by Hanna Howard
We progressed into the teeming crowd, Madam Pearl leading our line at a determined pace, and as we did, another wave of heat rippled through me. It was more powerful than the first time, and I wished I could take off my mask and fan myself again. Sweat trickled down my back.
All around, masked faces turned to watch us file into the ballroom, and now I could see the whole room—buttressed and columned and ringed by a mezzanine level packed to brimming. Dapper young men in tail coats and top hats flashed smiles at us as we passed, and dark-haired girls raised sculpted eyebrows. A tall, tousle-haired youth slipped through the crowd just ahead of me—
My heart cartwheeled, and I wrenched my neck to try and catch a better look. Surely that wasn’t . . . ?
I wanted to kick myself for even thinking it. Of course it wasn’t Linden, and in any case, he was the absolute last person I needed to be thinking about.
A bead of sweat slipped out from my hair and down the back of my neck, and I swatted at it as our procession wound toward a raised platform. It was an island amid the gleaming sea of black ball gowns, and it faced a dais upon which sat a woman I had heard about my entire life but never seen before.
As I looked up at her, I forgot everything else.
Queen Iyzabel was tall, and paler than anyone else in the ballroom, with skin like misty quartz. Her figure was a perfect hourglass, and her raven hair was piled high atop her head, woven with green jewels that glinted like dragon scales in the lamplight. She was beautiful—by far the most beautiful woman I had ever seen—and her black gown swirled and eddied about her like a garment of living shadows. Like her eyelids, her lips had been painted emerald green, and they were curved into a slight smile. Beside her was a small table, on which she rested one arm, curled loosely around a gleaming black urn.
Her presence was mysterious, with an aura of seductive power, and for the first time I truly understood why my parents preferred to spend their time in her court rather than at home with me. I had come here out of a desire to please them, but as I looked at the queen, I felt an equal, blooming yearning to please her.
Someone nudged me in the back, and I realized I had stopped walking. Our procession was now filing up a set of short wooden steps onto the platform, and I followed the golden-haired girl ahead of me, wondering whether she was sweating as much as I was. I couldn’t remember ever being so hot in my life. But then, neither could I remember ever being so excited.
On the dais opposite us, Queen Iyzabel rose and raised her arms to the crowd. The orchestra and opera singer fell silent, and a hush rippled through the ballroom until the silence echoed. She smiled brilliantly. I looked out over the crowd—and my excitement tripled. My parents were there, just there, two rows back from the platform, close enough I could see the silver paisley embroidery on my father’s black tail coat. They were not looking at me yet, but I knew they would be soon. I clenched my fists to stop them from trembling.
“My guests.” The queen’s voice was the low purr of a cat. “Thank you for coming to this Choosing Ball. To all who have traveled great distances across my kingdom, I thank you for being here. And to you,” she said, turning to us on the platform, “I thank you most of all, my radiant creatures, for being so cooperative. You are my guests of honor.”
I beamed, anticipating my parents’ pride, but then had to bite my lip as another wave of heat—much more intense than the two before—crashed through me from scalp to toes. I swayed as it passed, and realized with a jolt of panic that my vision had gone slightly blurry. Was my corset too tight? I spaced my feet farther apart and jiggled my knees, trying to steady myself. It would be disastrous to faint.
“Hear me, my court, my schools, my subjects!” Queen Iyzabel cried, her voice strong and commanding as it rang among the buttresses of the vaulted ceiling. “Nearly sixteen years ago, I overthrew the Light-loving government of Luminor and established the Darkness. I blotted out that destructive inferno in the sky that parched and burned the land, threatening all life.”
A murmur of approval ran through the crowd. With a rush of shame I remembered the sun I had sketched on my window mere hours before. From now on, I resolved, I would love the Darkness with all my heart. I would never daydream about Light again.
“And though it nearly cost me my life,” the queen continued, “I purged this kingdom of the creatures that loved the accursed sun most: those light-haired, spotted beasts known as sunchildren.”
