Phoenix Heart

Season Two

Episode Two

“City of Secrets”

Sarah K. L. Wilson

Copyright 2021

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Note to the Reader:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Behind the Scenes:

OTHER BOOK SERIES BY SARAH K. L. WILSON

Note to the Reader:

Phoenix Heart is a series very much like your favorite streaming tv. There are seasons and episodes. These episodes are designed to be read in roughly two hours, though fast readers will read more quickly and those of you who really like to absorb the story may take longer. They’re intended to be fast-paced, exciting, and they release frequently so that you can keep up with the story even if you have a very busy schedule. Perfect for lunch breaks, a single evening of enjoyment, or younger readers who like bite-sized chunks, this story will keep you wanting more.

I’d like to also offer you a prequel short story for free download when you join my subscribers.

Also of note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Enjoy!

Chapter One

Saffron, fish, river water, perfumes, sweat.

The scents of the city were nothing I’d experienced before. Gone was the fresh sharpness of the forest around my village. Gone the simple, individual smells of the smithy – acidic metal and smoke – or the fishmonger – fish – or the baker – bread – or the inn – soup and beer. Here in this mass of people, the scents tangled and mixed and distracted me in an uproarious stew of humanity.

My cousin tugged me into the mass of people filling the streets, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed. The city suited her. I’d never seen her look so much herself. It made me feel a twinge of something – guilt? Wistfulness? She couldn’t stay here. Not when she was ai’sletta and destined to somehow save the world from a threat we didn’t fully understand. And yet, I could tell this was her kind of place. The sort of place where a girl who thrived on drama and willful certainty could flourish.

Alarm mixed with wonder was in every voice we passed. Mally’s eyes twinkled as she watched people stop and stare at the sky and I knew that she was thinking, “I did that.”

To one side, a hawker cried he had amulets and talismans to hold back the wrath of heaven and to the other, another man called that the temple would receive all who wished to assuage their consciences with a sum of silver or copper. Each of them looked different from the next. While I was brown – brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, these two were opposite either direction. One was shaded the palest of ivories flushed with pink and the other was the darkest hue I’d seen in a man. It wouldn’t be a problem blending in here. Even Mally’s green eyes and cropped chestnut hair had matches in the crowd. I felt both relieved and worried about that. How would Judicus find us if he arrived in the city? Our descriptions wouldn’t help to locate us. We shouldn’t stray too far.

Someone seized me by the free arm and shook me – an elderly woman swathed in colorful scarves, her eyes ringed in fine lines.

“Did you see it, girl? The sky turned black as pitch. In the middle of the day. But, of course, you saw it. Lasted for hours. And for the second time, too. You should flee this place, girl. A strong thing like you. Flee, for we’re cursed! The ravens gather to feast on the carcass of Briccatore. Eh? Eh?”

“She’s mute,” Mally said, giving the woman a cynical look. “And she isn’t going to give you a coin so you might as well find someone else to offer gloomy predictions to.”

“Well she’s not blind, is she? She can see we’re in trouble. And who are you?” the woman shot back. “Her keeper?”

Mally gave me a saucy grin. “I suppose I must be. Come along, Sersha.”

And then she was dragging me through the crowd again. People began to tear their eyes from the sky, but I sensed worry in their movements, and they seemed quiet – though together they were still too loud for me. How did anyone live in this chaos? It felt like I couldn’t catch a breath. Every time I did, I knew it was air filtered through hundreds of other lungs and I shuddered.

I watched as a mother hustled little children into a doorway, her glances over her shoulder tight and strained. Saw a hawker begin to pack up his cart with fast hands. I was not the only one on edge.

“So much fuss over a little darkness,” Mally said, rolling her eyes. But she seemed energized by it 0 as if their fear sparked excitement. After all, she’d caused it just by putting on and taking off a crown.

My brow furrowed as I glanced over her. Where had she put the Diadem of Darkness – the crown that had caused all this trouble in the first place?

She tapped her thigh and winked at me, and I realized that without me knowing, she’d slipped it under her shirt and jacket. It made a bulge at her middle, but though I could tell she was hiding something there, I couldn’t tell what it was.

It was standing there, looking at her that I realized what a sight she looked, and she must have thought the same thing about me.

“You’re a wreck,” she said. “And I mean that in whatever way most indicates that you look like a ship moldering at the bottom of the sea. We need to find an inn and get cleaned up. No one will talk to us like this. And I’m assuming there’s someone here we want to talk to, right?”

I nodded. But I shot a quick glance the way we came and made signs to Mally. I wanted to go back and wait for Judicus and Gundt.

“Nonsense,” she said. “They’ll find us.”

I signed to say that I thought that unlikely given the size of the city and that we should wait where we landed. Reasoning with Mally always took patience and repetition.

“You’re such a bore, Sersha. I’m not waiting for them, and you should know I think they’re trouble. We’re better off on our own.”

She tugged at me, but I stood my ground. We were starting to draw attention out here in the street arguing. I saw more than one person with wide eyes staring at us as they passed. Mally must have noticed because she licked her lips nervously.

“Look. You must know some step we have to take here, right? Someone we need to talk to? Something we need to do?”

I nodded. Was she really agreeing to help do something useful without being coerced into it?

“And we can’t do it when we draw every eye to what a shambles we are.”

I shrugged. She did have a point. We were already drawing attention.

“And if your ‘friends’ are worth anything they can probably find you on their own. And if they can’t, then I’d still help you, only I’ll be a lot happier because they won’t be around to complicate things,” she said, tugging me toward a door that was a small inn based on the bed carved into the swinging sign. Beside it – so tight they shared a wall – was a dry goods store. “Besides, we’re pressed for time. I’d say we have a few days here at most before hell rains down on this city and I’d like to be gone by then, wouldn’t you?”

And she did have a point. I’d seen the enemies closing in as well as she had and soon – very soon – the raiders would storm across Briccatore and the city would be enmired in war. We had very little time to find the Grand Hadri’s spies.

I nodded my agreement and to my surprise, she smiled.

“It’s really not that hard to just stay out of my way, Sersha. If you’d done that from the start, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Which was really the opposite of the truth. I glanced warily back toward the river and hoped Judicus and Gundt were alive and headed this way. I didn’t want to leave them. I didn’t want to do this with only Mally for company. But it seemed I didn’t have a choice.

Chapter Two   

To my shock, Mally had coins. Where she had found them or how – I did not ask, I simply followed her silently as she bought me a plain, serviceable dress of charcoal wool and herself a somewhat nicer dress in cherry red wool from the dry goods store along with a pair of linen shifts for each of us and a small sewing kit.

