Soul of Cinder

by Bree Barton

  Chapter 42

  The Last Son

  WHEN QUIN CAME TO, he was no longer in the crypt.

  He knelt on the Kaer’s southern parapet, the river kingdom unfurling at his feet. His cheeks wet with tears.

  For so long he had tried to outrun it. But a part of him was still cowering in the crypt, locked forever in that gruesome night.

  “You remember now,” said the voice behind him.

  The wind tore through the balustrade, stinging Quin’s cheeks.

  “I hadn’t forgotten, Toby. How could I ever forget?”

  He turned, wincing when confronted with the row of heads. He saw Maev and Sylvan; Tristan had joined their ranks. A fourth, too, which he feared might be Phoebe from the kitchens. She had never liked him, and now she was dead, all because he had taken an hour too long.

  “Our little Brialli is quite the revolutionary,” said Tobin. “Quite the spy, I should say.”

  Quin’s heart dropped into his stomach. He saw the wet knife in Toby’s hand.

  “If you’ve hurt her—”

  “Then what? You’ll hurt me? Kill me?” He laughed. “You can make fire, fantastic. It’s a good parlor trick. But you need fire in your heart to be a real threat.” He gestured toward Quin’s hands. “I don’t even have you bound, that’s how little you scare me.”

  He was right. When Quin tried to spark a flame, his hands were blocks of ice. Useless. Weak.

  “What do you intend to do with me?”

  “I haven’t decided. Maybe I’ll let you join the revolution, son of Clan Killian.” He spun the knife on his palm. “Or maybe I won’t.”

  Quin forced himself to breathe. Callaghan was dead. How could it be otherwise? Furious, he banished the thought from his mind. Cal was smart and resourceful. For all he knew, she had already led the Embers to freedom. In which case it was time for Quin to do his part.

  What was his part, exactly?

  To die?

  He peered down from the parapet. To the south, his kingdom fanned out before him, a moving green-and-blue quilt knit together by the Natha River, the lifeblood of Glas Ddir. He winced at the remnants of Tobin’s forest fires, scorched tree stumps like black scars on the earth. It hurt Quin to see his wounded land—though it had hurt worse to see his wounded people. He’d met more Glasddirans over the past few days than he had in the past eighteen years. They had suffered greatly, these good, kind, hardworking women and men he felt proud to know.

  To the west, the marshes glittered in the sun. The air was so clear he could see even farther, to the red glint of desert where the swamplands met the sands. He imagined the Twisted Sisters in the glass kingdom. Had they received his letter? He felt ashamed of it now. Would they come to Glas Ddir, expecting a show of force and fire, only to find his burnt head on a spike?

  He craned his neck. At his back, looming high overhead, were the northern peaks. Mammoth and immovable, the black cliffs were both above the castle and part of it. Thousands of years ago his ancestors had carved Kaer Killian between the mountain’s dark ribs. Even as a child, Quin had resented the peaks for blocking the Opalen Sea. The ocean was so close, tantalizingly within his reach, yet he had never once seen it.

  And to the east . . .

  He blinked.

  There was movement on the eastern road.

  A group of people hurried toward Killian Village. He squinted. He hadn’t imagined it: they were fleeing the castle, at least several dozen. And two small creatures besides.

  He inhaled sharply.

  “Yes,” Tobin said. “That’s her. Leading the precious Embers to freedom.”

  Hope swelled in Quin’s chest. “You let her take them.”

  “They’re a sorry lot of revolutionaries. You said so yourself.” Tobin shrugged. “I can find better.”

  “How?”

  Quin wheeled around. He felt braver now, knowing Callaghan and the others were safe.

  “Will you ravage more villages? Kill more innocents? Seize other people’s power because your own was taken from you?”

  Tobin groaned. “Spare me your soliloquy on power.”

  He gestured toward the retreating Embers with his knife.

  “Brialli will lead them to wherever she’s been hiding. Domeniq’s there, too, yes? If I follow her trail, I don’t imagine they’ll be difficult to find. Once we’ve finished here.”

  Quin looked into Toby’s silver eyes. He had spent years dreaming about those eyes. But where he once saw love, he now saw only hate.

