”
“You have found loyalists among the Embers, true. But you will also find dissenters. And once your duplicity is revealed, you will find even more. Are you prepared to kill people to reclaim the throne? Domeniq? Me? Your darling little Brialli Mar, who loves you so?”
Quin hesitated. Tobin saw it.
“Forgive me, but I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you believe you. You’ve summoned the sisters back to Glas Ddir with threats of violence, but you’ll never harm them. I think you loved Mia and Pilar the same way you loved me, and your heart will always succumb to love before it succumbs to hate. You will never be your father’s son.”
“I don’t want to be my father,” Quin growled. “I want to be better.”
“Your sister was better. Karri would have been the kind of ruler you could never be. She was better at swords and war games. But she was kinder than you, too. She knew how to listen to her people. To truly listen, not quietly feed their fears and longings into some manipulative scheme.”
It was a low blow. Tobin had inflamed Quin’s grief—and used his dead sister against him.
“Have you wondered why we’ve kept you alive, Quin? Why we have allowed you to saunter about the castle the last month, fervidly taking notes, cooking soup and eavesdropping?”
Quin’s pulse kicked up a notch. “Because I vowed to fight against tyranny.”
“Do you think we are so easily misled? To believe a tyrant when he vows to fight tyranny?” Tobin’s laugh was sharp and brittle. “Some of the Embers bought into your deception. They’re clinging to the belief that the last heir of Clan Killian might be worthy of their loyalty. That he might not uphold a reign of death and terror. On that last point I do not disagree. I think you are incapable of inspiring terror. Those of us in charge never once considered you a threat.”
Quin swallowed. “But Maev—”
“Maev despises you. She told me to slit your throat the night you arrived, before any of the Embers grew too attached. But Sylvan and I convinced her you were more useful to us alive. You are a bargaining chip. The more the kingdom loves you, the more leverage we have.”
Toby straightened.
“Since the moment I found you in the tavern, you have been our prisoner, not our guest. With every attempt you’ve made to woo the Embers, you’ve only given us more power. Our revolution is far stronger than you could ever be.”
Quin’s blood boiled.
“This isn’t a revolution,” he spat. “It’s a bunch of drunkards pretending to have power.”
“If anyone has mastered the pretending arts, Your Grace, it’s you.”
Quin hated that Tobin was right. Hated that, after a lifetime of hiding in Kaer Killian, he was once again mincing about, trying to be liked, wanting to be loved—and repressing who he truly was. He finally had real power, and he was too frightened to use it. No matter how hard he tried to eradicate his weakness, it clung to him like a second skin.
He stood, shoving the piano bench back so forcefully Tobin sprang to his feet.
“I don’t have to pretend anything. This is my castle. I am not a prisoner. I am a king.”
“No, Quin. You’re still the soft and spineless prince you always were. Last I checked, you had neither the grit nor the prowess to reclaim a kingdom, let alone lead it.”
In one swift motion, Quin snapped the fallboard shut. The wood landed with a hollow thud, sealing the keys inside. He pressed his hands to the glossy black veneer. Then he summoned every smoldering spark of hurt and rage and shame.
The piano burst into flames.
Tobin stumbled back. Mouth agape, eyes asking the inevitable question.
“Yes,” Quin said. “I have magic.”
His cheeks blazed from the heat. The piano made for perfect kindling: the wood popped and crackled as smoke coated the air. Soon the library’s books would catch fire, igniting thousands of years of history, page after page of hate and death and tyranny. All the finest jewels of his inheritance.
“I’ve seen your symbols in the woods, Toby. Remember the Embers. Your desperate attempt to leave your mark. I know you carve your sad little flames wherever you commit violence.”
Quin smiled.
“I, unlike you, do not require a knife.”
Chapter 24
Freely Given
MIA COULDN’T SLEEP. SHE turned and tossed, unable to get comfortable. Outside her sfeera window, she could hear the streets of Shabeeka pulsing with energy from the Pearl Moon Festival. Surely someone was awake in Manuba Vivuli, too.