I watched her, wide-eyed. This practical Mally who had the foresight to steal coins from her captors and then use them for sensible things was not a Mally I recognized. I liked it.

I followed her from there to the inn where she purchased us a very tiny room – more of a closet really – for the night, a bath each, and a dinner of chicken stew.

“We can afford to spend one night here before we save the world,” she told me as we crowded into the tiny room together. We couldn’t both stand at once, but there were two beds under the peaked thatch roof and a window at one end of the room that least kept it from being panic-inducing. “I’ll take the first bath. You can start on fitting the dresses.”

We both had history stitching our own clothing and altering them as needed. A girl didn’t grow up in a tiny town without learning the basics, so I carefully set to work as she left for the baths, stitching to take in the bust and hips on the dress she’d bought for me and letting them out on the dress she’d bought for herself. They were good quality and warm and would wear well and I had to admit that it would be nice to have a change of clothing again. I’d lost everything in the flurry of the last few days, and I was dirty and ragged. The hem of my dress was torn from flight.

I paused, looking at it as memories of the ruined city and the stone octopus flooded back. Would it come here or would it wait at the temple like Judicus thought it would? I missed him in an almost physical way. He always knew what to do next. He always had a plan. Even when we were apart I had been working to get back to wherever he was. Working on something without him felt like a betrayal and it sat uncomfortably inside me like a greasy dinner.

Eventually, though, I set my worried thoughts aside. Even I had to admit that a bath and a hot meal couldn’t hurt if we were about to start running again. It had been a long time since I’d had either.

Besides, as long as it was day, I was stuck here without Kazmerev or any idea where to start in looking for the Grand Hadri’s spy network. He’d given me a name and told me to go to the palace and look for the Crown and Seal. But how would I get in? And how would I explain myself when I couldn’t speak or write? Solving that problem would take time and thought.

I also had to find Judicus’ family and warn them to flee. But I didn’t know where they would be either. I was chewing the inside of my cheek worrying about that when Mally returned, snatched the red dress from my hands, and proceeded to dress, throwing her old clothes in a heap in the corner.

“I should have bought a comb,” she muttered as she combed through her hair. “After your bath, we’ll go see the city and if you have any idea where we need to go, you can tell me then.”

I waited to agree, but she didn’t look up, so after a moment I left to find the inn’s baths. The frustrating thing about Mally was that she never listened to anyone but herself. And it seemed that despite everything she’d gone through, she’d decided to keep being that way. If she didn’t want to listen to me, she’d just ignore my signs or refuse to look at me. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Resigned, I found the steaming room where the baths were kept warm by serving girls and I stripped down to bathe.

It wasn’t until I was in the water that I noticed something hanging from my neck. Surprised, I lifted it to inspect, as the waters lapped around me. It was a medallion on the end of what appeared to be a gold chain. The medallion was also gold, tarnished where it was engraved with a small mouse holding a spear, and around the rim were words. I could not read them, but I did pick out some of the letters Gundt had taught me. Three words. Almost all the same size. The first started with an “M.” Maybe it said mouse.

I blinked back tears, feeling forlorn, as I watched it spin in the air, dangling from the chain. I’d never had such an expensive – or odd – piece of jewelry in my life. And it looked just exactly like the one who’d given it to me. Only Judicus would wear a medallion with a mouse on it, and only he would choose one who also bore a spear. It was both ridiculous and somewhat endearing – just like him. And for some reason, just looking at it made my chest feel tight and my eyes tear up.

They’d survive the caves, wouldn’t they?

I could only hope they would.

The door opened and shut, and I glanced up to see a serving girl come in and then another female guest – the bathing rooms were, fortunately, divided for men and women.

I went back to studying the medallion before finally shaking my head and scrubbing myself from top to bottom before turning to clean my dress with the same water. Waste not, want not. I’d need the old dress as backup, even if I had a new one to change into.

I was just dressing when I heard a whisper in my ear.

“Midnight. In the stable.”

I spun, but all I saw was the edge of a skirt leaving the room. I dropped the dress I was cleaning and hurried to the door, looking out into the hall, but in the gust of steam that came out of the bathing room, I could see nothing. Whoever had spoken to me was gone.  

Chapter Three

Mally had insisted we go out immediately.

“The stew won’t be ready for an hour and there’s no point wasting time here. What are we looking for, anyway?”

I indicated we would be looking for the palace and she smirked. “Really? You want to go to the palace when you know there’s going to be an attack on it at any moment.”

I signed that perhaps we should warn the guard and she scoffed. “Absolutely not. I think we both know we can’t trust authorities anymore. Our best bet is not to be noticed and to get on with whatever thing we need to do to save the world. You say it’s over the sea, right?”

I nodded.

It was on the stairs that I noticed the first strange thing, though I thought little of it at the time.

A maid carrying a large load of wash tripped on the top step, dropping her basket. It flew through the air and landed right-side-up at the bottom of the stairs. Meanwhile, she cartwheeled down the stairs, screaming as she went, and landed on her bottom right in the laundry basket. Everyone froze, hearts in our chests, breath stoppered in our lungs. It wasn’t until she groaned and picked herself up again that we let out our breath and carried on.

I thought it was just a coincidence. A strange thing that happened for no reason.

We were back on the street when I saw the next thing like it.

Mally pushed through shoals of people toward where the buildings rose higher, and the crowds grew thicker. Red sunset glows surrounded everyone and with them, little bursts of hope flared in my heart. Soon it would be dark, and I would get to see Kazmerev again. I couldn’t wait.

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted his confidence that we could do this. Most of all, I needed him to help me make this plan.

“I don’t see why we aren’t looking for a ship if we have to cross the sea,” Mally said but she kept pushing forward. And she was right. We would need a ship, but first, we needed to find the contact the Grand Hadri had sent me for.

I was glancing in the direction of the dock when I saw the second strange thing. A man carrying a wooden box stumbled on a stone no bigger than my thumb. He lost the crate and for a moment seemed to be held in the air and then he fell to the side just as a cart went by and somehow – unbelievably – he tangled in the harness of the oxen. There was a terrible snapping sound, and someone screamed.

I didn’t realize I’d frozen, staring horrified at the people rushing to pull his lifeless body from the tangle of cart and harness until Mally tugged on my arm.

“Come on,” she said, looking a little green. “We can’t do anything for him. Bad luck, don’t you think? It’s like the opposite of what happened to the maid.”

