Page 23

I flipped through the yellow birds pages of the book I’d brought back from the library last week. As late spring settled on Sirun, the new species out my window changed every day. But this one—

This was the first to land on my window and whistle at me. And I had no idea what it was. I’d opened the glass hours ago because the weather was so warm—I hadn’t expected any of the birds to come this close.

I grabbed another book, trying to find one that matched the bright yellow bird with red dots along the edges of its wing. It looked like some kind of parrot—bigger than the songbirds, but not nearly as big as a hawk.

A light tap sounded on my door.

“Come in!” I called, continuing my search through the book. I only knew two elves who would knock that softly, and one of them lived in Bridgetown. It had been a couple months since I’d met Molanna, and Jolter hadn’t convinced me to cross the bridge to visit her yet.

But Salor lived here in the fortress and had come by to see me at least twice a week since we’d met. The only other possibility was Mylo’s wife, Corva, but she only came with Mylo. As expected, Salor opened the door… and froze.

“Callista! How did you get a callida to come to you?”

“A… callida?”

She stepped closer to me and whispered. “Your golden bird.”

I wrinkled my brows. “Did you just name it after me?”

She laughed. “No, though it might be appropriate. I think it means something like clever .”

I sighed dramatically. “Well, not after me, then. Callista means Beauty in a language my parents knew . ” I wasn’t going to tell her it was the Mother Tongue, but she knew my father was a scholar and my mother enjoyed learning.

She clapped her hands silently. “That’s perfect for you.” Then she pointed at the bird. “Callidas are famous for being incredibly smart and gathering sparkly things for their nests. Some people think they can even understand language and pick out their favorite elves to follow around.”

I had lots of hair pins with glittery gems. At first I’d worried for Mylo when he’d brought me a dressmaker and so many accessories. Then, he told me the king had paid for it, and… I didn’t worry for him anymore.

Nor did I worry about giving away some of the pins.

I set three in my hand and started talking to the bird. “Hey there, I hear you like pretty things.” I stepped closer to it. “Can I call you Gaudi? It means something like ‘bringing joy,’ because it made me so happy to see you here.” I walked slowly toward it with the pins on my extended hand. “You can have these, if you’d like them. My friend tells me you might.”

I stopped right in front of the bird. She rubbed her head against the side of my palm, chirped twice, gripped the pins with one of her clawed feet, and then flew away.

Salor rushed up to me, and we watched Gaudi disappear into the forest. “Wow,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?” I asked.

“I have no idea. I’d leave the window open, just in case.”

“I don’t think I’ll close it until it snows. Even then… I wonder if the king can enchant it to keep out the cold and let birds in.”

Salor shook her head. “I can’t imagine asking the High King to do anything.”

I chuckled. “I don’t really see him as a formal High King, and he’s usually happy to help.” I’d seen too much of the depths of his pain to be so formal. And sometimes, when we sat close to each other reading in the mornings, the air would charge, and I was sure that his heart pulled on mine. In those moments, it took all the strength I had not to throw myself into his arms, soak in his crazy heat and delicious cedar scents, and confess that I found him wildly attractive.

But, as close as Salor and I had grown over the last few weeks, I would not admit any of that to her. Or to anyone else. They were thoughts I had to keep firmly in my own head. “So what brings you up here this afternoon?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. They did that a lot—at first I thought she was always worried, but then I decided she was just surprised easily. “I nearly forgot! Forten said to tell you they have another set of lemons, and he wanted to invite you into the kitchen today or tomorrow to make more lemonade. ”

Forten was like a giant bear. He looked terrifying, but he was even softer than the king. “Oh, that sounds wonderful. Tell him thank you. I’d love to come by—I’ll ask the king if he wants to come too before I pick a day.”

She shook her head again. “I’ll let him know. I need to get back down there.” She paused halfway to the door. “Do you know, it’s been two months, and Broomden still sends everyone home four hours after dinner? He even acts like a noble noble now. I never thought I’d see the day.”