  And then his gaze lifted to the northern peaks at Tobin’s back. Dark and oppressive, forever casting a long shadow. They’d been peering over Quin’s shoulder his whole life.

  Till the northern peaks crumble.

  Promise me, O promise me.

  Heat ticked between his palms.

  “Do you know what I miss, Toby? Hearing you play. You playing piano was my favorite sound in the world. But now when I try to remember the songs you taught me, all I can think of is that night. I hear you screaming.”

  “While you vomited,” Tobin bit back. “A touching duet.”

  Quin closed his eyes.

  Suddenly his ears were full of sound. It wasn’t only his pain and Tobin’s that thundered down around him. The whole Kaer roared with suffering. He heard the howls of innocent women as their hands were severed by his father’s blade. He heard the sobs of servant girls dispatched to the king’s chambers at night. The wails and cries rose in a crescendo, so many he knew they were not from Ronan alone, but from the long lineage of Killians who came before him.

  Newer voices mingled with the old. Quin heard the crack of the Hunters’ skulls as they fell in the Grand Gallery after Angelyne stopped their hearts. He heard Domeniq shuffling through the corridors, dead-eyed, dragging bodies to the Hall of Hands.

  And he heard the sound of the piano in the library, blazing, smoldering, destroyed by his own hand. His own fury. He was a son of Clan Killian. He’d been trapped inside a cycle of rage, fear, and hatred since the day he was born.

  Callaghan was right. Quin was a soulless tyrant. He carried this legacy in his very blood. He could not rewrite his history.

  He opened his eyes.

  “You were right about me.”

  Tobin looked at him askance. “Was I?”

  “You said my heart would always surrender to love before hate. Your point stands. I don’t hate people. I didn’t even hate my father, though he was certainly worth hating. I’ve seen what hate can do. You’re about to kill me, and I don’t hate you, either. You’re the first person I ever loved. What my father did to you . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “It was unthinkable. I am so sorry I couldn’t save you, Toby. I couldn’t even save myself.”

  He took a breath.

  “But you weren’t right about everything. You called me a coward. You said I was too weak to make hard decisions for the good of my people. The good of my kingdom. You said I wasn’t capable of violence.”

  Quin held out his hands.

  “You were wrong.”

  The flame leapt from his palms. It arced, casting off red-hot sparks, curling into a spiral of fire that flew upward, picking up speed, until it burrowed into the side of the northern peaks.

  “You missed me,” Tobin said, incredulous. “From two feet away.”

  But Quin had not missed.

  The rocks fell slowly at first, like crumbling sugar on a cake. Then the crumbles grew larger. The peaks began to tremble, fissures yawning into cracks, the heat and power of the flame cleaving the cliffside. A spray of stones landed on the parapet.

  Tobin jumped back. He looked at Quin in disbelief.

  “Forgive me, Toby.”

  He heard a thunderous rupture, like the smack of a waterfall. He saw Mia floating in the Salted Sea, the two of them laughing and swimming, marveling at how they had survived the fall.

  Not everything was meant to be survived.

  Quin felt the castle shift beneath his f
eet. The rock walls were caving in, crushed by other rocks, a stone snake eating its own tail.

  And as the northern peaks fell, so too did the bloodied Kaer, so too did the reign of Clan Killian, and so too did the last son.

  Act IV

  Once upon a time, a girl came home.

  Chapter 43

  Modalities of Healing

  MIA RETURNED FROM PRISMA alone.

  The pain of leaving Angelyne was excruciating. She felt it in every nerve, every tendon, every bone. As she dragged herself across the white sands of the island, the mist pressed against her ears, a new voice inside the glass terror. A voice that broke her heart.

  But Mia didn’t push the ache away. She had chosen differently than her sister; her body was still her own. Each step brought her closer to the Bridge—and offered her another chance to breathe. In, out. In, out. She pressed the ruby wren to her chest, let the pain curl into the hollows of her rib cage, hunker down inside her soft tissues. Her body could feel suffering now.

  And so, she let it.

  The Shadowess was overjoyed to see her. So, too, were Lord Shadowess and all the creatures in the Curatorium, big and small.