And after that, it seemed like coincidences were all I saw. A child plucked a gold coin from a gutter with a cry of delight. Someone else was yelling that his horse had dropped dead in the street, a fine, healthy horse that had been well only moments ago.

It wasn’t until we were nearly at a place called “Triumph Square” – a place I’d heard the Grand Hadri and Judicus mention. Wasn’t it the place where a statue was placed depicting his father in a way he didn’t like? – that Mally had enough.

A woman fell in the street in front of us and to the shock of onlookers, she delivered a baby right there with hardly a gasp. Another woman rushed out of a shop, gathering up mother and babe to be cared for in her home when Mally laid a hand on my arm, a sick expression on her face.

“I think I need to lie down,” she said, her eyes haunted.

I signed a question. Was she hurt? Troubled?

She made a curt dismissing gesture.

“We both need sleep, Sersha. Stop always fighting nature.”

And with that grim explanation, she steered me back the way we’d come through the crowds to the inn where we ate our chicken stew in silence and went to bed in similar silence.

My mind was racing as we lay in the darkness of the small room, side by side. I could hear Mally’s breathing sawing through the air as if she was trying to suppress sobs – until finally, it softened into sleep. What had Mally found so concerning about today’s events that it kept her awake and on the edge of emotional collapse? Did she know something I did not?

I was still troubled when I woke sometime later, and the answer popped into my head. Hadn’t Cassanetta said that the ai’sletta changed luck? What else would you call what we’d seen today but the oddest stream of luck – both good and bad – turning on people? Did Mally realize she might be the source of it?

I shivered at the thought. But even knowing my cousin was likely shifting the course of fate around us, I was even more concerned to see the sun had not set. How was I supposed to keep a midnight appointment if there was no midnight?

I snuck down to the stable anyway, hoping to find the person who had scheduled a meeting with me. Perhaps they would think, as I did, that it was worth meeting even without the sun to tell us it was midnight.

Most of the inn and the hostlers had gone to bed despite the unmoving sun and the horses whickered lightly in their stalls.

I waited. And waited.

And I fell asleep in the straw.

When I woke, someone had stuffed a note in my hand.

For all the good it did me when I couldn’t read it.

The note had one word on it. It started with a “P.”

“P-A-L-A-C-E,” I read in my mind, sounding out each letter as Gundt had taught me. But together they meant nothing. “Pal. Pala. Palakey.” It made no sense.

Frustrated, I returned to my room and slept a few more hours in the bed.

I had lived my whole life silently until a few weeks ago. And I had never felt so alone as I did now. I’d grown spoiled. Used to being listened to. Used to being able to speak in my mind to Kazmerev. Used to being included in everything and now here I was back in the world that excluded me as much as it could.

I did not like it.

I rose frustrated and certain that until I found my phoenix again, I would not be able to rest. It turned out that I needed him more than I’d ever realized.

Chapter Four

It took hours to convince Mally to try to go out into the city again. Hours where she bought us more to eat and then braided her hair elaborately only to pull it loose again.

Eventually, she sighed. “Stop looking at me like a goat I’ve milked, Sersha. We’ll go out and see the sights, if it means so much to you.”

Of course, it wasn’t sightseeing that interested me. It was the chance to find the Grand Hadri’s spies. At any moment, the raiders might invade this city. At any moment, we might be on the run again and before that happened, we needed to find out where we were going. Only they knew that. Only they could confirm the things the Grand Hadri had said to me.

The sky was still red and gold by the time we reached the wall surrounding the palace courtyard. The guard there – his features thrown into stark relief in the bright light – scowled up at the sky but turned his attentions on us the moment we tried to walk through the gate.

“Hold up, now,” he said kindly enough. “What business do you have, mistresses?”

“I’d like to see the palace,” Mally said. “My cousin works in it scrubbing floors. Quiet girl, but good for hard work.”

She shot me a smirk. Clearly, she was drawing on her thoughts about me as she conjured up this cousin. But it was clever enough. It sounded real.

“Servants’ door is around back but they aren’t letting visitors in. I could let you leave a message if you have one.” The guard was kind, gesturing to indicate a small wooden box with a slot on the top.

“I can’t write,” Mally said, but she thrust one hip out and tucked her chin in coyly. “Perhaps you could write for me.”

“I have more important things to do than that, mistress,” the guard said, flushing. I suspected he also could not write. “Best look for her at her residence if you have no note.”

He went back to examining the sky.

“Is something the matter?” Mally asked innocently, trying to angle herself further through the gate while she distracted him.

His hand shot out to stop her and he shook his head with the kind of smile that said he admired her attempt, but it wasn’t going to work.

“Sun should have set hours ago. Didn’t you notice?”

Mally stilled, her eyes wide, “I was busy.”

“So, we have bigger problems than people visiting their cousins,” the guard said grimly. “Try another day when the sky is right and not sending chills up and down the spines of any guard with half a brain.”

He was right. Almost a full day and the sun hadn’t moved. Not in all the time we were bathing or walking or sleeping or searching. Would Mally have to put the crown on again to fix it? It made me feel a little ill to think that she might have that much responsibility now. Would she have to keep an hourglass at hand and watch it carefully so she could put the crown on and take it off to keep days and nights in place? That was madness, wasn’t it? Perhaps this was just bad luck like the rest. But something told me it was not just bad luck.

Worse yet, no night meant no Kazmerev. I reached out to grab Mally, suddenly feeling a wave of nausea so intense I could not seem to stand up straight. She caught my hand before I could clutch at her.

“Calm down, Sersha,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Seriously, how do you expect to navigate the city if you panic at every little thing.”

But it wasn’t a little thing. It was a huge thing. I should have panicked about it earlier but I’d been too caught up in finally getting to sleep in a bed and in trying to figure out why someone wanted to talk to me. I’d hoped that it would just right itself and that at any moment Kazmerev would sail back out of my heart, bright and bold and happy as he always was.

But there was no night and that meant no Kazmerev and also no Huxabrand reborn for Gundt. It meant that Judicus and Gundt could be days away instead of mere hours. We were truly on our own.

And probably Mally had broken the sky.

I was breathing too quickly. Little black stars danced across my vision.

“Sersha,” Mally whispered urgently, pulling me away from the gate where she could lean me against the palace walls.

The walls were made of mosaiced bricks. They were edged in flowers and trees topped with wide fronds. I tried to focus on them but all I could feel was sharp-edged panic.

