Ignite the Sun

by Hanna Howard

  The floor tilted. Something inside me was crashing down, and I had to shout to hear myself over the roaring in my brain. I was only vaguely aware of what I said: “Linden, get everyone into the stairwell!”

  “Siria—”

  “Now!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “Take Elegy!”

  He darted around me to pull Elegy, Phipps, and Milla after him. Through a brief gap in the scrum of soldiers—many of whom were running for the stairs out of terror of Elegy—I glimpsed Merrall’s still form on the floor, blood pooling over the stones around her. I felt a desperate desire to heal her, even though I knew I would die before I made it halfway to her body, and I remembered as if from another lifetime the group of blonde and redheaded girls left on the platform the day of my transformation. I had not been able to save them either.

  Everything inside me was crumbling, and I could barely hold myself upright.

  Crumbling.

  I threw a wild glance at the ceiling. Maybe I could not save Merrall, but I could at least give her a proper burial with her love. I could keep her from becoming another head on a plaque for Iyzabel’s collection.

  With a massive effort, I put aside my grief, dodged a whistling sword, and ran after the people I could still save. I stopped just before the arched stairway where my friends had disappeared and wheeled about to face the soldiers who had not already fled. The sunchild head on the wall seemed to watch me with a touch of a smile as I lifted my arms to point the citrine dagger at the ceiling.

  One of the lead soldiers shouted something, but I barely heard him. I closed my eyes and focused upward.

  The dagger became an extension of my reach, and I strained up, up through the stone ceiling, through floors of decadent parlors and marble ballrooms, and out of the Black Castle, through empty space, toward the malevolent crust of the Darkness itself. Then I paused a moment to search for the thing all my hope now rested on.

  The crack I had made when I arrived.

  I sucked in a breath as I found it, my arms shaking as I gripped the hilt of the dagger and pulled with all my strength.

  “Stop her!” Iyzabel shrieked, but it was too late.

  The first cascade of light came like a stream of dazzling gold, passing through the ceiling and into the crypt with a brightness that made the soldiers shriek. It sped down the dagger and into my arms, so that to create a sunshield I had only to open my eyes and look at the spot where I wanted it to appear. It did, and the first soldier’s desperate, blind swing of his sword slipped off like a foot on ice as it met the illuminated surface.

  My stomach clenched with grim resolution as I gathered the energy between my hands.

  The dagger hilt shook in my grip as the citrine increased the already thrumming power. When it was as full as I could bear to make it, I flung the energy up the blade, and it soared through the crypt with a sound like crackling flames. The noise when it met the ceiling was like nothing I had ever heard—a massive crack, followed by grinding and groaning—and the sunburst ripped a hole in the ceiling as big as a carriage wheel. Chunks of stone fell almost gracefully from it, landing with thunderous crashes on the flagstone floor, which cracked beneath them. But where they struck my domed sunshield, they merely glanced away.

  Iyzabel’s soldiers were bellowing like bulls, trying to flee to safety, and two leapt right into the path of a falling slab. The queen herself was electric with rage, but without the silver knife, her magic had no control, and it ricocheted off the walls, blasting stone and mounted heads alike. She advanced as close to the shield as she could, teeth bared and eyes blazing as she stalked in front of it, looking for a way in.

  Above me, the sunburst was still passing through floors of the palace like a boulder flung from a trebuchet, smashing it apart as it sped, comet-like, toward the sun. The Black Castle trembled from foundation to ceiling, but that was as nothing to what was coming next. I looked Iyzabel in the eyes to make sure she knew, and the hatred I saw in them was all the confirmation I needed.

  I turned my head to where the others now stood behind me, grouped on the stairs with various expressions of grief, awe, and terror. “Run,” I told them.

  The sound that came when the sunburst began its return journey shook the stones beneath my feet. I closed my eyes, and in my mind I saw it: the great, burning sphere, swollen and wreathed in fire from contact with the sun, crashing through the crust of the Darkness and speeding back down the stream of light toward the castle.

  Toward the citrine lodestone that was guiding it, held aloft in my hands.

  60

  CHAPTER

  When it struck the top of the castle, the sound was like mountains breaking apart, and the floor pitched so violently I almost fell. The subsequent crashes as the sunburst smashed through countless floors above us were no less violent, and I could hear an eerie moaning from the stone as it strained to hold itself up.

  Many of Iyzabel’s men were now running for the catacombs, but the queen stood like a pillar of ivory and onyx in the middle of the floor, gazing up at the ceiling. When the next crash came—the loudest one yet—she bared her teeth like a cat hissing.

  I braced myself to hold on, to draw the burst of energy all the way to its destination. Light blazed beyond the hole of the ceiling.

  And then arms closed around my waist and hauled me back, just as the sunburst ripped the ceiling apart and plummeted like a falling star into the crypt. My sunshield flickered away. Linden’s heartbeat pounded against my back as he dragged me beneath the arch of the stairwell, and then there was an earth-rending explosion and a glare of diamond-bright light.

  For a frozen moment in the sea of blinding gold, I saw Iyzabel’s mouth open in a scream of agony, her veins stark beneath her porcelain skin, thick smoke pouring from her limbs.

