We stop mid-step, still close, both of us breathless. His hand lingers against the small of my back. I don’t move away. My hand is still pressed to his chest, bunched in the fabric of his tunic, and I can feel the hard, uneven pound of his heartbeat beneath it. His eyes flick to my lips, then stay there long enough to send a rush of heat through me that has nothing to do with the fire.
I tighten my grip without meaning to.
His head dips lower, slow enough that I feel every inch of distance vanishing between us. The rest of the world blurs at the edges, voices and laughter fading beneath the rush of blood in my ears. I know he’s giving me time to pull away.
I don’t.
“It’s time!” Rhian’s shout cuts through the moment.
A low sound rumbles through Taliesin’s chest, something caught between frustration and amusement. For a moment, neither of us moves. Then he steps back, slowly enough that his fingers drag against my spine before slipping away entirely.
Together, we move toward the ledge with the others. Gethin and Brioc are already waiting there beside two rebels I haven’t met yet. They’re gripping the harp’s curved frame to anchor it against the gusting wind now that the ropes have been removed.
Gethin settles before the harp, his long fingers brushing the strings like a test, while Brioc steps beside him with an unfurled scroll clasped in one hand. The others around us fall silent almost immediately.
Then Gethin plays.
The first note rings out low and clear, trembling through the night air with a strange, aching beauty. Another follows, then another, the ethereal melodycascading through the quiet darkness.
My breath catches. I know this song.
Not truly. Not enough to place it. But I’ve heard fragments of it before, hummed low beneath Taliesin’s breath beside the fire, or from the firebird’s aching melody. I knew there was something about it then, but now…. hearing it fully played beneath Gethin’s hands, something inside me twists hard enough to hurt.
Brioc begins to sing from the scroll.
His voice folds into the music, rich and powerful, the ancient words carrying out across the sea. I don’t understand the language, but the sound of it crashes through me anyway, pushing at something buried deep in my mind.
A strange rush of emotion slams into me so suddenly my knees nearly buckle.
Anger. Defiance.Grief.And beneath all of it, woven through every note, a fierce and terrible kind of love.
My heart pounds as thoughts and feelings flicker through me, vivid and disjointed. The urge to fight. To protect. To burn the world down for someone I cannot name.
Then an image flashes through my mind. Taliesin’s face, a crown on his brow, his short hair sweeping across his tipped ears. Then another. Fire raging like an inferno, devouring everything in its path.
Another. The stars—there one moment, gone the next. A firebird’s wings flared across the sparkling constellations.
Beside me, Taliesin goes utterly still.
And then I realize it. The song is making me remember.
From the moment I first heard it, it has been drawing something out of me, bringing back pieces I thought I’d lost. Not just the music, either. The tapestries. The paintings of firebirds on the ceiling. Every work of art reaches inside my mind and pulls at things long hidden.
Artmakes me remember.
And like a starving woman offered her first meal, I become ravenous for it. More songs, more paintings, more poems, morelife.
A faint shimmer ripples around the harp strings, so brief I almost think I imagined it. But the next chord sends tiny sparks of silver drifting into the darkness. Soft murmurs spread through the crowd as more flickers dance through the air. Flickers that look likestars.
Hope rises so fast in my chest it nearly hurts.
Gethin’s hands move faster across the strings. Brioc’s voice swells, echoing against the cliffs with enough force to rattle the stones beneath our feet. Then the light suddenly vanishes.
The music falters. Brioc lowers the scroll slowly, his expression tightening as Gethin’s hands still against the strings. Above us, the sky remains dark and empty.
Despair rises within me. It didn’t work.
35