I couldn’t do this. Not by myself. I couldn’t be alone again. I’d finally found friends. A family. And now I just wanted them all back. I’d give up saving the world. I’d give up saving all phoenixes if I could just have them back.

“Sersha.”

It was all her fault. Again.

First, crashing into raiders.

Now, breaking the sky.

But I’d done it, too, hadn’t I? I’d worn it once. Maybe she could just put the crown on to fix it. Or maybe I could.

I signed putting on a crown and Mally laughed. “I’d be a fool to do that. Don’t you see? This is perfect. If we stop time, we can be away from here before nightfall, and if that happens, no one can start a war before we’re ready.”

That was an insane thought. Life would go on, night or day.

I made a mad grab for her skirts but all I found was cloth and her legs.

“Really, Sersha, that’s indecent,” she said, her voice mocking. “You don’t think I have it with me, do you?”

And she didn’t even have it with her! Anyone could steal it. Anyone could have it already!

“You really need to stop being so panicky. It’s like dealing with a child,” Mally said. “I think I should buy you a drink.”

She grabbed my hand and started to haul me across the street. I almost gasped when I saw the sigil on the sign above the door she was hustling me toward. It was very clearly a crown laid on a wax seal.

“Go to the palace,” the Grand Hadri had told me. “Look for Jensen at the Crown and Seal.”

And now here it was, right in front of my eyes. Talk about luck.

Chapter Five

I did not have much experience with inns outside of The Hog’s Head Inn where I grew up – but I had a lot of experience with The Hog’s Head. This place was not like it, just as the inn we were staying at was not like it. While The Hog’s Head had been homey and warm, bustling with life and children, the place where we were staying felt impersonal and drafty, and this inn we were entering felt colder still.

There was a small fire banked in the very clean common room and patrons drinking at the chest-high bar and private tables, but their murmurs were quiet, and their heads bent low, their clothing so fine that I immediately blushed, though my new dress was perfectly serviceable. They reminded me, somehow, of Judicus, even though they were neat and tidy and he was usually rumpled. The Crown and Seal was clearly an inn for nobles, and the man scowling at us from behind the long bar was the innkeeper.

“Servants’ entrance is around back. So are deliveries,” the man behind the bar said. He was bald and thin with a set of scored markings on one cheek – deliberate, I thought, and more decorative than the result of an enemy or accident.

“We aren’t servants,” Mally said frostily. “In fact, we’d like a drink.”

“Keep the riff-raff out, would you, Jensen?” a cloaked man down at the end of the bar said, his voice low. I couldn’t make out his face, it was buried so deeply in his hood, but though my cheeks were aflame, my heart soared.

Jensen. This was who I’d come to find.

I was already seeing why everyone wanted to be near Mally. By blind luck, she’d led me directly to the one man I needed in a city of thousands. A person could use that. Imagine looking for a lost artifact with her along? Or a missing person? Or, I realized belatedly, a way to save the world. That was sobering. It brought my attention back to what we were doing.

“Get your drink where girls like you do,” the man in the cloak said and he pulled the cloak back from his hip just enough to show a dagger which was as long as my forearm.

I tugged Mally toward the door. We could use the servants’ entrance. It wouldn’t harm anything. Besides, maybe I could sign to her what was going on while we found it.

But she had planted both feet, refusing to move.

Of course.

I wanted to put my hand over my eyes.

“And where would a girl like me get a drink?” she asked, her eyes blazing.

A chair scraped across the floor on the other side of the fire and a nobleman in crisp blue clothing edged in silver thread cleared his throat. He wore a fancy sword decorated with gold frogging.

The nobleman spoke clearly. “No need to stir up trouble, Prexav. Let the girl have her drink and be off.”

I tugged on Mally again. If we made a scene then Jensen would never talk to us. And then my promise to the Grand Hadri would be for nothing.

Mally shrugged off my hands a second time, but this time I spun in front of her, signing rapidly.

I signed that we needed to go around back. That it was important. That it had to do with the king.

I hoped she’d caught that last part. I’d never signed king before and it’s always hard to try a new sign for something. Sometimes people guess immediately. Sometimes it’s not as obvious.

She ignored me but the troublesome man at the bar stood and sauntered toward us. To my surprise, he was carrying a white flower in his gloved hand. An oleander. It smelled beautiful.

I was even more surprised when he offered it to me.

“A gift, my lady, for clearly being the sensible one burdened with the management of this madwoman.”

Mally threw back her head, which had the added benefit of bringing other aspects of her physicality into prominence. I’d seen that move work on Tyndale before. But though she opened her mouth to speak, the man was already disappearing through the front door. It was well oiled – like everything about this inn – and did not squeak or shudder as he left in a flurry of dark cloak and black leather.

“Well,” Mally huffed.

“I’ll tell you what, girls,” the innkeeper said diffidently. “Come around the back instead and I’ll give you each a cup of ale on the house. You’ll find no better offer.”

I tugged on Mally again, and this time she seemed to deflate as if all her fight had walked out with the cloaked man.

“Agreed,” she said miserably.

I led her back out to the street, where the sun still hung awkwardly just above the horizon as if it were hovering on the doorstep of a home it had visited, unwilling to say goodbye.

We found the small alley at the back of the inn. It led to a tiny door and from there to a courtyard.

“We aren’t servants, Sersha,” Mally said, fuming, as we went. “We’re as good as anyone else.”

Which was fine, but besides the point. We weren’t wanted there, and we had other business to attend to. Like talking to the Grand Hadri’s spy. I’d never wanted to be anywhere I wasn’t wanted, and well-polished inns were no exception.

“If I’d stayed with Lady Lightland no one would ever talk to me like that,” Mally said. I stopped for long enough to force her to stop, too. “What?”

I gave her my longest, driest look.

“Okay, yes, I’d probably be dead,” Mally said overdramatically. “Or used forever for what I am while everyone I loved was tortured. Is that what you want me to say?”

I nodded and started walking again.

“But I would be surrounded by wealth and nobility, and no one would look down their noses at me. For a girl from Landsfall who was raised in an inn, that’s something. I wanted that, Sersha. I wanted a little glory and some nice things. Is that so wrong?”

It wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t for us. We had to do the things no one else would do. If we didn’t, we’d lose even what we had, small as she may consider it to be. That’s what I was learning – either you fought for what you valued or it slipped away. Hoping, waiting, wanting: those things weren’t enough.

Mally was still talking, “And if Lady Lightland hadn’t killed my mother, I would have been happy enough to get those things from her. I’ll never get another offer like that, you know.”