  And then all sound was sucked from the world as the sunburst buried itself in the flagstone floor exactly where she was standing, opening a great chasm that split the crypt from end to end. The world rocked beneath us, and Linden and I toppled back onto the stairs as a piece of ceiling fell onto the bottom step, crushing the archway and sealing us out of the crypt.

  The whole castle was coming down.

  I scrambled up and pulled Linden to his feet, and we leapt two stairs at a time, hands grasped tight. About halfway, I felt something strike my hand, and realized Linden’s obsidian band had fallen off. Yarrow was waiting for us at the top, pale as death, and I glimpsed Roark disappearing through a door at the end of the room. We fled after him.

  I could hear only the deafening smashing of stone and the groans of the walls as the structure swayed. The castle was full of people escaping, mouths open in screams I could not hear over the roar of the toppling building, and I saw soldiers and courtiers alike. I remembered the nymph servants Linden and I had met in the kitchens so long ago, and hoped they would have time to escape.

  I counted my companions constantly, mentally stumbling each time I remembered Merrall was gone, and fighting down a searing pain as I saw her motionless form in my mind, harpooned in a bloody pool on the flagstones. Then at last, through an opened door ahead that was crowded with terrified people, I glimpsed a patch of dark sky.

  It was a small, wooden door in a part of the castle I guessed only the servants used, and we all scrambled through it, clambering over rubble and bits of fallen ceiling into the smoking, churning air of the wounded Darkness. Outside, we did not stop. The towering onyx structure moaned, and all around the sounds of smashing rock crashed like thunder, sending tremors through the cobbled courtyard.

  Eamon seemed to have used most of his strength in the crypt, and Sedge and Roark now supported him as we ran. Phipps and Milla still sprinted alongside us, apparently so focused on surviving that they had not yet thought to go their own way. We didn’t stop until we had put several city streets between ourselves and the castle—though even then the ground shook with every distant boom.

  It felt unreal to be here, in these same Umbraz streets where I had been hunted, and
know the Witch Queen who had caused all my suffering now lay defeated in the bowels of her ruined castle. As we stood and caught our breath, Phipps and Milla seemed to realize the sort of company they were keeping, and shot furtive looks down the empty street beyond. But they darted glances at me too, plainly afraid I might roast them alive if they tried to leave.

  “I won’t hurt you,” I said wearily. “And I’ve let go of the past.” As I spoke the words, I realized they were perfectly true. I now felt only pity for these people whose home, life, and name I had shared, both for their years of emotional enslavement to Iyzabel and the selfishness that had driven them so easily into her net. They had neglected me and failed to love me, but I was lucky enough to have had Yarrow and Linden at hand, ready to counter my feelings of unworthiness with their own stalwart faithfulness. To my astonishment, I felt a tired smile lift the corners of my mouth as I gestured around at them and the others. “I’ve found my real family.”

  They nodded, still looking terrified, and turned away. But a moment later, Milla faltered and looked back. “We never wanted to betray you,” she said very quietly. Her eyes were clouded with confusion and pain, and I wondered what would happen to her now that Iyzabel’s sway had been broken. What would she be like without it? Before I could reply, though, they scuttled away down the street and out of sight, and I watched them go, the last remnants of something tight and frayed crumbling away inside of me.

  I took a deep breath, then turned to Yarrow for instruction, only to realize that he and the others were watching me.

  “What now, Siria?” asked Sedge.

  I looked at each one of them in turn—Linden, standing tall and ready despite his many injuries; Eamon, watching me blearily through one eye as he leaned on Sedge; Elegy, still crying thick, silent tears for Merrall; Bronya and Roark in their opulent Umbraz disguises; and Yarrow, exhaustion in every line of his face, but brimming with pride as he leaned on his stolen sword and regarded me—and then turned back to peer up at the churning black sky above the ruined castle. The new hole I had opened in the Darkness had not closed, but sagged apart like a fatal wound, pouring sunlight in a narrow column down onto the cobblestones.

  “This city will be in chaos for some time,” I said slowly, “but Iyzabel’s manipulation should lift, which will make the transition easier. The critical thing now will be for me to break the Darkness apart more thoroughly and speed up the decay of the enchantment so we can convince people she’s really gone. Then we can get Eamon back on the throne.”

  Everyone nodded solemnly except Eamon, who gave a weak chuckle. “Take your time.”

  “Obviously, a place to rest and recover a bit is next on the list,” I added. “And . . . and I’d like to hold a funeral for Merrall.”

  There was silence for a long moment, broken only by distant screams and continued, smaller crashes from the castle.

  “There’s an inn,” said Yarrow, “just outside the city. Linden and I used to go occasionally for news. They should have room for us.”

  Roark nodded. “I’ll see if I can find a horse or two.”

  “And I’ll be right back,” I said.

  A few minutes later I stood once again in the courtyard before the Black Castle, which now lay in a vast, mountainous heap across the once-splendid square. Dust hung like dense fog, eerily lit by green lamps and that single shaft of sunlight, and people wandered, stunned and aimless, amid the wreckage. I hoped there had been enough time for most of the castle’s inhabitants to escape before the place collapsed, though it was some small consolation to think there had been no ball underway during the calamity. If we had made it out, I thought the servants at least had good odds, if not the soldiers in the crypt. Even so, my heart ached for the deaths I had caused—innocent or not.

