I scrambled from the bed, my breath hitching in fear, which only prompted more coughs. Smoke was beginning to billow up the stairs in waves, dark and gray, and I pulled up the hem of the tunic I’d been sleeping in, covering my nose and mouth. Heat, unlike anything I’d felt before, was funneling up toward me.
I needed to get out of here andfast.
Instead of freezing, the terror pushed me into action. I scrambled down the open stairs, my feet falling onto the hot stones. Pain registering, I hissed but kept going. Adrenaline pumped through me. When I reached the bottom floor, I saw the walls were on fire. The prep counter, the table, the chairs.
The smoke was so thick here that I could barely make out the door, and even through the cloth covering my nose, I hacked. Deep, wrenching coughs. The heat wassearing. I tasted blood on my tongue. I would burn my lungs if I didn’t escape. It was too hot. I’d never feltanythingthis hot.
Stumbling my way to the front door, I tugged on the handle…but then released it with a cry, my palm burning. Draped over the back of the kitchen chair, my father’s cloak wasn’t yet consumed in flames, and I tugged it off, patting off the embers that had begun to eat at the hem. I used it on the handle of the door, pushing with all my might—
But it wouldn’t budge. Not a single inch. As if something heavy was blocking it from the outside. I cried out, gritting my teeth, throwing my entire weight into the frame. Metal was beginning to melt—Ruaala’s designs—sliding off the wood like condensation on a glass. It burned my exposed flesh, but I continued to slam my body into the door. My heartbeat was a fluttering, wild thing in my chest, and as I tried to catch my breath, smoke wound down my throat so deep I couldn’t get air.
Dropping to the ground where the smoke wasn’t as dense, I dragged in violent, rasping breaths. Tears dripped down my cheek, but it wasn’t because I was crying. The smoke was stinging them until they felt bloodshot and raw.
I might die here,came the sudden realization.
The stone floor was burning my kneecaps and shins where I was kneeling.
The windows.
Pushing up sluggishly from the floor, I kept low, keeping my tunic pressed to my nose. When I flicked the latch open and pressed at the glass, the window wouldn’t move. Brow furrowing, I banged at the pane, thinking it was stuck…until I saw large bolts pinned on the outer ledge frame—a frame I had just repaired yesterday. Bolts I didn’t recognize, that hadn’t been there this morning.
Using my father’s cloak to protect my fist, I pounded at the glass, though I knew that it was impossibly thick. I didn’t think I could break it, and my damn tools were outside in the front garden. I only had knives in here, and even the sharpened blades wouldn’t be able to puncture glass.
Just then I heard a loudcrack, the ceiling giving a mighty shake, dust falling from the wood beams overhead.
Oh gods,I thought. How long until they burned?
“Millie!”
A guttural roar nearly shook the cottage.
My breath hitched, hope and desperation mingling tightly together.
“Kythel!” I called back before I dissolved into body-wracking coughs once again. My voice was too weak. I felt like I could barely hear it over the blood rushing in my own ears. “Ky-Kythel, I’m here!”
I screamed when I heard another thunderousboomfrom above, when one of the wooden beams cracked and fell to the ground. Shaking, gasping, I eyed another beam as the ceiling began to cave in, the falling debris shooting the flames even higher as they lapped at the fresh material.
“Millie!”
So close. He sounded so close. But I felt sluggish, trying to crawl back toward the door. I couldn’t get enough air.
The door gave a sudden violent rattle.
Then it was practically torn off its hinges, and I heard the whistle of oxygen just before the fire seemed to explode in size and intensity.
Kythel was a blur, snatching me up into his arms quickly as another wooden beam crashed to the ground. He shot us both out of the cottage just as the rest of the ceiling caved in on the ground floor, feeding the ravenous fire below.
The clean, cold air that rushed down my throat made me hack until I felt like I would cough up both of my lungs. Kythel took us nearly to the edge of the clearing, leaning me back against one of the bleeding trees.
“Are you hurt,sasiral?” came his roughened demand. “Where are you hurt?”
He was running his hands over me in the darkness—tremblinghands, I realized when I was finally able to control my cough—and I hissed when he encountered the burns on my legs.
“Azur!” Kythel yelled into the clearing. Azur? His brother was here? “Go to Erzan and get the healer!”
But then I heard the whistle of wings as another Kylorr took to the sky.
Kythel’s voice sounded different. Deeper. Gruffer. And when I finally blinked away the tears from my eyes, I saw he was changed too. His vest hung off his body in tatters. The blue of his eyes were so bright they were almost glowing. He was barefoot, his seams at the sides of his pants popped open.