We’d reached the back of the inn by the time her rant ended. I wrinkled my nose. Something smelled familiar.

Oleander.

I’d just taken a step backward when the man in the black cloak stepped out from the shadow beside the servants’ door.

“Lady Lightland, is it?” he said to Mally, reaching out to seize her arm. “Now, what do you have to do with her?”

Chapter Six

“Nothing, obviously,” Mally said, talking before she should, as she always did. If I was allowed to open my mouth and say just one thing, do you think it would be “I love you” or some great wise comment that would be passed from one pair of lips to another and engraved upon stone? No, it would not be. It would be to tell Mally to think before she spoke for just once in her life. Instead, she opened her eyes wide and followed it with, “And what is it to you, anyway?”

“It’s a lot to me. That name could get you strung up right now.”

She quirked a half-smile, flirting, of all things. “Is that you being fresh?”

Reaching out quickly, she pulled his hood down, revealing a face much younger than I’d expected. The boy was our age. Younger even than Judicus – eighteen or nineteen at most – and angry. His thick eyebrows knit furiously together. They were dark brown and shocking beside the light gold hair that hung around his face where it had escaped the knot at the back of his head.

“You wish,” he said, leaning forward. He still had her wrist in his grip. I’d worry except that they were clearly playing silly games, and no one was going to get hurt. Or at least not physically. It was possible a heart would be broken.

I sighed and pushed past them both to where the bald innkeeper was coming out the back door with a pewter mug in each hand. He looked at Mally and her new companion, shook his head, and offered me a mug.

“Well, girl, you could use this if you’re with her.”

I nodded emphatically and he shook his head with a chuckle. Behind us, the banter continued. I’d heard it all before with Mally. I could practically play her part if I had the voice or the inclination.

“Pity you can’t speak,” Jensen said, “or maybe I’d get the real story of why you’re here.”

I tried to mime putting a crown on my head. If this was Jensen, then he was who I needed to speak to.

“A hat?” he asked me, setting Mally’s drink on a barrel beside him and crossing his arms. “I can help you with that if you need it, girl.”

I shook my head, trying again.

“A cloak?”

Mally paused her flirting, though she was so close to Prexav that I couldn’t have slipped a thick blanket between them.

“If you’re talking about a crown, Sersha, you know better.”

“A crown,” Jensen said, his eyes narrowing. “You want to see the Grand Hadri? The palace allows petitioners twice a month and the next judgment is not for a week.”

I shook my head and tried again. First the crown, then pointing to myself, then to him.

“I can’t get you in there any sooner and I’m needed back in my inn.”

Frustrated, I turned to Mally and signed that I needed to speak to him.

“She wants to talk to you,” Mally said and then turned back to her flirting.

“We are talking, though we aren’t getting far,” Jensen said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, girl. Can you write?”

I shook my head and tugged at Mally’s sleeve.

“What?” her voice was sharp, irritated at being pulled away again.

I tried to sign that the Grand Hadri wanted me to talk to Jensen. That he was a spy. She rolled her eyes.

“It’s too complicated, Sersha. I don’t know what you’re saying. We’ll find you one of those phoenix people later.”

“You’ll what?” now her companion stiffened, his hands dropping hers, the playful light vanishing from his eyes.

“Flame Riders or whatever they call themselves,” Mally said impatiently. “She can talk with one of them.”

Jensen and Prexav exchanged a look then – one that sent a little burst of cold down my spine.

“You’ve known Flame Riders, then?” Jensen asked casually, but he hadn’t relaxed yet. His voice was asking a mild question. His body was warning that the wrong answer meant violence.

I put a hand in warning on Mally’s arm.

“Well, there was that Gundt fellow. Useless, I thought, except that he seemed to be able to hear her. You can decide if that’s a blessing or a curse,” she said, and then turned back to her would-be-lover. “Let’s not worry about phoenixes. I think you were telling me about watching the stars from a hayloft. I’d love to have someone explain the southern stars to me. I’ve never been. South.”

The pauses between her words made me blush.

“Why would he have understood the voiceless girl?” the blond man – Prexav, Jensen had called him – asked. His smile had double dimples. I wondered if she realized he was unleashing it to loosen her tongue. It seemed like a waste. Mally’s tongue was looser than a rope flapping in the wind.

“Because she has a phoenix friend, too, and they’re all in cahoots in their ‘we’re so important as we save the world’ game they play,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Personally, I’d be more interested in seeing your stars.”

“Maybe another time,” he said, gently shuffling her to the side, and stepping right past her to place himself in front of me and then offer a low bow.

I stepped backward, surprised, and found myself with my back against the wall, my drink slopping over my knuckles.

“Lady,” he said, “I’m honored. And I hope you won’t find it too forward of me when I tell you that you will always have a friend in Prexav Bassica.”

“I think you might have the wrong girl,” Mally said exaggeratedly. “Sersha isn’t like you and me.”

“Ah,” Prexav said, a glowing smile on his face, “but that is where you are wrong. She’s exactly like me. Or at least, she will be when the sun finishes setting.” 

Chapter Seven

“Wait,” Mally said, and I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or irritated. “You’re a phoenix rider, too?”

“Flame Rider,” he corrected while Jensen snorted and went back into the inn.

I wanted to curse. I wanted to go after him. I wanted to tell him about the Grand Hadri and beg him to share what he knew but I couldn’t. Not until nightfall.

If that ever came again.

“Another one?” Mally said, exasperated. “You people are everywhere. Honestly, I’m surprised the whole world isn’t lit up all the time. Maybe that’s why it looks like sunset. Maybe the sun has actually gone down but there are so many of you phoenix people that the sky is permanently flaming.”

He was still ignoring her, his eyes looking me up and down as if he’d found a treasure. “You’re lucky to have found me.  There are few of us in Briccatore not sworn to the Flamerarch and you would not want to run in with them. Do you have a Guiding Flame already?”

I nodded and he looked a little disappointed. Was it possible he was hoping to be my Guiding Flame? My cheeks flushed at the thought of it. Somehow the idea of him teaching me everything about riding a phoenix felt a lot more ... intimate ... than learning from Gundt.

“I’m the lucky one,” Mally corrected. “I’m the reason you’ve found each other. The only reason.”

And I almost laughed then because she looked so outraged – and she was right it must be her insane luck that brought us to where the spy was and a phoenix rider and yet there was no way to prove it.

“Well,” he said, smiling his double-dimple smile. It really was pretty – though far too showy for me. I liked my men a little on the pale side with a worried brow. Wait. I did? “Since our luck is here, you can both eat with me, and then when night falls, we can talk together about whatever your business is here in Briccatore.”