  I turned my attention to the sky and raised both dagger and palm to the Darkness. It was easier now that Iyzabel’s power was broken, and the hulking crust above the city seemed to thin as I drew sunlight through it, pulling apart in places like something weak and fibrous. After a while the sky was full of strange, floating chunks, which seemed to wither as the late afternoon sun glowed down from behind them, casting odd shadows over the Royal City. Fresher air swept in to mingle with the cloying warmth of the Darkness, scattering it like mold on the breeze.

  It was a good start.

  I turned to leave, and saw the courtyard had filled with timid watchers, all shielding their eyes from the sun they had not seen in fifteen years.

  As I crossed the cobbled courtyard, I stopped at the base of the carriage drive, where the large crest of Umbraz had been worked into the street as a mosaic. Pointing my citrine dagger carefully down, I drew a slow, crackling circle of sunlight right in the middle of it, the fiery heat melting right through the stone. Then I added a dozen lines, branching out from all around the circle. I stepped back from it and walked away, knowing it would say as much about the return of Luminor as any crown prince could ever hope to do.

  Linden was waiting for me at the gates. He pulled me into a silent hug as I reached him and held me for what felt like a long time. I was ready for food, ready to sit in the inn’s common room and drink to Merrall, ready above all else to sleep. But before I did, I wanted to stand and hold on to Linden for just a little while longer.

  Eventually we drew apart, and he raised a hand to lift the jasmine and honeysuckle circlet from my head. It was slightly wilted, but still alive; Linden had done his work well. Silently, he took my hand and led me just outside the huge iron gates, where he knelt down and began digging with his bare hands in the hard-packed dirt beside them. Then he took my circlet and broke it apart, planting its ends in the barren soil. His skin glowed with brown whorls for a few moments, then he stood up again and moved aside.

  The vines had grown, twisting in and out of each other, across the dirt, up the side of the gate, and into its twisted ironwork, so that the huge metal U was totally disfigured by yellow and white flowers.

  Linden’s hair glowed in the sunlight as he smiled at me.

  “Welcome back to Luminor, Siria.”

  I took his hand, and together we walked out into the city, the sun warm on our backs as it sank toward the horizon.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book has been on a long road—a decade, in total!—and I am therefore indebted to more people than I have space here to thank. But if you ever read a version of the book once called “Sunchild,” and gave me feedback, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You helped this story find itself. Chief among those who read early versions are: my dear friend and critique partner, Amie McCracken; my soul-sister and INFP commiserate, Joanna Ruth Meyer; book-brother, Peter Myers; and fiercest and most loyal encourager, Jaclyn Metcalf. Thank you all for lending your eyeballs and your brains to help me through countless swamps, and for doing it more than once.

  I am also immeasurably grateful to my warrior queen of an agent, Jenny Bent, who put me through several mental Olympics with her edits, and helped this book shed its excess and become so much more itself—all before doing the incredible work of finding the book its home. You’re a rock star.

  To the team at Blink, who have worked so hard to transform this story from a Word document into the gorgeous tome you hold in your hands, and especially to Hannah VanVels, who fell in love with Siria and her friends first, and to Jacque Alberta, who guided them through the subsequent stages of edits with love and enthusiasm. Thank you! (Mad props for finishing up the production of this book during a global pandemic!)

  So much thanks and love to my brothers: Jordan, who wrote “Sweet Sadie of the Glen” for me when I needed a poem about a sunchild, and Adam, the Charles Wallace to the Meg Murray; to my mother, Sandy, always ready with hugs and delicious food when the writing life got hard; to my sister in-law Kelsey, who championed this book from day one; and to my Hutchinson family—Ted, Jane, Heather, Ian, and Cheryl—who cheered me on as readily as they welcomed me into their midst. Your encouragement has meant toe world to me. Also my be
loved grandmother, Libby, who wanted to live to see this book in print but missed it by a mere five months. And to my dad, Jerry. Nothing less than death itself could have dragged him out of my corner, and even cancer had to fight tooth and nail to best him. His dogged encouragement and belief in creative passions as God-given fuels me even when every road seemed to end in failure.

  To Ashley Sullivan, Emily Persson, Libby Keenan, Bethany Shorey-Fennell, Laurel Baird, and Megan Brown, and Ashley Ford: thank you for cheering me for so long. To my teenagers: thank you for always keeping me up to date on what the kids are saying/doing/dancing these days. You all are the worst, and I love you so much.

  To my husband, Daniel, the love of my life, and the Beren to my Luthien: My heart is infinitely richer for the love you give day in and day out to me, to our strange animals, and now to Edmund. I love you more than the Doctor, Harry, Aragorn, and Jamie Fraser combined, and I would totally rescue you from Sauron’s fortress if he imprisoned you. Together or not at all.

  And finally, to my Lord and my God, without whose grace I am dust and ashes, words without form, and story without substance. Thou, my best thought by day or by night; Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my Light.