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Chapter Five

Daeros—the plains

We abandon our camp and ride hard east after Indridi, into the burgeoning dawn.

The wind sears cold past my ears, choking all my breath away.

My heart beats, beats, an erratic rhythm.

Saga rides beside me, frantic in her anguish.

Vil rides ahead, grim as the goddess of death, flanked by Pala and Leifur.

“How do you know?” Saga had asked Pala, desperate in her denial in the flaring lantern light. “How do you know Indridi is an Iljaria spy?”

“Because she rode east, Your Highness, as fast as her horse would take her, and when she glanced back and saw me, she threw flames from her hands. Why would she do that, if she were not an Iljaria spy? How would she do it?”

She wouldn’t. Because Skaandans don’t wield fire magic. That was enough of an answer, for Saga.

So we pound on after her, our horses’ hooves tearing into the earth.

We see Indridi in the distance as the sun lips above the rim of the world—she’s sparking red.

But for all her magic, her horse has none, and she’s driven it too hard.

The animal stumbles. Indridi slides from its back and turns to face us.

Fire burns in both her palms; it does not hurt her.

I blink and see Dagmar, the Iljaria boy from Kallias’s Collection who was there when I first arrived. Even at nine years old, Dagmar was a master of his fire magic, and Kallias feared him. I was eleven when Kallias slit his throat and dumped his body in the Sea of Bones.

Flames curl up into Indridi’s hair as the rest of us slide from our mounts and pace toward her. Vil draws his sword, and Saga just stares at her friend, openly weeping. I am sick through to my core.

The fire burns away the black of Indridi’s hair, until her curls are white and gleaming, her brows and lashes, too. She lifts her chin, her eyes locked hard on Vil’s.

“I should have known,” he says, voice harsh and unyielding as stone. “I should have known no natural person could start such a fire in the rain.”

I fight the urge to be sick in the grass. Heat radiates from Indridi, even from ten feet away.

“I don’t understand,” Saga chokes out. “Ridi, I don’t understand. You’re Skaandan! You’ve served me and my family for a decade. You’re my best friend. You can’t—you can’t—”

Indridi shifts her gaze to Saga, and her fire lessens a little. “I never meant to hurt you, Saga.”

“You dyed your hair,” Saga realizes, staring. “You kept your magic hidden. Why?”

Indridi’s fire lessens yet a little more, and I finally see the fear in her eyes. “I was ordered to,” she whispers.

“By who ?” Vil asks viciously.

Indridi flinches. Flames flare hot once more, crawling up and down her arms, circling her brow like a crown. “The Prism Master.” She sets her chin, but it wobbles. She looks at Vil like her heart is fracturing into infinite pieces.

On either side of Vil, Pala and Leifur draw their swords.

“You were going to report to him,” says Vil. “Somehow meeting the Iljaria on the road yesterday was your signal to go.”

“Yes.”

“Your mission is ended now?”

Indridi is shaking. Saga half collapses against me, and I struggle to hold her upright. She gasps for air. I try to breathe with her, breathe for her.

“I have a duty to my people,” says Indridi, voice shrill and high. “The mountain does not belong to Skaanda. It belongs to the Iljaria.”

“And what would your Prism Master think to do about it, seeing as he doesn’t believe in war?”

“Don’t mock me, Vil!” Indridi cries. “You have your beliefs. I have mine.”

“ You do not have the right ,” he grinds out, “to use my name.”

Tears drip down Indridi’s cheeks. They turn to steam.

Leifur flicks his eyes to Vil, who gives a sharp nod. Leifur strides forward and grasps Indridi’s shoulder, flinching for only a moment before her flames die out altogether.

She sags in the grass. She looks small, vulnerable, her white hair stained orange in the light of the rising sun. Smoke coils up from her fingertips.

Vil approaches her, every line of him hard as steel. “Indridi Hellir, you are charged with high treason against the crown of Skaanda. I sentence you to death.”

“No!” I shriek, lunging forward only to be caught by Pala and held forcibly back.

“There is nothing you could do or say to change this,” the soldier tells me. Her voice is quiet and filled with regret.

Saga weeps on the ground.

Indridi raises her tearstained face, a hardness coming into her that rattles me to my core. “You do not have the power to deal out death to the daughter of a First One, Vilhjalmur Stjornu,” she says. “I answer only to my people, and it is to them I surrender myself now.”

She wrenches out of Leifur’s grasp, and flames begin to dance along her arms. The fire runs up her neck and down to her feet, singes the grass where she stands. It pulses hotter and hotter, so that Leifur tugs Vil back, lest he be burned.

Pala releases me, and I stand and watch in sick, helpless horror as Indridi is wreathed all in flame, tongues of fire licking greedily at her hair, making her skin bubble and crack. She gives one long, high scream, and there comes a flash of red so bright that for a moment I am blinded.

There is the stench of burning flesh, the reek of smoke, and the rattle of bones, and when my vision clears, Indridi is gone, reduced to ashes by the power of her own magic.

I collapse to the ground, where Saga kneels shrieking, and I think I must be screaming, too.

Tears blur my vision and everything reeks of death and this must be a nightmare except I don’t wake and every time I look to the place Indridi was standing there is only ash and shards of bone, gleaming white.

Somehow, eventually, we ride back to our camp, pack everything up, and start again on the northern road. We let Indridi’s horse go free.

We ride through the day and some hours into the night before stopping again. Leifur builds the fire and hands out rations from the packs, but it seems no one has the stomach to eat anything. I certainly don’t.

Saga sits close beside me in front of the fire, her eyes wet with fresh tears. “I don’t understand,” she says, helpless and hollow. “How could she be Iljaria? All this time? Spying on us and scheming, pretending to be my friend and pretending to admire Vil—”

“I don’t think she was pretending those things, Saga,” I say dully. “I think she genuinely cared for you.”

“That makes it even worse.” Her voice breaks.

“I know.” Everything hurts, and I want to crawl into my bedroll and surrender myself to the bliss of unconsciousness, but I am afraid Indridi’s ending will follow me into my dreams. I am afraid I will never be able to think of anything else.

Saga hugs me close for a few long moments, then gets up and goes to bed. I stay sitting by the fire, watching the smoke coil up, trying to comprehend the fact that Indridi is gone .

Vil comes to crouch beside me, and I fight off the tears stinging my eyes.

“You were going to kill her,” I accuse him. “Right there on the plains.”

His face is racked with agony. “She knew everything , Brynja. The inner workings of the palace. Our plot to take Daeros and the Skaandan army’s paths through the tunnels.

Everything. She was a horrible risk to us, and with her fire magic, how could we even restrain her? What other choice did I have?”

My insides are writhing and my heart is fractured. “But would you really have done it?”

“I would do anything I have to, to ensure the safety of my people and the success of our mission.” Firelight traces the line of his jaw.

He looks utterly sick, and adds quietly: “Indridi certainly didn’t have much faith in the concept of my mercy.

She thought that ... that dying that way, at her own hand, was better.

” He shudders and shudders, and I try to ignore the sour twist of my stomach.

Vil tips his head onto my shoulder, and we sit like that for a while, both of us trying to remember how to breathe.

When at last I crawl into my bedroll, I lie for a while in the dark before sleep pulls me under, traced with the scent of smoke and the sound of Indridi’s scream.