by Hanna Howard
Be brave.
I took Linden by the hand and led him, wordlessly, out of the pavilion.
44
CHAPTER
We walked in silence into the darkening trees, which were a blur of purple shadows that grew cooler as the night deepened. Insects hummed and chattered all around us, their strange cacophony a music I would never tire of hearing.
Linden squeezed my hand. “Let’s go this way. I want to show you something.”
If I had thought my heart could not beat any harder, I was mistaken. By the time we stopped in a small glade, equipped with an unlit lantern on an iron hook, a firepit, and two fallen logs as seating, it felt as though a battalion of military horses were stampeding inside my chest.
“I found this place yesterday,” said Linden, stepping away from me to light the lamp. “Sat a while . . .”
He swallowed visibly and raked a hand through his hair as he turned back to face me—and something inside me loosened from its tight coil. Linden, with his unfailing confidence and good humor, was nervous too.
Letting out a long breath, I moved to sit on one of the fallen logs. I felt like I was on the brink of the mountain precipice again, preparing to jump. Even with near certainty of Linden’s feelings, and the long ache of my own, I was terrified to speak. And yet somehow I also longed to speak, so badly the words were practically clawing their way up my throat.
I smiled up at him, and his face relaxed.
“Hello, Weedy,” he said softly. He pronounced the old nickname as though it were the most precious word he knew.
“Hello, Linden.”
He gave a quick, lopsided grin and sat beside me, folding his hands in his lap. His knee touched mine very lightly, but he came no closer. I resisted the urge to crawl into his lap.
“Tell me what you meant the other day,” I said. “When you said what you did to my brother.”
The look on his face made my breath quick and uneven. I glanced away to steady myself.
“Do you remember the day Yarrow and I came to Nightingale Manor?” he said.
I looked back at him in surprise and nodded. It was one of my clearest early memories.
“You were our assignment, Yarrow and me. I’d sworn to the rebels I would protect you, and I thought meeting you would be like . . . well, like meeting a princess. I thought you’d be some delicate thing I’d be able to guard valiantly and stoically, like a knight guarding a tower.”
A sound somewhere between a cackle and a hoot burst out of me.
“I’ve never been more wrong about anything,” he said, grinning. “I remember that day perfectly. It was freezing cold . . . Yarrow and I were exhausted. We’d been traveling in almost complete darkness for days, and we came through the trees onto the moor and saw the manor house with its glowing windows and smoking chimneys . . . I don’t know why, but it made me angry to see it. I resented you for growing up there, for living in ignorance of the horrible things that had happened to us both. But Yarrow knocked on the door and we went into the warm parlor, and just as I was wondering where your lavish tower bedroom was—there you were.”
His eyes glowed at the memory. “You came charging out of the hall like a whirlwind, with all your fine skirts askew, and said, ‘Hello! I’m Siria,’ while the butler kept trying to introduce you as the young Miss Nightingale. You came right up to me, even though I must have looked like a gargoyle, and you seized my filthy hands and said—”
“‘We’re going to be best friends,’” I finished.
Linden laughed. “I had no chance after that. You’d have been crushed if your new best friend was mean to you, even if he secretly thought you were turning out to be much more than he’d bargained for.”
His laughter faded, but I heard the soft echo of it in my ears as he turned toward me and took both of my hands in his. My heart was surely bruising itself against my injured ribs.
“You’ve been my favorite person in the world since that day,” he said. “That’s what I meant.”
Every particle of my body yearned toward him, but I held myself back. “Linden,” I said, my voice quavering slightly, “I’m sorry I kept away from you those last years at school . . . I don’t know why I was such an idiot.”
“You thought you needed to live up to different expectations,” he said gently. “I can’t fault you for wanting your parents’ love.”
“I wanted yours too. I just didn’t think I should.”
His eyes held mine. “Either way, you always had it.”
An acute, aching joy spread through me. I pulled one hand free from his and lifted it to his face, placing it precisely over the handprint I had burned into his skin, barely visible beneath his stubble in the lantern light.
“Siria,” he whispered, flecks of gold dancing in the green of his eyes. His free hand came up to my face, the mirror image of my hand. “I really don’t care if you burn me.”
A laugh bubbled up in my throat as I slid forward and put my arms around his neck, bringing my lips to his. And then he was pulling me tight against him, one hand at my waist, the other tangling into the braided hair at the nape of my neck as he kissed me, gently at first, and then with the heat and intensity of ten years’ buried longing. My pulse raged, and I could feel his thudding erratically in his neck as I slipped my hands into his hair.
It was overwhelming, I thought, to have felt so much for a person for so long, to have kept it hidden—and then suddenly to let it stretch inside your heart like a freed captive. I had never known anything more terrifying, or more wonderful. Sunlight thundered through my body, and I channeled it into things that could have no chance of burning him: healing energy, plant growth, flight.
I was floating several inches above the fallen log, but Linden pulled me back down. By the time we broke apart again, he was laughing, and a veritable thicket of trailing vines—both his work and mine—had grown up over the log and engulfed our legs.
“Well,” he said, gesturing to the place our ankles had disappeared, “I hope you didn’t want to go anywhere before the next frost.”