I nodded along with everyone else, feeling suddenly that I had been deeply remiss to let Yarrow talk about sunchildren as if they were good, or even harmless. Sunchildren—fire nymphs, with their flamelike hair and leopard-spotted skin—were widely acknowledged to be second only to mages as the embodiment of evil. But in typical contrary fashion, he persisted in making them the heroes of his fairy tales. I ought to have corrected him.
“But I did not succeed entirely,” the queen said, and the already quiet ballroom became perfectly still. “Though few knew it, I failed to eliminate the last sunchild born in Terra-Volat, and she was lost to me among other infants, not to come into her barbaric powers until the first moment of her sixteenth birthday, like all her wretched kind.”
Her dark eyes blazed, and I again felt that intense desire to serve her, but stronger this time: I was almost giddy with longing to help her find this lost sunchild. And though the desire competed with the bizarre heat still passing in waves through my body, it also made me care less about the sweat coursing down my back. If Iyzabel chose me to serve her, my own needs wouldn’t matter. I would be the luckiest girl in Terra-Volat. And my parents would love me. I didn’t even mind the Darkness anymore.
“But my loyal subjects,” Queen Iyzabel continued in a ringing voice, “I have taken great pains to isolate her identity, and I can assure you that she is here today! I therefore give you the evening’s entertainment!”
I was so consumed by my hope that when, breast heaving, Queen Iyzabel flung a forefinger toward our platform, I knew a moment of searing joy. I was sure she was pointing at me, choosing me. My longing to join her court was all-encompassing, delirious . . . But the heat inside me was growing profound too. My mind tumbled in the wake of reality, and as I slowly understood the queen was pointing in accusation, the heat surged alarmingly. Had I caught fire? I looked down to see if my skirt was flaming.
Flaming?
No, it wasn’t my skirt. It was my insides.
They were being boiled.
Am I dying?
My head felt very dim. I tore off my mask and fanned myself again. A moment too late, I realized the queen would surely disapprove, and I tried, shaking, to retie it. But my fingers were clumsy, and the mask slipped and landed at my feet with a soft flump.
Queen Iyzabel now gazed directly at me, a strange smile on her face. “The fugitive sunchild,” she said, “was born sixteen years ago today, at the precise moment of dawn. The moment approaches. Today she attains her birthright. Today is the day she transforms, and today I shall know at last who among these girls is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” She paused, and her next sentence came out in an icy whisper that held us all in frozen thrall. “Today I shall know at last who is the beast I must kill to ensure the everlasting glory of this kingdom of Darkness.”
My parents had finally turned to face me. But far from looking proud or adoring, or even worried, their expressions showed revulsion and mortification. It was this sight, more than the heat or the faintness or the notion I might be in danger, that forced the breath from me, and with it a small, wounded sound. My mother heard it and averted her eyes.
It was as if I had been punctured, and I could no longer keep enough air in my lungs to hold myself upright. I slumped, bracing my hands on my thighs. Then a tidal wave of heat seemed to rise, almost visibly, above me.
Beyond it, I could just see Queen Iyzabel, eyes riveted to my face in hungry triumph.
Then the tower of heat broke over me in a blistering swell. I forgot I was on a stage before my queen and my parents a
nd an entire ballroom. I forgot everything except the fire and the burning.
I fell forward onto the hard platform with a crash.
And then—
It was unendurably bright. An orb of roaring fire, its light all-consuming and radiating heat, raged over me, filling me up until my whole being had caught flame. I writhed against it, but it poured through every inch of my body—from my toenails to the ends of my hair—burning away all that I knew and replacing it with light. I tried to cry out, but when I opened my mouth, I inhaled flame. The heat swelled to an impossible pitch—I couldn’t endure, wouldn’t survive—and then, quite suddenly, it was gone.
Somewhere nearby, someone screamed.
6
CHAPTER
I was on my hands and knees, blinking down at the wooden platform.
