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Chapter Forty-One

Guinevere

Some things were gifts, some things were to be learned, and some things were both.

No one’s first arrow hit its mark, but a boy who trained every day with the blades he forged could come to know their heft and arc, and grow up to be a man who might take on a dozen and live.

The ear for melody was a gift, but the voice had to practice so that it could bend with ease. Social graces were learned, so that a girl born to common thieves could hold her own in a ballroom full of the finest pedigrees.

There were some for whom magic was a gift, and the only thing left to do was understand how to control it. And there were some for whom magic was the product of years of careful study to produce a single flame.

Fear was a natural state, neither gift nor curse. But everyone possessed the ability to overcome it. It was just a matter of when and how.

Teinidh, Guinevere begged, there in the darkness, through the haze of the calming spell. Teinidh, wake up.

Her fingertips brushed against the soil of her totem.

And magic stirred in the deep of her soul.

My sister.

A voice like smoke. Eyes like embers, opening. The gift she hadn’t wanted, the curse she had borne all these years—as much a part of her as her too-soft heart and her eagerness to please.

The connection was faint but there. Guinevere held on to it, forcing it open. The wildfire burned low in her core.

Teinidh shimmered in the dark, bound not by Guinevere’s fear but by the ghostly shackles of Accanfal’s calming spell. But that’s not exactly right, is it? she mused. Perhaps we were sisters of a sort, once.

And now?

Guinevere listened to the voice in the inferno. She listened to the beating of her heart, and to the currents of her magic. She heard what Teinidh was trying to say—what Teinidh had been trying to tell her all along.

To live in this world is to change, said the wildfire spirit.

To live in your world is to become you. To hide from me is to hide from yourself.

One blazing wrist strained against the manacle that tethered it to the shadows.

Give me your fury. Make me the instrument of your vengeance.

Give me your fear. We will not die on water. Give me something.

I can’t. Accanfal’s spell was too strong.

Yet Teinidh was resolute, pressing against her mind. Get us out of here. Give me something.

And Guinevere knew only what she had learned on the Amber Road—that fire could destroy, but it could also be used to cast light in the dark, to give warmth in the cold, to protect from evil.

And she could think only of Oskar, and how Exandria would be a worse place without him in it, and how he had to go to Boroftkrah because he’d promised his mother.

I can’t be angry, she told Teinidh. I can’t be afraid. But I— we —will save him. We have to save him, because I love him, and if you don’t come now, I will never forgive you.

Teinidh smirked. Good enough.

It was Guinevere who reached out first. Her hand moved through air and darkness, through soul and being. She pressed her palm to Teinidh’s burning heart.

The white shackles disintegrated, each shard scattering like snow, only to be melted into nothingness by the same heat that poured into Guinevere’s veins. The flames engulfed her, and she welcomed them, because to live in the world was to want to save it.

No matter what.

In the cargo hold of the arcanist’s ship, the wildfire spirit burst into existence beside Guinevere.

Teinidh wrapped her smoldering arms around Accanfal, who screamed as he was reduced to cinders in the red-gold embrace.

First the feathers, up in smoke, then the pink flesh beneath, then the hollow bones.

A death of seconds, inches from Guinevere’s face.

Teinidh released what was left of him and made to sweep around the hold in a victorious dance of carnage, but Guinevere held her back, with a cool assurance she had not known she possessed.

Teinidh was her magic, her darkness, her worst fears and her most wicked impulses magnified; she was her, and she was not going to let Oskar burn.

She tightened the tether until the spirit’s charred lips twisted into a pout and she grumbled, Fine, have it your way.

You mean our way, Guinevere corrected.

Teinidh laughed and vanished.

What fire there was had already snagged on the floorboards.

Guinevere had to move fast, if there was to be any hope of saving Oskar.

She hurriedly slipped her totem over her head and snatched up the scepter from where it lay in a heap of Accanfal’s ashes.

It was too hot to touch, but she didn’t care; magic surged through her, a song soft and sharp all at once, like sunbeams falling on lace, like clean sheets and salt air.

The ring of lightning had also been left unscathed, and she shook off a few specks of Accanfal before slipping it on, just in case.

She turned to Oskar—Teinidh’s heat had melted the ice spear, leaving Guinevere with an unobstructed view of the hole in his chest, his tunic wet with blood and water.

His skin was gray at the edges, and those golden eyes were already at half-mast.

She listened to the song that only she could hear, letting it guide her next steps. She aimed the scepter at Oskar’s wound, and the emerald that crowned it glowed a bright green. There was the sound of wings, the skein of fate respooling, and then—

—the hole in Oskar’s chest closed up, oakmoss skin knitting over red to form a puckered scar.

He jerked, his breath returning to him in a stuttered gasp.

He bolted upright, normal color fully returned to his face.

Guinevere felt tears of joy and relief prickle at the corners of her lashes, and she waited, her entire being aglow, for him to hug her, for him to whisper sweet words of comfort and gratitude…

“ Why are you still here? ” Oskar roared, a vein throbbing at his temple. “You daft woman, the ship is on fire !”

He scooped Guinevere up before she could respond, tossing her over his shoulder.

The scepter slid from her grasp as he broke into a run, barely pausing to bring his sword down over the ropes that bound Wensleydale’s wrists.

The cargo hold was fast filling up with smoke, and Oskar and Wensleydale shot up the ladder with flames licking at their heels.

The inferno chased them across the ship’s deck, devouring hull and masts and barrels and rigging. Oskar hurled Guinevere into one of the dinghies hanging off the edge, then clambered in after her.

“Hold on tight,” he said.

“How?” she muttered from where she’d landed face down on the floor of the small vessel, her derriere sticking up. “You threw me—”

Oskar’s sword slashed through the air, severing the ropes, and then she was screaming as they fell. The calming spell had apparently worn off with Accanfal’s demise, and one unladylike expletive after another burst from her lips all throughout the sharp drop.

The boat landed in the ocean with an almighty splash. Guinevere struggled upright, completely drenched, spitting out salt and soot. Oskar wasted no time in grabbing the oars, and soon he was paddling them away from the burning ship.

Even as she shivered—even as she did her best to wring water out of her hair and her hopelessly ruined gown—a strange calm settled in, one that had nothing to do with magic.

It was over, in more ways than one. The night’s disaster had wrapped up; the mystery of the trunk had come to a close.

Her betrothal was nullified—in her eyes, at least, and that was the only opinion that mattered—and her relationship with her parents was never going to be the same again, and that was for the best. Her journey had ended, and the start of a new one lay on the horizon.

But there was something about the issue of her betrothal that was nagging at her…

“Oskar!” She turned to him sharply. “We forgot all about LordW—”

A spray of water shot up beside the boat. A hulking form reared its head from the depths, tangled up in seaweed, teeth glinting in the moonlight.

Startled out of her wits, reacting purely on instinct, Guinevere punched it.

“Argh! How dare you!”

She relaxed. “You gave me quite a fright, my lord.”

“And you,” Wensleydale panted, slinging one arm over the gunwale while his free hand clutched at his injury, “gave me a broken nose.”

“Adds character,” Oskar piped up, with rather more cheer than the situation called for.

Wensleydale sniffed. “Help me on board, Miss Guinevere.”

The thing was, she really would have. She was, in fact, reaching over to do just that. But then he added, in the kind of aristocratic mumble that was meant to carry, “Since the manservant is busy rowing.”

And that was when Guinevere drove the final nail into the coffin of her old life and pushed Fitzalbert, Lord Wensleydale, back into the water.