“Not really,” I said, and though I laughed too, I almost meant it.
Linden kissed my forehead, my nose, my lips again, and then folded his arms around me, tucking me against his chest. As I held on to him, feeling his heartbeat begin to slow, I could sense his thoughts returning to the shadow that had loomed over us from the very beginning.
“The equinox,” he began, but I shook my head against his neck.
“Not now. Let’s just pretend that the Darkness and Iyzabel and every other foul thing we’ve been worrying about the last two months have gone away. Just tonight, Linden . . . let’s pretend we’re normal people.”
He started to brush a lock of hair away from my forehead, and then stopped. “What about almost normal people?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you.”
Something moved against my ankles, soft and ticklish. I pulled back and saw vines snaking up over my skirt, gently, but with determination. “Linden—”
“Just wait.” His eyes burned brightest green, and deep brown patterns swirled over his skin.
The vines, which I recognized from years of gardening experiments as climbing jasmine and honeysuckle, had reached my arms. They made their way up over my shoulders and crept into the now disheveled braided crown of my hair. Linden’s blazing eyes were open, but unfocused. After another few moments the funny crawling sensation retreated, slinking back down my neck, over my shoulder, and down my skirt once more. But a slight, new weight remained on my head, and I could still smell the mingling fragrances of the two flowers. Linden’s eyes and skin faded to normal, and his grin widened.
I raised a hand to the top of my head.
“A circlet,” he said, cocking his head to peer down into my face, “for the princess of Luminor. I’m not sure if you noticed, but these flowers are in the colors of the old kingdom.”
White and gold: the colors of the Luminor standard.
“It won’t last forever, but I’ve made it self-sufficient for a while.” He surveyed his work, looking smug. “It makes you look utterly wild.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“That’s a compliment.”
“Only from you.”
We sat another moment, gazing at each other, both of us grinning like fools.
“Linden,” I said. “I don’t think we’re very good at being normal.”
“No,” he agreed. “But abnormal is much more interesting.”
And as the sunlight swelled once more within me, Linden pulled me to him and kissed me again.
45
CHAPTER
An hour later, we made our slow, meandering way back to the pavilion, sure the celebrations would be nearly finished. Linden held my hand, fingers interlaced, and swung it gently as we walked, glancing over at me from time to time with a lopsided grin that made the sunlight grow bright in me all over again.
We had almost come into the lantern-lit glade where the pavilion stood when he suddenly stopped, his fingers tensing. Before I could ask what was wrong, I heard it too: shouts from up ahead. Was it a drunken argument? But then I recognized one of the voices, and Linden and I dropped hands and broke into a run.
“. . . overwhelming difficulties over the years—not to mention the last two months! We endured for the sake of this cause, despite terrible opposition, because we believed when this day came you would stand beside us without hesitation!”
We skidded to a halt just outside the pavilion. Yarrow was in the middle of the now empty dance floor, red in the face and shouting down an equally furious-looking Briar.
“We have learned not to be rash—” the old rebel began, but Yarrow cut across him.
“Rash?” He sounded incredulous. “This plan has been underway for fourteen years, Briar!”
The pavilion had emptied significantly, but there were still a number of villagers sitting on benches or tidying up leftover food, and judging by their shocked expressions, the argument had only just erupted. I located Merrall and Elegy sitting a little distance away from the two old men, and while the banshee looked drowsy and a bit frightened, Merrall’s expression was hard and alert.
“Wait a moment,” my brother called, voice ringing with authority as he stepped forward. “What did Yarrow mean, they believed we would stand beside them when the time came?”
Briar looked like he was fighting both fury and impatience. He chewed his lip, silently calculating, but it was Sedge who answered.
“Your Highness, Yarrow refers to a plan that was formed in the early years of the rebellion, when he and others left us to find and protect the princess. We thought then that we could reclaim Luminor, that with the power of the sunchild girl at the equinox, we could destroy the Witch Queen’s Darkness.”
My mind reeled. We thought then, he’d said. A plan that was formed in the early years . . . And my brother didn’t know this plan. Which had to mean—
“We abandoned the idea as ludicrous and fantastical many years ago,” Briar said scornfully. “This girl could no more destroy the Darkness than build us a bridge across the oceans to Soleador.”
I suddenly felt faint. Was it possible we had come all this way, endured so much, only to be denied help from the very people who had sent Yarrow and Linden to find me?
“Why did you want me to come here, then?” I asked, stepping forward. Briar and Yarrow both jerked around, looking startled. “You said you sent scouts—said you wanted to find me . . .”
But then I knew the answer. Of course. They had their own ideas of how I could be useful. Because that was what I was: A tool for other people’s ends.
“You could make our safety here absolute!” one of the rebels called from the benches. He sounded excited, hopeful. “You could bring the sun back, and we could reinstate the rule of Luminor here in the Wilds!”
“Why risk more death in a war we cannot win?” said a blonde woman two seats away from the other man. “If the queen tries to invade, we could offer her a truce, promise the sunchild won’t touch the Darkness below the mountains if she leaves us in peace. We could have normal lives again, and no one would have to die for it!”