“I don’t think night is coming,” Mally said as Prexav put an arm around me and swept me into the inn with him.

I looked over my shoulder at Mally, trying to indicate that this really wasn’t my fault but that I couldn’t afford to lose him when there was a chance he could speak for me.

It was lost on her. She was huffing and shaking her head as she followed us, like a dog heeling her master. I recognized the signs. She would make us both pay for this.

“I’m treating the ladies to the lamb, Jensen,” he said as we passed the kitchen and went through to a small, private dining room. “Sit, sit.”

We obeyed, sitting around the wooden farm table. There were eight chairs and there was no window – which seemed strange. After a moment, I realized there was also no decoration or hangings, no stacks of things in corners or on shelves. There was only the table and the chairs and the lamp on the table with just the one door in and out. Interesting. Wouldn’t this be the exact place you’d have in your inn for spies to meet? A place where eavesdropping could only be done through the door and never while the innkeeper was watching it from without?

“I fear your sister may be right,” Prexav said. “This sunset may be magical, blocking us from our rightful place on the backs of our phoenixes.

“I’m her cousin,” Mally said, and he went on as if he hadn’t heard.

“But don’t fear. If it continues, the Flamerarch will do something about it. They can’t bear not to see their phoenixes rise any more than independents like us can. You are independent, right? You don’t owe your allegiance to a band of Flame Riders?”

I shook my head and he nodded happily as a serving girl came in the room and passed around bowls of lamb and thickly buttered bread before retiring and closing the snug door behind her.

“And are you a Fledgling?” he pressed.

I nodded my agreement and just agreeing to it made me miss Gundt all over again – and worry about Judicus. Had he survived? Would he be able to lead them out of the caverns?

“But you have a Guiding Flame?” he pressed and there was a note of wariness as if he was afraid of stepping on toes. His smile broadened at my nod though it quickly vanished. “He should be here. Is he detained?”

I nodded again.

“Hurt?”

I shrugged and tried to indicate my worry as I took a bite of the food. Mally was nearly halfway through hers already.

“Fear not, when the sun sets we’ll figure it out,” the other Flame Rider said. “Have you been to Briccatore before?”

I shook my head.

“Then it will be my pleasure to guide you through it.”

I wasn’t sure I liked all this attention. It didn’t seem right. I was no Mally to dazzle the eyes and heart and without Kazmerev nearby no one could be certain my claim to him was true. I offered a wry half-smile, but I was low on trust. Who was to say that this Prexav was a good man? Who was to say I could trust him?

I ate warily as he gossiped about Flame Riders I’d never heard of on quests I didn’t understand.

“But no matter what, you know you have a place with us,” he said encouragingly. “Flame Riders never turn their backs on one another.”

Which wasn’t true in my case. After all, I’d turned my back on Olliman and let him die for me. I’d turned my back on Judicus and Gundt – unwillingly, but still ...

“I am curious why your sister –”

“Cousin,” Mally corrected.

“Why your cousin was speaking of Lady Lightland when you came around the corner,” Prexav said without missing a beat. “The thing is, she’s key to some things here. Things I would use your help on if you’re willing.”

Mally cleared her throat. “If you want answers to your questions then you can stop treating me like I’m just someone who tags behind Sersha. You were interested enough in me before you realized she’s tied to a big flaming bird. Even if you’re both phoenix riders and have so much in common, you can’t just ignore me.”

“My apologies,” Prexav said mildly but his eyes were still on me. Something flickered in them, and I realized with a start that he was torn and that he’d just chosen duty over pleasure. He did want to talk to Mally but he was holding that part of him back, pursuing his duty to talk to me with dogged intensity. So. Why was speaking to me a duty? Was there more here than met the eye?

Frustrated, Mally pushed her bowl away and stood. “I think we should go, Sersha.” She shook out her skirts dramatically. “What’s the point of staying around blockheads who don’t even have the vision to see what is happening around them. You could say you were the ai’sletta and they wouldn’t notice, they’re so involved in ‘phoenix this’ and ‘Flame Rider that.’”

I looked worriedly between the two. I couldn’t afford a dramatic scene from Mally or it would put in danger my contact with Jensen and with the ai’sletta. I needed both those things to stay intact.

“If you truly were the ai’sletta,” Prexav told her with a smirk, still not looking at her. Clearly, he did not believe that was likely, and yet I could see the iron will he was exercising to keep from falling back into their easy banter. “I would spill my secrets to you as a waterfall spills its contents into the river below.”

I leapt to my feet and was within inches of getting my hands over Mally’s mouth, but she was too fast for me. She threw herself into the chair opposite him, dragged it noisily forward and said, “Good. Because I am the ai’sletta and I think you can offer me more than a cold shoulder, don’t you?”

If I could say just one thing. Just one thing, that’s what I’d tell her: to stop telling everyone her secret.

Chapter Eight

“Of course you are.” Prexav was laughing as my cousin fumed, her face going bright red. His cheeks were flushed, too, and I wondered if he thought this was an elaborate lie to get his attention and if he might just be a little flattered. “Of course, you’re the woman of prophecy who everyone’s been looking for. Because you’d just stroll in here and announce it to us.”

I put my face in my hands. There was nothing you could do about Mally anymore than you could do something about the wind or the rain. They happened. You endured it. That was it.

If I had words, maybe I could vouch for her. Or maybe I couldn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t have taken my word anyway. Maybe they would have thrown us out and never listened to the Grand Hadri’s message or anything else.

By the time I looked up, Prexav was staring at me. I’d expected him to be staring at Mally who was beside me speaking with a voice full of outrage.

“But I am. I really am.”

Instead, he held his hand out across the table and said, “Take my hand.”

Mally reached for it, and he shook his head, nodding at me. I took his hand. It was very warm as if he were feverish, confirming that he really was a phoenix rider. Only Gundt was that hot to the touch. Another human would be weak and sweating if they were like that.

“She called you Sersha. Is that your name?”

I nodded and he nodded with me.

“You’re hot, Sersha. But not sweating.”

I snorted. He was doing the same mental math I was.

“And now you’re going to chat about the weather?” Mally asked, throwing up her hands. “I confess the truth of who I am, and it means nothing to you. What do I have to do? Bring the night back.”

I might start sweating if she revealed any more secrets.

Prexav eyes were locked on mine and he smiled, his dimples flashing me again. “No fever. So, I trust you really are a Flame Rider with a connection to a phoenix and your cousin isn’t entirely a liar. Yes?”