I smiled. “I’m glad.”

I was still grinning in the middle of my room minutes after she left—picturing Aedan using all his flaming power and ruthless reputation to terrify Broomden while secretly letting me see the most vulnerable emotions possible—when Mylo pounded on my door and opened it himself half a second later.

“Callista—” He spoke quickly, but made eye-contact and carried a tone of urgency. “I need to go help with an emergency. I’ll seal your door, so do not open it if anyone knocks. Anyone who needs you can wait until I get back. I do not have time to find someone else to stay with you.”

“I’ll stay.” Flashes of the last time he wanted me to stay in my room teased my memories as he raised a brow. “I promise,” I added.

“Do it for my sake, if you can’t manage it for yours,” he added. “The king will kill me if anything happens to you.” That was a sweet sentiment, but I nodded my agreement. He turned, and I just caught a glimpse of another soldier behind him before he closed my door and set it glowing with a magic seal.

I doubted the elves could see it glowing, but my magic senses had no trouble picking up the seal.

The last time Mylo had been whisked away from me, a horde of karkins had frightened the horses outside. What might have drawn him away so urgently today?

Aedan said he only trusted three elves to guard my door, partly because of their personal motives and partly because of their magical strength, so Mylo, Jolter, and Koan rotated their days in my hall or escorting me around the fortress to different activities. Were Koan and Jolter involved in this crisis? Or were they completely unaware of it? Maybe they’d gone to Bridgetown?

I was still standing in the middle of the room, wondering about what the captain’s newest crisis might be, when a dark purple magic flooded the room. Heat flashed through the entire space like a blast of hot air from an oven door opening, and the walls of my room lit on fire.

My jaw fell slowly as I realized what was happening. There was no crisis for Mylo. Someone had distracted him so they could burn my room down.

If I had been standing near any of the walls, or on my bed, I’d already be dead. I tried to press my rising panic down with logic. As it was, a ring of fire completely surrounded me. Flames blocked Aedan’s door and the hall door, and smoky heat quickly filled my room.

If I didn’t get out of my room, I would die. And I wouldn’t have any help. Whoever had done this had arranged for me to be alone in this inferno.

The entryway to my washroom only had a streak of fire across the ground—no door separated the space from my bedroom, so I rushed through the entrance and tried to leap over the flames along the ground. Some of them jumped to my skirt. I ignored them and climbed into the washbasin.

I turned on all the valves that controlled water, and stepped under the fountain meant to fill the large basin. The water drenched my clothes and doused the flames. I grabbed a towel, soaked it, and wrapped it around my body. Then I grabbed another, soaked it too, and wrapped it around my head.

I didn’t have time for anything else. I had to get out of the washroom before the flames at the entrance grew too high for me to jump over.

I couldn’t jump as well with my wet towels. The fire had grown, but my clothes were wet enough that I was able to leave the washroom and get back in my main bedroom without any trouble. Getting out of my bedroom, though…

That would be something else.

I stared at the door, and my vision blurred as panic clawed at me. Flames more than five feet deep blocked my escape. My towels no longer dripped—how could they possibly protect me from a fire this big?

And not just a fire. It was clearly a magic fire, which meant it burned hotter and would be harder to put out. Even Aedan, as a drekkan, had been burnt by the karkins’ magic fire. How was a non-magical half fae, half human supposed to run through it?

I clenched my teeth. Because the only other option was to stay here until the smoke and flames choked me to death. And I was not ready to die today.

I wadded up a few layers of towel in my hand to use as a mitten, wrapped the other one around my face better, and then ran straight into the flames.

The heat made me want to turn around and run straight back out, but I could not. Only one direction led to surviving this day. Every other direction—every other choice—meant death.

I grabbed the door handle and twisted it while my eyes stung and the smoke closed off my throat. I held my breath and ignored the pain in my skin as I flung the door open and burst into the hall.

