“Tarek was telling me about this. Damn, what did he call it?” Declan rubs a hand through the scruff on his jaw. “The Festival of the First Flame. Something about celebrating the monarchy.” He shrugs. “We were about to go onstage. I wasn’t listening all that well.”
Something about the pageantry makes my stomach knot. The perfect rows of offerings lining the raised platform. The way groups rehearse chants word for word. The rigid smiles stretched across people’s faces. It looks less like joy and more like a rally I once saw in a documentary—flags waving, speeches roaring, everyone pretending to be grateful because the cost of doubt was too high.
It isn’t joy. It’s control woven through the air like invisible thread.
“It doesn’t look very celebratory,” I mumble, and my lip curls before I can stop it.
“Careful,” a voice murmurs behind me.
I turn to find a boy no older than Nessa carrying a basket of fig tarts. His bright green eyes flick from my face to the dais. “Best not wear such a look,” he warns. “Eyes are quick to notice, mouths quicker still to speak.”
Heat spikes across my cheeks. “I wasn’t—”
“You were.” He nods to the basket and lifts it up between us. “Take one. If your mouth is full, no one may claim you forgot your lines.”
I take a tart, sugar sticking to my fingers, and the boy slips away into the crowd as quietly as he appeared.
Declan drifts closer. “Making another friend?”
“Making sure I don’t get us executed,” I mutter, biting into the tart. It tastes like ash under all that sugar.
Tarek barrels up behind us and seizes Declan’s shoulders with both hands. “Flaming arrows!” he booms, shaking him. “First to strike the bull’s-eye shall be declared victor and supplied with mead for the whole of the four-day festival! What nobler tribute could there be to the Great Families who delivered us from lawlessness?”
Declan’s gaze cuts toward the practice area where guards and others taking a break from setting up the festivities dip arrowheads into open flames then loose them at straw targets painted with red and black rings. Fire streaks across the air before thunking into hay, sparks and smoke spiraling upward.
He lifts a brow. “Is there a climbing option? I was never good at archery.”
“Come! You will enjoy it.” Tarek claps him on the back. “Almost as much as I shall enjoy the endless supply of mead.”
Before Declan can protest further, Tarek drags him toward the targets. Cinder bolts in the opposite direction, wisely uninterested in flaming arrows, and Fennel trots after her.
I spot Nessa in the crowd and call out to her. She hurries over, saffron skirts swirling, cheeks flushed, and presses a basket into my arms.
“How pleased I am to see you. You must help with the shrine,” she insists, nodding toward the raised dais swathed in garlands. “The queens and the ancestors of the Great Families must be honored before sunset, and we are already behind becausesomeone”—her glare slices toward Celine, who yawns and flicks a speck of sand from her dress—“did not harvest the sunflowers. And with no camels left to fetch them from the Everspring we are forced to make do without a symbol of loyalty and devotion.”
“Lavender and rosemary,” I suggest, peering into the basket of marigold and daisy garlands.
Her blue eyes brighten. “By the gods, yes! You are brilliant.”
She links her arm through mine and sweeps me into the shrine’s preparations.
The dais brims with offerings: copper basins filled with water where chrysanthemums float beside flickering tea lights, bowls of figs stacked like pyramids, garlands wound around the wooden posts until they gleam gold and white and green. Women sit cross-legged in the sand, weaving crowns of dried flowers from two greatmounds spilled onto the ground, stacking them into precarious towers that sway in the breeze.
I kneel beside Nessa as we untangle a stubborn garland from the basket. “How’s your fire eating coming?”
“The Player says my flame control is stronger than most apprentices.” She grins. “And when I sang at our last rehearsal, she noted how my voice carries even over the drums.”
“You’re a singer?”
“Since I was small,” she admits, tugging the garland free with a triumphant nod. “My first audience was our goats. Now I sing for the queens.”
A ripple of unease stirs in my gut. “Won’t spitting fire damage your voice?”
Nessa shrugs, careless as only a sixteen-year-old can be. “What is a little discomfort to destiny? Besides, I can’t dwell on what hasn’t happened. I must do as you do and think positively.”
Dav’s warning rings in my head—reckless advice, dangerous encouragement. I almost tell her to slow down, to guard herself with more than words and thoughts. But the sparkle in her eyes stops me. This is what she wants. Who am I to strip it away?
“You’ll shine brighter than anyone out there,” I say instead, stringing the garland around a post.
