Prologue
For many, my birth meant death. It meant drowning in the rain I called with my first breath. Corpses were swept away in a ceaseless flood, left to bloat and rot, or devoured by sea creatures or wayward sirens. Their lives were stolen as mine was starting.
I was the beginning that brought the end, as the Fidra say.
When I was young, my mother used to tell me stories. She mademea story. She spoke of a girl with eyes like rainclouds and sea mist, a girl with the power to summon the greatest storm our people have ever known. She had this way of glossing over the ugliness, of making things beautiful. It was many years before I realized that this story,mystory, is not beautiful, and that the girl, thatI, must be twisted, wicked, cursed.
Blaze is my given name. My mother thought I was Flameborn, and of course she did. Every Harglade inherits fire flickering at their fingertips, searing through their veins, burning bright at their core. Harglade fire is ancient fire, rare and pure and uncontaminated, preserved down the generations by the careful crossing of Ignitia bloodlines. When I was born, she thought the prayers of her House answered. Only they weren’t. Or at least, not by me.
The moment my twin brother was pulled from our mother’s body, every candle, torch and hearth was set alight. Flint. Flameborn.
And then there was me. Small, scrawny, with strange eyes and a strong set of lungs. Yet still no one suspected a thing. Why would they? Who would have thought that I, my mother’s daughter, a pure-blooded descendant of the Fire Goddess Vesta herself, could ever be anything other than a child of flame?
Then the storm came.
Rain pelted stained glass like an iron-tipped whip, streaming in great sheets, stirring up the sea which rose to meet it.
This wasn’t any ordinary rain – it didn’t stop.
The storm grew and grew, spreading across the realm, flooding each and every province, drowning Etheri and Fidra alike. The ocean began to rise. Rivers burst their banks. Lakes bled on to land. Still, the rain fell.
I sometimes wonder how long my mother was able to convince herself that it was impossible, that it was merecoincidencethat a storm had been called down upon the earth the instant her daughter was placed upon her chest. I wonder at what point the doubt began to crawl up her spine.
After countless days, as the world was starving, drowning, dying, when she could stand it no longer, my mother turned to face the truth that loomed behind her like a shadow. She plucked me from my cradle in the dead of night and walked out into the storm. She conjured a flame to light her way, but no sooner had it unfurled in her palm than it was doused. She tried again and again. But it was no use.
My storm swallowed her fire.
My mother made it to the very top of the tallest cliff, the sea heaving beneath her, the sky weeping above. She told me that I held out a tiny hand and closed it into a fist, as if I were grasping a handful of the storm and keeping it, like a secret. And just as it had started, the rain stopped. She who called the storm quelled the storm.
Me.
The story begins and ends with me.
I have many names. Or rather, I am known by many. I don’t think of them as mine. My names belong to the people who use them. Those who spit them in anger, whisper them in fear, sing them in prayer. Those who mouth them to one another, too afraid to speak them aloud, or mutter them softly during tales told by candlelight.
The last Rain Singer.
The Aquatori, Etheri with the power to manipulate water, have legends about the Rain Singers. They could turn the brightest days grey. They could end droughts, quench wildfires. But there was never a Singer who summoned a storm like mine.
Gods’ damned.
That one’s particularly uplifting.
Murderer.
I didn’t mean to flood the empire. I was a newborn baby, after all. But those who died, died because of me. So I suppose I’ll have to take that one on the chin.
Changeling.
The name given to a Rain Singer born into a House as pure as flame. The first Aquatori in generations of Ignitia.
Freak.
It drips like venom from the lips of those brave enough to say it. Sometimes I hear the attendants whisper it in the hallways when they think I’m not around.
Names have teeth. They bite right to the bone.
But there’s this other name, one from which I can never escape, one that is seared on to my skin like the brandmark on the back of my hand.