She threw her green dressing gown over her shoulders and wandered out into the hall.
Mia loved the House at night. The moon sent fulgent beams through the domed glass ceiling, planting a forest of shadows on the walls. She found herself thinking, as she so often did, of Nelladine.
They had yet to kiss. Yet to do anything, really. But Mia didn’t mind. Every moment they spent together was precious, and she wanted to savor them. Nell had given her more than anyone ever had. She’d taught Mia about magic and brought her to the House, then shared her parents so generously. Nell was always there to offer a word of encouragement or a warm embrace.
Whenever Mia wasn’t in the Curatorium or the Shadowess’s working chambers, she was with Nelladine. Watching her throw clay. Eating the delicious new Pembuka foods Nell introduced her to. Imagining how Nell’s lips would feel against hers.
Now Mia glided down the corridor, slippers swishing softly over the glass. She knew where she was going. Her pace slowed outside the Creation Studio, where she heard a low, whirring hum. She peered through the open door.
Just as she’d hoped, one of the potter’s wheels was in motion, a mound of wet clay at its heart. Nell’s head bowed over the wheel, her black braids pulled back at her nape. Moonlight spilled over her hair and bare shoulders. Although the room was cool, her brown skin glistened with sweat. The muscles in her arms were lean and sculpted, biceps curved into a neat figure eight.
Mia inched closer to the wheel, hoping to go unnoticed. She’d whiled away countless hours sitting in the Creation Studio, watching Nell’s strong hands deftly shape the clay, coaxing it up into a cone, then smoothing it down into a disc, her long fingers stained a pale liquid gray. It reminded Mia of how her bloodbloom charm expanded, then shrank back down.
Nell’s version was better. As she pulled and pressed, a bowl emerged from the clay.
“So you couldn’t sleep, either,” Nell said, without looking up.
“And here I thought I was being so furtive.”
“You can hear everything in here, it’s always echoey. Pull up a stool.”
Mia claimed the stool to Nell’s left. It came with its own pottery wheel, which lay still and quiet.
“These stools are rather short, aren’t they?”
“You want your hips at the height of the wheel. It’s easy to strain your back muscles when your posture isn’t right, that took me a long time to learn.” Nell pushed a pedal with her foot and her wheel stopped spinning. “You want to sit like this.”
She planted her feet on either side of the wheel, a wide, bold stance. Then she dug her elbows into the spots where her groin met her hip bones, leaning over the wheel with her back flat, forearms resting comfortably on her thighs.
“You need to be strong to throw. Nobody ever thinks that. They assume it’s all about making something pretty, and I want to make beautiful pieces, of course I do. But I want to make strong pieces, too, ones that will
survive a long time, and to do that you have to be strong yourself.”
Again Mia’s eyes were drawn to the elegant curve of Nell’s biceps. Or were those her triceps? Mia’s pulse quickened. Had she really just conflated basic anatomy?
“Throwing makes me feel powerful. I love Maysha more than life itself, but I feel powerless on the ocean, and that’s the charm of it, the fact that I don’t know what’s coming. The sea is a goddess and I serve her whims. Throwing makes me feel like the goddess, like I’m breathing life into something that was dead.” She smiled. “You know a bit about that.”
Mia stared at the empty wheel in front of her.
“The elixir has been amazing, Nell. I feel so much more now. But there are still times . . .” She hesitated. “Times I think I’m not entirely alive.”
Nell took her hand, sending a thrill up her arm. She pressed a fingertip to the frostflower on Mia’s wrist. The fyre ink pulsed and churned.
“There,” Nell said. “A sign of life.”
She removed her hand, leaving Mia’s wrist smudged with wet clay, her skin vibrating.
Nell had touched her, just like she wanted. Mia felt most alive when they were skin to skin. Even Nell’s presence was intoxicating. But it also left Mia with a growing desperation; Nell had given her so much, and she’d given Nell so little.