My hair had sprung free of its coif, and I could feel it tumbling down my back and over my shoulders, its weight strangely hot through the silk of my gown. My fingers were splayed, and I gazed at them in confusion. Both they and my arms—indeed, all of the skin that was visible to me—were covered in a multitude of tiny brown dots, as if I had broken out in some kind of rash.
The feverish heat had entirely left me, and I felt so strong and well by comparison that I wondered if I had entered a new kind of illusion. I raised my head and found myself looking directly into a stream of blinding, golden light, flooding in from the ceiling through the labyrinth of ornate buttresses. Dust motes swirled through its beam like a cloud of insects. The light fell directly upon me, deliciously warm, and I realized with amazement that the terrible pressure around my chest had gone. I squinted, searching higher for the source.
Another scream ripped through the ballroom then, sounding both real and near, and the light vanished. Like a band springing back into place, the pressure around my chest returned.
I blinked and sat up as real flames—blindingly bright, as tall as a man—exploded into being in front of me. The fire shot around the platform’s perimeter, encasing it like a great fence, and the other girls’ screams mingled with more distant cries from the crowd. I fell backward onto my hands, and my heart seemed to fail.
A tall, masked person had hurled himself through the flames over the front of the stage and leapt directly at me. Before I could so much as cry out, his shoulder slammed into my chest and I was flat on my back beneath him, a blinding pain in my head. Then, with a crushing grip, the stranger pinned me to him and rolled sideways, through the raging fire and over the edge of the platform.
For a moment, we were in free fall; then, with a thump that knocked the air from my lungs, we landed in a smoking tangle on the floor, half-covered by the skirted lip of the stage. The ballroom was in a state of advanced mayhem, but Queen Iyzabel’s voice screamed above the din: “DO NOT LET HER ESCAPE!”
The stranger scrambled to his knees, yanked off one of the two black cloaks he wore, and flung it around my head and shoulders even as I struggled to rise. Hoodless now, his wild, dark hair stood up in all directions.
“Lind—”
Linden Hatch clapped a hand over my mouth and hauled me up, both of us now camouflaged amid the churning sea of black. He slipped a mask over my face with a deft movement, then tugged his hood back up. Behind his own mask, his green eyes were blazing, and I could see in them all I needed to know: We had to get out, quickly.
But how had he known? I thought of his note: Y and I need to talk to you. Urgent. Had this been what he meant?
Over the clamor, Iyzabel’s voice rang out, somehow even louder than before: “FIND HER—FIND HER! STOP HER! KILL HER!”
Without speaking, Linden took my hand and pulled me into the crowd. I tripped after him, but a shrill cry came from behind and I glanced back. Several tall, armored figures had barreled onto the burning platform, swords glinting in their hands as they prepared to round up the other girls. Icy fear shot through me: in a moment they would know I was the one who escaped. But what would they do to the remaining girls? Kill them?
I tried to pull my hand out of Linden’s, but he tightened his grip, and then my eyes snagged somewhere else. Two familiar figures had appeared through a gap in the crowd, standing with their heads together.
My parents!
A mad desire to go to them seized me, and once again, I tried to pull free of Linden’s grasp.
“Siria,” he hissed, jerking me hard toward him, “you’re going to get us both killed!”
At that moment, my mother lifted her head and looked straight at me, as if an invisible thread had linked us. Her dark eyes widened as they darted over my mouth and chin—likely only partially shadowed below the mask and hood—and I saw her throw her head back and shout, “There!” Her finger flew up to point at me.
No one took any notice of her, but I felt as if I had fallen headfirst into an abyss. I couldn’t breathe for the searing in my throat, and my stomach churned. Linden’s hand felt hard and cold around mine.
My mother had pointed at me. She knew what they would do, and she had still tried to turn me in.
She wanted me to die.
Did it matter what happened next?