  When Mia walked into the Creation Studio, Nelladine cried out. She leapt off her stool, clay abandoned, and barreled toward Mia, sweeping her feet off the floor.

  “Let me look, just look at you. This isn’t my mind playing tricks? You’re really here?”

  “In the flesh.” A truth that still felt miraculous.

  “Great sands, Mia.” Nell’s eyes filled with tears. “No one comes back from the Isle of Forgetting. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  Amidst the abundant relief on Nell’s face, Mia saw another emotion, one she hadn’t expected. Guilt.

  “The things I said to you . . .” Nell trailed off. “I’ve thought of nothing else. I had bottled everything up for days, weeks, and it all came bursting out at once. I . . .”

  She faltered.

  Mia pulled her friend close. Nell was doing it again: putting Mia’s feelings above her own. Everyone’s feelings above her own. She had, after all, been doing it her whole life.

  Mia didn’t know how to talk about Prisma. She did not yet have the vocabulary to describe her time in that strange and terrible place. But the last thing she wanted was to focus solely on her own pain. Nell’s mattered just as much.

  “I’m grateful, Nell. Your words helped me find my way back.”

  They held on to one another, until Nell stepped back. Mia sensed a kind of severing; she couldn’t deny that it stung. But this was probably the most honest interaction they had had in months.

  Mia stepped back, too. Her gray eyes locked onto Nelladine’s brown ones.

  “I’m going back to the river kingdom, Nell. To face Quin—and to do what I can to help innocent Glasddirans. It’s time I stopped running.”

  She took a breath.

  “I know I wounded you. I didn’t see what you needed, or how much our friendship cost you. But I’ve spent a good bit of time lately mending wounded things. Even if there’s a whole kingdom between us, I’d like to take the time to mend our friendship.” She swallowed. “If you’ll still consider being my friend.”

  Nell squeezed Mia’s hand.

  “After the things we’ve seen, the things we’ve survived? I think that’s a bond worth mending. Even if it takes time.” Then she added, “I’m glad you came when you did, I would have just missed you. I’m headed back to Luumia. Maysha and I will sail alongside the Snow Queen’s party.”

  “They’re still in the House?”

  “You’ve only been gone a few days, Mia.”

  She was astonished. “I thought I’d been gone for weeks.”

  “That’s island time for you, certainly that island. The Snow Queen leaves tonight. Mumma is sending scientists and alchemists—magicians, too—to help the Luumi rebuild. I’ll travel with them as far as Valavïk, then make my own way back to White Lagoon.”

  Mia raised an eyebrow. “You’ll get to know my mother, then.”

  Nelladine laughed her deep, husky laugh. Mia was going to miss that laugh.

  “After all the time you’ve spent with mine?” Nell teased. “Seems only fair.”

  Now it was Mia’s turn to squeeze her friend’s hand.

  “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve given me. I’m glad you’re going back to Luumia. You can be brilliantly, wholly you. Not what other people need you to be.”

  A gigantic smile broke over Nell’s face.

  “Look at you, always the good student! I can’t wait to be back, honestly, Luumia feeds my soul. I feel most myself there. It feels like home.”

  Mia held on to the word, turning it over in her brain.

  Home.

  In the old language, the word heim meant, simply, “dwelling.” The deeper connotations—warmth, family, the sense of belonging—came later. Perhaps those things came only with time.

  Where was home to Mia Rose?

  “If you’re going back to Glas Ddir,” Nell said, “you should join Mumma’s caravan of ambassadors. She wasn’t going to accompany them, but she’s changed her mind, she won’t tell me why. We’ve heard nothing from the river kingdom for days, no news. Other than Quin’s letter to you, of course, which he would have sent by courier a month ago. We don’t know what has happened in the weeks since, but it can’t be good.”

  Mia wasn’t sure what she feared more: a world in which Quin was dead, or a world in which he was alive—and massacring his own people.

  “When does the caravan leave?”

  “Tomorrow, first thing.”

  Mia felt a flicker of hope. She remembered Pilar in the Creation Studio, Quin’s letter clutched in her fist. We have to go back.

  “Is Pilar coming, too?”