I nodded, but I couldn’t help my wry expression. I wouldn’t trust Mally’s word, either, if I didn’t know her. I didn’t trust it half the time when I did know her. Mally was usually out for Mally. Although it was a little unfair to her that she was finally trying to help other people and still no one trusted her.

And a little unfair to all of us that she was just spilling her secrets everywhere like a seed bag with a rip.

“The word of a Flame Rider can be trusted,” Prexav said. “Even if she doesn’t talk.” He cleared his throat. “Well then. You need to come with me so Ceghan can take a look at you.”

“I don’t think so,” Mally said, but I was already rising. This was the closest we were going to get to being trusted. “I don’t know this Ceghan and I don’t plan to be inspected by her.”

“None of us does, and yet here we are,” Prexav said flippantly but I noticed he very obviously was not meeting Mally’s eye. He was trying to keep her from realizing how attracted to her he was, even after everything. I was certain of it. “Give me a moment.”

He left the room but neither Mally nor I could help peering after him, our heads stuck out from around the door like eavesdropping children. We caught him whispering fervently in Jensen’s ear. Doubtless, explaining his intentions. I wish he had been that forthcoming with us, but I was no stranger to the need to earn trust.

“You don’t really plan to go with him, do you?” Mally whispered.

I tried to sign that I did and that I thought she should, too.

“And if you do, then when it’s nightfall you’ll spill everything to him and hope he can help us?” she pressed.

I agreed. But this wasn’t my fault. She’d started it. And now, if we didn’t stick with him, he would still know our secret and we’d know none of his.

“Well. I don’t trust him,” she said, crossing her arms, but eventually, as I stared at her, wondering if she could possibly be so stupid, she let them fall and without looking at me, she confessed. “But, I suppose I started spilling secrets first.”

That was practically an apology from Mally. I reached out and squeezed her hand gratefully.

“He’d better be taking us somewhere nearby,” was all she said to that.

It turned out, that Prexav did live nearby. And that was where he was taking us.

He took us by way of a string of alleyways behind some very fancy manor homes located near the palace. They led to a winding switch-back staircase behind a towering stone building. That, in turn, led us to a rooftop where a dovecote was located. The dovecote was empty. But it disguised a trapdoor which opened into a hidden attic far larger than I would have guessed – maybe the entire span of the eldritch home below it.

Open beams covered in thatch spread over us. Wide beams and a wattle ceiling formed the floor. Someone – likely Prexav – had formed islands and bridges between them out of boards laid over the beams so that though the space was large, only the parts with stitched-together floors were usable.

These he had draped with silks and tapestries so that they were more like individual private islands connected by bridges than actual rooms or even one large room. And each island was replete with furniture – all small enough to be hauled up the tiny staircase and through the dovecote – from folding chairs made of light wood and tight silk, to a hammock filled with cushions where he must sleep. Strings of glass beads and lanterns hung riotously, decked in every color from emerald to citrine – some lit, despite the danger of leaving open flame where no one attended it – and some empty.

It was to this strange place he led us and then welcomed us as if to a palace.

“Mind your voices,” he said quietly. “Those below would be rudely awakened to learn that heaven dwells just over their heads.”

And then he waggled his eyebrows playfully.

I shook my head at his teasing, but it only made him grin more.

“And now what?” Mally hissed.

Prexav turned and this time I caught him actually looking at her – really looking and clearly admiring. His face flushed hot, and his smile was entirely unfeigned as if he was being served his favorite flavor of pie.

Mally appeared not to notice. Her flush was all fury. “What happens now that you’ve taken us to your secret hideaway?”

“Now, I decide what to do with you,” a fresh voice said and over one of the bridges, a girl was approaching, dressed almost identically to Prexav, her long flowing hair matching his in golden waves. Her eyebrows just as dark and drawn together. There were no dimples, though. But only because there wasn’t a trace of humor on her storm-cloud face. “Hopefully, I decide that you live.”

Chapter Nine

Whatever Ceghan’s judgment of us was going to be, it was not going to be fast. She made us tea first, undeterred by Mally’s frustrated whisper of, “You brought us to your sister? Really?”

And as the tea brewed, other people began to slink in.

The first was an old man, so bent I couldn’t tell what his original height had been. He seemed to fade before my eyes so that I almost forgot he was there at all. I had to concentrate to remember and pay attention. He took a folding chair beside what had been three crates and was now a bookshelf and began to write in a tiny journal with a crisp hand. I could not read his writing, but he didn’t seem to care if I tried, for he neither hunched over it nor protected it at all but rather smiled kindly at us as Prexav introduced us to him. I noticed his name was not given to us.

Neither were we given the name of the woman who came next, carrying a basket of rolls and fussing over Ceghan and the tea before taking her seat on a one-person hammock seat. Jensen, I already knew.

The longer it took to assemble everyone, the more nervous I found myself as I peered out the tiny round window. It had slanted shutters to keep anyone from looking in, but it easily showed me that the sunset was still endless. And maybe it would always be that way until Mally put the crown back on.

Only Mally would hide something important enough to govern night and day somewhere in a strange city and expect it to still be there when she returned. My guts twisted in knots every time I thought of that. It was my own fault. I should have insisted she make a plan for it with me or that she keep it on her person. I should know by now that what made logical sense to me wouldn’t be a consideration for her.

The others whispered pleasantly together as if glad of each other’s company though they gave nothing away to us about who they were or what they were doing. I felt as though I were driftwood washed up on the wrong shore. I missed my friends and the safety of being near them. Where were Gundt and Judicus? Probably still along the river somewhere if they’d survived. And what would they do if they were wounded? I should never have left them. I should have found a way to insist that Kazmerev stay.

“He’s certainly making a big deal out of your arrival,” Ceghan told Mally in a whisper that was clearly meant to carry. “He always does with pretty girls.”

Prexav turned and winked at his sister.

Mally was resentfully helping with the tea even though I could tell she thought it should be my job. Usually, I would help. But I was trying not to vomit now that I was getting closer and closer to panic. What would I do if I never saw Kazmerev again? How would I carry on?

You couldn’t just have a best friend one minute and have them ripped away the next and not feel the agony of it.    

To my surprise, a hand touched my bouncing knee and I looked up into the sympathetic eyes of Prexav.

“Don’t fret. Night will fall. It must. Even miracles cannot last forever.”

“See?” Ceghan whispered to Mally.

“Sersha?” Mally said – no whisper this time because of her surprise and Ceghan threw her hand up over my cousin’s mouth.