Many of the rebels were now bobbing their heads in agreement or excitedly whispering to one another. I felt a rush of dizzying disbelief.
“No one wants another war,” said one man loudly, to murmurs of assent. “Why should more of us die?”
“The queen doesn’t know we’re here, and even if she discovers us, we have the power of a sunchild on our side!”
Sedge was one of the only rebels who had not spoken or nodded in agreement; behind him, Merrall’s expression was like carved ice, and Elegy had covered her face with her hands so that only her large violet eyes were visible. Beside me, Linden seemed to have grown roots. Yarrow, by contrast, looked as if he was about to erupt: His nostrils flared, and his face had gone crimson.
“Am I to understand, then,” he growled, “that this community no longer claims the ideals it held fourteen years ago, when it decided saving the lost sunchild was the most important task it could undertake? That you’ve abandoned the passion that drove so many good people into the darkest places of Terra-Volat to try and clear the way for the future, when the restoration of the Light would once more be possible in our kingdom?”
Though several people on the benches shifted and looked away, two or three appeared ready to argue.
“I do not think that is our position, Yarrow,” said Briar in his calculating tone. “We esteem the princess most highly here, and wish her to use her powers for good.”
“For your good!” I shouted, blood rushing in my ears. And then I was striding toward him, fury swirling in me like a rising storm. “You just want to use me! And you’re willing to abandon an entire suffering kingdom in order to save your own skins.”
I poked Briar hard in the shoulder, and he jumped away from me with a cry. There was a ringing silence in the pavilion as we all saw the smoke curling up from the hole I had accidentally singed in his tunic.
I felt no remorse.
Briar’s face lost its shrewd calm. “This will be for your benefit more than anyone else’s, in case you haven’t realized,” he snapped, weathered skin flushing dull maroon in the firelight. “Who could prosper from the sun more than a sunchild?”
“And besides,” said the woman with blonde hair, “marshaling an attack on Umbraz will likely end in death for most of us, including you. Why should we die for people we don’t even know—people who are too lazy to stand up for themselves?”
I felt sick. These people had no idea what life was like in the grip of Iyzabel’s manipulation, but they were willing to judge the countless souls trapped there? I suddenly realized why they had given me a dress in the colors of Luminor: they wanted me to feel I had come home, that I was their proud standard, the defender of their peace. I wanted to tear it off.
“So,” I said through tight lips, “you would leave the rest of the kingdom helpless against the Darkness? You would condemn generations to die without ever having seen the sun?”
Briar bowed his head. “It is . . . regrettable, to be sure. Do not mistake me. If it were possible to save them . . .”
“It is possible, Briar,” said Yarrow, who had beckoned to Merrall and Elegy, and turned to walk toward Linden and me. I was surprised to hear his voice was quiescent now, almost defeated. “It is. You knew it once.”
I was hardly aware of the walk back to Freda’s house, and barely registered climbing into bed beside Elegy. I tried to distract myself with thoughts of the sun, but that hope seemed empty now. Even if I did succeed in using the vernal equinox to crack the Darkness, I could never overthrow Iyzabel’s government without the support of the resistance.
If they could even be called that anymore.
Anguish and fury boiled in me as I tossed and twisted in bed, but the warmth I felt did not diminish, even when I fell gradually into a restless sleep that should have
calmed the burning. An intensifying heat followed me into my dreams, like a stifling woolen blanket I could not throw off. I tossed fitfully and smelled smoke. I was hot—so very hot.
Somewhere close, a voice cried out.
I threw myself upright, dragging my eyes open just in time to see a large section of Freda’s thatched roof shrivel beneath licking, red tongues of flame. As Elegy screamed, a chunk of burning thatch separated from the ceiling and fell onto the foot of the bed, spitting embers and sending flames shooting across the floor into the rest of the house.
We were on fire.
46
CHAPTER
I scrambled out of bed, dragging Elegy after me, and scooped my rucksack off the floor as I charged toward Merrall’s cot. The naiad was propped on an elbow beneath the open window, frozen halfway to sitting, her enormous eyes so wide they reflected the flames like small mirrors.
“Get up!” I cried, seizing Merrall by the arm. “Out the window, both of you!”
I grabbed Merrall’s rucksack and flung it with my own out into the night, then pushed Elegy toward the window. “Climb down on the limbs,” I yelled over the roar of the fire. “I’ll meet you outside!”
“What about you?” said Elegy.
“I’ll be fine,” I shouted, spotting Linden’s flower tiara on the bedside table and lunging back for it. “I’m going to make sure the others get out. Hurry!”
“No—” began Merrall.
“I’m a fire nymph!” I bellowed, terror for Linden clawing at my chest. His magic was useless against flame. “I’ll be fine! Now move!”
For a brief moment when I had woken up, I’d wondered whether I had started the fire with my own excess energy. But the flames had come from the roof, not from my bed, and I now feared something much worse.
Hiking up my shift, I hurdled the crackling ruin of ceiling blocking the doorway and landed, choking, in the hall. The main room seethed with black smoke and churning flames. I fumbled forward and ran straight into someone who grasped my arm and then crushed me to his heaving chest.