“How are you liking the lloira ointment?” she asked. “Is it keeping your hands soft?”
“It’s very nice, thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to. You’ve shared so much with me. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
Nervous, Mia smoothed a fold in her dressing gown.
“I’ve been working on a muscle cream, too. I just thought, on the days you’re in here for hours . . .”
“I appreciate it, Mia.”
Nell straightened, twisting her torso one way, then the other. She tipped her head toward Mia’s wheel.
“Want to take it for a spin?”
“Gods, no! I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“You’ve spent so many hours in here, countless hours, watching me. I think it’s time you try. I know you have an artistic eye, I see you drawing in your notebook.”
“I’m a scientist, not an artist. My sketches are anatomical in nature. I can render a human heart with excellent precision, but that’s another thing entirely.”
“Think of clay as a heart, then. It’s just as malleable”—Nell smiled—“and just as easy to break.”
The log of clay was heavy. When Mia hoisted it onto the butcher block, Nell wielded a thin, sharp wire, slicing a hearty slab off the loaf.
“You want to get out all the air pockets so it doesn’t explode in the kiln. Have you heard of clay memory? You can have a ball of clay that looks absolutely perfect, not an air pocket in sight. But there are things inside the clay, little flaws and impurities no one can see. Clay remembers everything.”
She slammed the clay down hard, shoved it roughly forward, then lifted it off the block. Slam, shove, lift. Slam, shove, lift. The movement was mesmerizing. On it went, until the clay looked vaguely like a ram’s head.
Nell reshaped the ram’s head into a perfect round orb, then handed it to Mia.
“Now we throw.”
A fringe of sweat had broken out at Mia’s hairline. On the boat when Nell had tried to teach her to sail, she’d done nothing but humiliate herself. Now here was the other thing Nell loved, one she so clearly wanted to share. What if Mia bungled that, too?
“Throw your clay in the middle of the wheel. It’ll spin counterclockwise, and your hands go clockwise. Always keep them nice and wet, that’s important. If it gets too dry your hands will stutter, and you don’t want to fight the clay. You’re on the same side.”
Nell had restarted her own wheel. She dipped her fingers into a blue bucket of water. Newly wet, her bowl turned from light gray to dark. She demonstrated how to glide her hands clockwise over the slippery surface, fingers curled loosely around the top.
Mia threw her ball of clay and felt a flush of pleasure: it landed at the wheel’s perfect center. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard. She wet her hands and cupped her fingers.
And thus began her embarrassing attempt at bowl making.
Her first lump of clay went flying off the wheel. Her second lasted longer, but when she tried to “draw up the walls,” the clay rose with frightening alacrity into a hideous, lopsided bowl.
“It’s all right.” Nell slid her wire around the top of Mia’s monstrosity, peeling off a sad, limp ribbon of clay. “There you go, a clean slate.”
Ten seconds later, the clean slate had turned once again into a hideous, lopsided bowl.
“You’re holding on too tight. Press down with the heels of your palms, but keep your fingers loose. The clay doesn’t like to be constricted, remember, it wants to breathe.”
Mia tried to hold her clay the same way Nell did: like an extension of her own hands. But just when she thought she’d mastered it, the bowl would collapse on itself, or she’d forget to add water and her dry hands would trip along the rim, the flesh of her palms burning. For months she’d missed feeling pain. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Mia.” Nell had stopped her own wheel. “It’s all right, it’s your very first time.”
Mia’s cheeks were hot with humiliation. The fact that Nell was being so damn nice somehow made it worse.
She had a sudden flicker of memory: trying to make a lean-to in the Twisted Forest, failing miserably, while Quin sat on a tree trunk making acerbic asides. She missed his sarcasm. Nell was many things, but sarcastic was not one of them.
Mia’s bowl collapsed. Naturally.