A rush of heat followed me out of the room, pressing me to run into the hall faster. I patted out the flames that licked at my skirts with the towels, and then threw them off my body. They were hot and dry, and parts of them had burnt holes already. But what I thought would be a safe hallway had turned into another death trap.

Apparently, magic fire could burn in a stone corridor.

The hall that would normally lead down the tower and into the main part of the castle was completely blocked by flames… and those flames moved toward me.

I ran away from them, terror mounting in my chest. Only one door remained at the end of this hall—one door that opened to a tiny balcony that dropped hundreds of feet to the ground below. And someone was pushing the fire closer to me.

But running away from the fire was my only option. Maybe someone would be outside under the balcony with some kind of magic that could help me. Maybe someone would see the fire and find someone who could put it out.

I coughed as I ran. Smoke had settled in my throat and made normal breathing much more work. The fire rushed behind me, knowing that I had nowhere to go.

Maybe the fire didn’t know, but somebody was controlling it. And lots of people had to know there was no safe exit at the top of this tower.

When I reached the door, my only options were to stay in the hall and die from the fire or open the door and hope for something else to present itself.

I threw the door open… but did not step onto the little balcony. I scanned the ground for any signs of someone who might help me. I did not see anyone .

I did see a great drekkan flying out of the forest on the other side of the lake at a breakneck speed—so fast that even I could tell it wasn’t safe. A mighty roar filled the sky—even louder than the fires behind me—and a stream of flames left the drekkan’s mouth.

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. “Aedan,” I whispered, and tears filled my eyes. I didn’t even try to hold them back this time. Aedan was not going to let me die now.

The flames reached me before he did, so I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the balcony, gripping the stony outcropping attached to the castle.

Seconds later, he flew up in front of me. “Callista,” his deep, gravelly voice drawled. “You must jump to me. I cannot fly any closer to the castle. My wings will hit the tower.”

My eyes fell to the ground hundreds of feet below us, and the landscape started to swim. I closed my eyes. “I can’t jump. I can’t even stand up.”

“Callista.” His voice had grown raw, sounding just as desperate as mine. “Do you trust me?”

My lower jaw quivered. I stayed on my hands and knees with my eyes closed, but… his question.

Did I trust him?

Hadn’t he taken burns for me when he could have left me to the karkins? Hadn’t he stepped in front of his aunt’s magic for me? But even more than that, during all the weeks we’d spent together reading his grandmother’s story, he had been so careful, so considerate…

A wave of heat behind me made up my mind. I could not stay here. I opened my eyes and focused on his bright green irises. Black tinged the edges of my vision, but I pushed it back, refusing to acknowledge a darkness that wanted to consume me.

Only him. I would only allow him to enter my vision. Only his eyes. “I’m so scared,” I whispered, choking on the words.

He flapped his great, black wings so he hovered vertically, his massive chest and clawed arms facing me. “Jump as far as you can.” He held my gaze, not even blinking. All I needed to do was jump into his arms.

It wasn’t as romantic as I’d pictured us in the library, but I trusted his drekkan form as much as his elf.

I stared at his eyes, refusing to even glance away in case that glance became a world-tipping, soul-crushing fear of heights.

I stood, clenched my fists, and ran off the end of the tiny stone balcony. I leaped into the air, as if I could fly as easily as a drekkan. As soon as the ground disappeared under me, my hands flew to my face, covering my eyes.

And then I crashed into a hot, dry body. It wasn’t hot like flames. It was a welcoming bed that had been warmed in advance for me by my mother’s magic. It was the sun at the height of a summer day reminding me that I was still alive by heating my skin.

Still alive. Warm, scale-covered arms wrapped around me, cocooning me against a reptile’s chest. I had survived, and Aedan would take care of me now.

Relief swept the last of my strength away. I closed my eyes, succumbing to the darkness that had been pressing into my vision. Safety enveloped me. I could let go now.