“Run.”
The word was only a whisper. The fire—the magic—was so strong here. Too strong. Her belly warmed and she bent over, collapsing in on herself under the weight of the magic. It was here. Beneath them. Poised to erupt.
Her knees collided with the wood of the platform. He turned toward her. She wanted to scream, but the magic burned it out of her. She lifted her head and met the eyes of the lone guard. Wrinkling her nose, she coughed but forced herself to keep eye contact with the guard. She rubbed at her throat, her nose, anything to make the heat fade, to make the imaginary smoke in her lungs dissipate, but it was no use.
Run, run, run, she pleaded, shouting her thoughts at him with every second his gaze remained locked on hers.
His eyes widened, recognizing her fear but nothing more.
A word, just one word, was all she needed. She dredged it up, protecting it as it surged past her searing throat and over her boiling tongue.
“Fire,” she rasped.
And then the fire she felt was real.
It roared vengeance into the world. Flames sprouted under their feet like hungry vines, twisting and snarling.
Something hit Nes hard in the side, and she was flung from the platform. She was in the air, falling, when the whole thing exploded. Planks and splinters—scorched and burning—pricked and sliced every bit of her exposed skin as the cobblestones loomed closer. She hit the ground, smacking her head, and pain lashed down her limbs, makingher eyelids heavy. Her head felt like a boulder. She fought the darkness back. Fought to see through the fire, the debris, the smoke, still searching for the one responsible.
Through it all she caught a glimpse of a face. Eyes darker than a moonless night stared back at her. Nes couldn’t look away. Those eyes…In them, she saw a fire far stronger, far greater, than the one burning around them.
The fire consuming them wasn’t the magic’s twisted perversion of this person’s emotion. No, this devastation was exactly what they’d wanted.
7
Nes
Nes’s eyes were shut, but she could see clearly.
A young boy with brown hair stood in a field of wildflowers. Beyond the small curves of his shoulders, snowcapped mountains peaked. Around him colors flowed like water over a creek bed. Blues and yellows and pinks and reds. The whole field in full bloom.
It was the boy’s brown hair that told Nes this was not her memory. If it were, the boy would have had hair as black and deep as the mane of a wild Barren stallion and eyes like ocean storm clouds. The boy before her had neither of those features.
Words fell from Nes’s lips, but she could not hear them. The boy could. And the boy laughed, his eyes squinting against the pure joy bursting from him like one might squint against the might of the sun.
The scene froze on the boy’s laugh, and Nes felt the world rising back up to meet her. Felt the cobblestones beneath her harden, heard the screams of onlookers and the crackle of flames.
When she opened her eyes, her head felt lighter, but her body felt heavy. The taste of fire had retreated to cowering ashes on her tongue.
The sun was still high in the sky, but a shadow blocked out the light. The shadow grunted, groaning with a pain of its own. It lifted, and a face stared down at her.
“Are you okay?” the lone guard asked.
His face hovered close to her own. She’d felt the rough scrape of the little hairs jutting from his chin and jawline against her neck. The stubble accentuated his lips, which competed with his eyes as his most appealing feature.
His lids were cloaked under the shadows of thick brows, but the color surrounding his pupils was pure enough to challenge the Goddess’s most devout follower. The color akin to a perfect brown eggshell—somehow both light and deep.
She blinked again, at last recognizing the restraining weight for what it was. The guard was on top of her. He’d thrown them both from the platform then shielded her with his body.
“Fine,” she whispered.
He still didn’t move, staring at her like she’d put on a spectacular show. She stared right back. Her heart beat faster.
She squirmed beneath him, and he startled, as if he’d forgotten he lay over her. He jumped to his feet, apologies dribbling from his lips like the juices of a ripe peach. He held a hand out, and she took it.
The air around them was thick with smoke. She moved through it as the sky began to drink it in, the wind calling the smoke away with one sharp whistle. Fire crackled, snapping at the air and biting hungrily into the remains of the wooden planks. But even as she watched, she realized the flames couldn’t hold on; a few flickered out.
It was just fire now—the magic had already slithered away. And with it, so had the person who’d wielded it.