  “Pilar left three days ago. She went alone.”

  Mia took very little.

  “Pack light,” the Shadowess told her. “It’ll take us a month to cross the desert—and that’s if the weather holds. Prepare for a long, bumpy ride.”

  So Mia stuffed a satchel with clothes, her elixir, the melonfish sketchbook, and the ruby wren. She was pleased at the lightness of her pack. She would conquer the desert like the intrepid explorer she was.

  And then she climbed onto her kama.

  Pink kamas were indigenous to Pembuk; she’d never seen one in Glas Ddir. They were bigger than horses, with enormous humps on their backs and thick, swooping necks. Her kama had two giant padded toes on each foot, bald knobby knees, and coarse beige hair—except for the tuft of fur on his head, which was a coquettish pink.

  Mia had ridden a horse before. Griffin Rose had kept a handsome blond mare in a stable in Ilwysion, and when Mia was little, her father would bring her along, toting a crate of apples and sugar cubes. Sometimes he let her climb into the saddle, then led her on a walk around the pasture, the horse ambling gently with a smooth, even gait.

  Riding a pink kama was not like that.

  The beast moved laterally, jostling her from side to side as it plowed over the red desert. Despite the blankets piled onto his hump, Mia’s cheeks were sore and tender. For hours on end, her royal steed kept up a running dialogue with the other kamas, a conversation peppered with bleats and groans, brays and bellows.

  “Yours is quite the talker,” said the Shadowess, jolting along beside her. Mia took comfort in the fact that Muri and the other ambassadors looked just as uncomfortable as she did. “A bit of a rough ride, isn’t it?”

  “It does take some getting used to,” Mia agreed.

  In truth, she was happy. She reveled in the sensation of the scratchy wool abrading her thighs, the constant eyestrain from riding east into the sun, the biting coldness of the desert at night, and the reliably burnt coffee they heated over the campfire each morning. She even found herself savoring the foul odor of the kamas. She could feel, taste, smell everything. Whether it was the elixir, her time in Prisma, or some other mysterious combination of factors, she di
dn’t know. But this time, she hoped the sensations were here to stay.

  Mia also felt tremendous guilt over the fact that, in the midst of so much suffering, she took pleasure in these small delights.

  “It’s all right to feel pleasure,” the Shadowess said. “Your happiness can coexist alongside others’ suffering. We must hold on to the things that bring us joy, even during difficult times. Especially then.”

  Mia dreamed of Prisma every night. She had vivid nightmares that she’d abandoned her sister; she would hear Angelyne crying out for her, only to wake in a cold sweat. In the most awful dreams, Mia sat beside her sister on the shore, sand eroding beneath them, their bodies rotting away. When she woke, she felt a deep, pervasive sadness.

  But she had ample time in the desert—to think, reflect, remember. Mia let her mind wander where it would: to her cottage in Ilwysion, to Kaer Killian, to the House of Shadows. She thought of her parents, Angelyne, Pilar, Quin. Whether the memories arrived as rolling waves or violent sandstorms, she let them come.

  She spent long hours with the Shadowess, talking. At night when they made camp, they huddled together by the fire, wrapped in blankets, the stars smeared so thick over the sky they looked like bones.

  “The thing I can’t let go of,” Mia said, “is that Angie gave me the ruby wren. She told me to embrace life, not death. And yet, moments later, she left her own life behind.”

  “It can be hard to understand why people do things. We don’t get to live inside their heads.”

  “I’m glad I have the wren. There’s great healing power inside the fojuen stone; I can feel it. The bird was my mother’s, and she was a gifted healer.”

  Muri smiled warmly.

  “From what my husband tells me, so are you. Hold on to those gifts. I expect you’ll need them in the river kingdom. The Mahraini mystics say the only way to heal something as large as a kingdom is to heal it in a hundred small ways every day.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to save Quin?”

  Muri didn’t know, because no one did. Would they have to take the castle by force? The ambassadors were grateful to have Mia; she knew Kaer Killian better than any of them. She tore out pages from her melonfish notebook and drew intricate maps, sketching alternate methods of entry, such as the secret entrance through the crypt.