Nell pulled her own stool up behind her, slid her arms down Mia’s arms and her hands over Mia’s hands.
“Like this. Press down harder until you’ve centered it. Only once it’s centered will it become what it’s meant to be.”
Mia held her breath. Nell’s curves pressed against her back, soft and warm, the inside of her thighs brushing the outside of Mia’s. For all the bodily sensations returned to her, she only felt this kind of melting heat when they touched.
How was she supposed to think about clay bowls? She could smell the shea butter in Nell’s braids. The sweetness of Nell’s sweat.
Mia wanted to kiss her. She’d wanted to forever. She turned her body, leaning into Nelladine—and heard the screech of metal as Nell shoved her stool back and stood, abruptly.
“Mia.”
She didn’t understand the look on Nell’s face. Was it exasperation? Anger?
“I—I’m sorry,” Mia stammered. “I thought—”
“I can’t fix you, all right? I know that’s what you think, that I’m some kind of . . . elixir.”
“No,” Mia said vehemently, though in a way she had been thinking it. “That’s not true. It’s just, when I’m with you, the way I feel . . .” She searched for the perfect words to make Nell understand. “I feel whole. Like I’m alive again.”
“That doesn’t mean I feel the same way.”
Mia’s mind was spinning faster than her wheel. Nell tapped the pedal and the wheel came to a stop.
“Do you even see me?” Nell said. “Or do you just see what you need me to be?”
Mia faltered. “I . . . I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Have you noticed anything different about me since we got back to the House?”
“You seem . . . happy? I can tell you’re glad to be back with your family. And you’re making pottery again, spending hours each day creating beautiful things.”
“Has it occurred to you I might spend hours a day throwing clay as a way to escape?”
Mia was dumbfounded. It had not occurred to her.
“It’s too much, being back, coming home after all these years. It’s overwhelming. And I knew it would be, I expected that. But I thought it would be different, that I would be different, and the problem is, I’m exactly the same. And no one’s even noticed
.”
Nell took a deep breath.
“When I was a little girl, I felt everything. Big things, small things, happy, sad. But I felt them differently from other people. The littlest things broke me. Once I went to visit Pappa in the Curatorium. He was trying to heal a kitten who’d been abused by her owners, starved and left for dead. But he couldn’t save her. She died in his arms. I started sobbing. I sobbed for two days straight.”
“So you’re empathic. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“There is something wrong with that, when you’re drowning in your own empathy. Mumma said emotions are like waves: they ebb and flow, and we can learn to ride them, to breathe through them until we arrive safely on the other side.
“But I couldn’t ride them. For me they weren’t pleasant waves rolling in and out to sea, they were storms that left me on some distant shore, gasping for breath. I started absorbing other people’s feelings, too. I’d sense their anger or sadness, and that became all I could see. Their feelings were unbearable, and I felt somehow responsible, like I could save them, and then all I could think about was making them feel better. Even if it made me feel worse.”
Nell stared at her hands. The clay was already drying, encrusting her fingers in pale gray.
“Then my brother started struggling. He was so little, and so sad, and no one could figure out why. He’d be fine one minute, and then the light would just . . . go out of his eyes.
“I was angry. Angry at Mumma and Pappa, that they couldn’t help Stone. I stormed into the circle one day when Mumma was leading it and shouted, ‘Aren’t you supposed to heal people?’ After that the other residents gave me a wide berth. I heard Celeste in the Rose Garden once, talking to two residents, back before she was the Keeper. ‘Can you imagine?’ she said. ‘Someone like the Shadowess having a daughter like that.’”
Nell let out a long, shuddering sigh.
“During my worst episodes, the ones where I truly felt out of control, I fantasized about what it would be like to go to Prisma and forget everything. To forget how much pain I took on, both my own and other people’s. Once I even packed a bag and got as far as the Bridge. I didn’t go any farther, because I couldn’t leave my brother. I didn’t want him to feel alone.