A resounding bang sounded ahead of us, and the floor shuddered. All four sets of the thick, ebony ballroom doors had slammed shut in unison. I looked around and saw, on the dais at the back of the ballroom, the queen on her feet with her hands raised above her head, teeth bared. At a flick of her wrist, her eyes glowed silver and a trail of flame retreated from one of the tapestries and shot along the wall toward the doors.
Linden jerked me into a flat sprint toward the blocked exits. I could see his free hand raised, palm extended toward one of the closed wooden doors, which suddenly gave a thunderous groan and opened a crack, widening until two people could just pass through. I stared at it, uncomprehending. Gnarled roots had grown out of its base, puncturing the floor tiles with deafening snaps as they anchored it open.
We pelted into the corridor beyond as the door slammed shut again with a cracking of tree roots and tile, cutting off the queen’s terrible, hair-raising shriek—the hunting cry of a predatory beast.
7
CHAPTER
The corridor was not empty.
Eight guards—two for each door—charged toward us, and Linden bent to scoop up one of the broken roots that had skidded across the floor. I watched in dizzy, stupefied shock as a pattern of deep brown whorls, like tree bark, flashed over the surface of his pallid, taupe skin, and his eyes glowed bright and iridescent green as if lit from inside. The root in his hands thrashed and expanded at incredible speed, and he threw it at the nearest guard, who gave a shout and tried to swat it away. The root twisted around the man like a rope and shot after the other seven before their swords were halfway unsheathed.
I could not understand. It was impossible.
Linden could not be a nymph.
For the third time, I tried to wrench out of his grasp, and this time I succeeded.
He whirled around. “Siria, listen—”
I shook my head frantically, lurching away. “You’re a wood nymph? An elf! All this time, and you never told—”
“Later!” he insisted, snatching for my hand again.
I darted out of his reach, hysteria rising. “I can’t go with a nymph!”
A hard determination came into his eyes—now back to normal, along with his skin—and he closed the distance between us in two strides. “You are a nymph, Siria,” he said harshly. “And when those doors open, the people on the other side will kill you.”
He pulled me on, and I stumbled after him, his words banging off the walls of my mind and utterly failing to gain traction. Perhaps I am dreaming, I thought hopefully. But dreams did not usually feel this physical . . .
“We have to get to the kitchens,” Linden grunted. “Don’t stop running!”
Down a sloping hall we ran, around several corners, up a short flight of wooden steps. A vaulted kitchen of rough stone opened before us, warm and noisy and full of Iyzabel’s servants. Satyr
s, she-fauns, and nymphs of all kinds flattened themselves against the walls as we burst in.
All kinds except one.
Linden pulled me to the back door and threw himself against it, but it didn’t open. “This should be unlocked!” he bellowed, whirling to face the wide-eyed servants. “Quickly—I need the key!”
Once standing still, I could feel myself trembling, starting to go cold with shock.
“We were told . . .” began one of the satyrs, “ah, to keep all doors locked, sir.” He and all the rest were ogling me, mouths hanging wide. “Queen’s orders. I’m sorry.”
“Damn the queen to the blighted Chasm!” bellowed Linden, and then he closed his eyes and took a breath. His eyes glowed when he opened them, and the dark brown lines swirled across his skin again for a fleeting instant. “If Iyzabel kills her, your hope for freedom dies too.” Shouting echoed down the corridor beyond the kitchen door. “Please. She’s the sunchild.”
The entire kitchen became motionless, staring at us, and I felt outside my own body as Linden’s words penetrated the fog in my mind. I croaked, “Sunchild,” as if saying the word would compel it to make more sense, and then raised one of my newly speckled arms to inspect it. Several pairs of eyes followed the movement.
I suddenly remembered what Iyzabel had cried to the ballroom just before I collapsed: Today is the day she transforms, and today I shall know at last who among these girls is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
One of the nymphs ran forward to Linden, holding out something small and shining in her palm. Linden snatched the key and jammed it into the lock.
