“Tell me what you saw.” I gather all my fury, all my desperation as I command her, “Tell me what the book showed you.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Maxim
Iwake with a roar, scorching flames bursting around me.
Fire beats against the walls of my underground cave, searing the rock in every direction. My body’s heat floods the air, but it’s the least of my concerns.
The Oracle’s voice cries in my mind, stunningly urgent, a near-scream demanding my attention.
Yet her elusive form is like a dream I can’t grasp, and the harder I try to hold on, the faster she escapes me.
Lurching up onto my knees, I roar into the fire, “What are you trying to tell me?”
Her voice screams, “Darkness! My heart… It hurts…”
My fire fades, and so do her words, leaving me surrounded by smoldering rock and smoke-filled air and a silence that deafens me.
I slump forward, my shoulders hunched, my hands planted on the cave floor, my body as scorching hot as the stone beneath me.
Final ripples of fire radiate through my bones before the silence becomes complete, leaving my mind to churn.
I don’t understand how I heard her just now. For that matter, I don’t know how I connected with her yesterday.
I wasn’t dreaming then, and now I ask myself: If I hadn’t been sleeping just now, would I have seen and heard her more clearly?
I always sleep during the hottest part of the day. All my people do. When the sun scorches the sand, even Ember Fae must escape to the cool caverns beneath the desert’s surface.
Well, except for me. I can roam the dunes when the sun’s heat would strip the flesh from other fae’s bones. I choose to sleep when my people sleep because it’s a connection to normalcy. An illusion to sustain the belief that I can carve out a life like theirs.
Now, I berate myself for it.
If I’d been awake, I might have heard what the Oracle was trying to tell me.
If nothing else, her cries have reinforced my greatest challenge: I don’t have a hope of wresting her from Antony’s control if I can’t keep her safe from my flames.
I spent nearly all of last night putting together a plan, starting with considering each of the Iron Kingdom’s weakest southern points I could infiltrate.
I’ll have to travel on foot because my serpent will be seen and intercepted in the air, but if I go alone and move quietly from village to village, I’m certain I can make it all the way to the Starlit City without detection. From there, I can figure out how to take the Oracle from Antony’s control.
No matter how well I plan, it’s my fire that will be my undoing.
For that, I have a solution.
I just haven’t wanted to risk it until now.
With a snarl of determination, I lurch to my feetcompletely naked and stumble along the narrow, meandering tunnel that leads to the cave’s entrance.
I draw a sharp breath at how molten the rock walls have become and how far my fire has extended.
This corridor stems my fire and stops it from reaching any other tunnels within the underground city, where my people spend much of their time. But the charring on the walls tells me my fire traveled much further than it has before.
My power’s getting worse. But I fucking knew that already.
It takes me a full five minutes to reach the outer cave closer to the surface, where I store my clothing and armor.
I choose my most inconspicuous options—high boots, long pants, long sleeves, along with a cowl, hood, and face mask. It’s the same garb my people wear, and, in this clothing, I can disappear into any crowd. Unrecognizable.