“Shh! Do you want to get caught?”

“He likes Sersha?”

“Well, they’re Flame Riders, aren’t they? The only reason you’re here is that he thinks she has something important to say. We haven’t seen a lone Flame Rider in a long time and there are rumors they are being hunted in the countryside.”

But I wasn’t worried. I’d seen how Prexav looked at Mally and I recognized the expression on his face when he spoke to me. I was in his brotherhood of Flame Riders. But I was not a girl he was pursuing. Which was a relief. I couldn’t handle romantic overtures at a time like this.

“It will be fine,” Prexav told me again, this time reaching out to squeeze my hand reassuringly before turning to Ceghan. “No need to frighten them with worrisome stories.”

“I’m not frightened,” Mally said, jutting out her chin. “Just surprised. Does that mean you don’t know that the Stryxex are back and they’re killing phoenixes?”

A cup fell from Ceghan’s hand but before it could hit the ground, Jensen snatched it from the air.

“Say that again,” Jensen said calmly but something about his tone turned my belly to ice.

“Stryxex,” Mally said, tossing her hair. “You know, big black things that are like what you’d get if phoenixes turned evil.”

“Yes,” he said, but it clearly meant, “Go on.”

“They’re everywhere now and targeting phoenix rider places – whatever those are called and smashing them to bits or something. I didn’t catch the details.”

“But does your mute friend know the details?” Jensen asked and I didn’t like the sharp look in his eyes as he rounded on me. The hash marks of his tattoo stood out starkly and I wondered if that meant he was going pale underneath them.

“Probably,” Mally said. “But we won’t know until your phoenix people can talk to her phoenix people. I only found out because Gundt wouldn’t stop going on about it when we were separated from her.”

“Gundt Hellebrand?” Ceghan asked casually as she poured tea. She was pouring far too slowly for it to be a truly casual question.

“I suppose,” Mally said. “I didn’t catch his name, but he has a phoenix and he’s pretty cranky. He wouldn’t stop berating Judicus when we lost Sersha and the Grand Hadri.”

And now all eyes were on her, owlishly large.  I saw her realize it as her face went from irritated to smug. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch. It was like seeing someone tumble from a roof and break their leg right before your eyes. If I could speak for just one day. Just one hour. I wouldn’t even need that long – just long enough to beg her to stop spilling our secrets everywhere.

“He was there, too, of course,” she said. “The Grand Hadri. He wanted me to work with him. Because I’m the ai’sletta. But I told you that already.”

And then she took a casual sip of tea from the cup on the tray closest to her and looked out the window like a hunter who had already set out the bait and was just waiting for the prey to walk into her trap.

I put my face into my hands and wished I’d been born to a different family.

Chapter Ten

“It has to be true,” Jensen said eventually. “It has to be. She has no reason to lie so foolishly. She must know the consequences for that.”

Everyone’s regard of Mally seemed to intensify and it was just like her to look superior instead of flinching.

“She must know she’ll be used – maybe even tortured – if the wrong people discover who she is.”

Still, she didn’t flinch. But this wasn’t a surprise to her, was it? She had been tortured – mentally, if not physically. She’d watched her own mother die.

“And you saw the sun. It is frozen in the sky. But what does that mean for The Plan? What does that mean for the colonies?”

The old man’s head snapped up at that and he shook it so subtly I wasn’t sure anyone but me caught the gesture. He pulled a book from the shelf beside him – an ancient one written by several different hands -and began to flip through it agitatedly.

“Why does it have to be true?” the woman who had brought bread asked. Her words were kind and open and yet I found the others quieted whenever she spoke. I’d begun to realize that despite her plain exterior and peasant clothing, she might be their leader.

“How could she know all those names if she were lying?” Jensen asked.

“Anyone can know names,” the woman said.

“I know that Judicus is the Grand Hadri’s nephew,” Mally said.

“Everyone knows that.” The woman waved her hand.

“I know he’ll be Grand Hadri if it turns out the Grand Hadri is dead,” she pushed.

“And they can deduce that, too,” the woman agreed.

“And I know that Cassanetta Lightland has turned two ministers and a general to her cause of overthrowing them both and that’s why the armies are withdrawing from defense of the city rather than rallying around it,” she said triumphantly.

The woman’s mouth shut with a click.

“What else do you know?” Jensen asked in a low, dangerous voice, and I wished so hard that she would just stop talking. That she would know when to hold her own counsel. I tried to sign it to her, but she wasn’t looking – intentionally, I thought.

I stood up, all the energy in me pent up and desperate for release. I strode across the room to the bookshelf beside the old man and bent over the trinkets on top of it, trying to pretend I wasn’t as agitated as he was.

“Sersha knows more,” Mally said firmly. “And she’ll tell Prexav, when the sun goes down.”

“When the sun goes down. When the sun goes down.” Jensen rubbed his hands over his bald head. “Everything is depending on it and yet, look! The sun does not go down.”

“Well, I just need to get to the inn again and I can deal with that.” Mally waved her hand, sipping her tea again.

Everyone froze, staring at her.

“What?” she said, innocently. But she wasn’t a fool, and I knew she had done that on purpose. She finally had their attention again and she loved it. “I keep telling you I’m the ai’sletta but no one listens.”

“If you can make the sun set, do it now,” Prexav said, crossing his arms over his chest and I wondered if the way he seemed to almost vibrate when standing still was normal for him or if he was feeling as agitated as I was at the lack of phoenixes.

“I can’t,” Mally said. “I need something. Something I hid in the inn.”

He made an exasperated sound – not his first if he spent much time with Mally.

“Is the Grand Hadri really dead?” the older woman asked. It took me a moment to realize she was looking at me.

I shrugged, but in a way that suggested it was likely.

“You saw him?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“He told you something?”

I nodded again.

“Something to tell us?”

I pointed at Jensen, and she raised an eyebrow.

“I think that she’s not lying,” the woman said eventually. “Fine. We expected to have to move soon. We thought we had days, but that is life, my girls and boys. It does not dance to your tune, you dance to its tune, or you’re dragged along by the hair wishing you’d danced, yes? We’ve lost the boss. We’ll lose more if we don’t act fast and then The Plan might as well be a child’s dream.

“So, here’s what we’ll do. Ceghan, you and Jensen take the talker to her inn and come back with whatever she has stashed there. She can fix the sun when she returns. Jastomen, we’ll need you to get word out. Anyone you can find – get them spreading the word. We launch tonight. We have no other options. Prexav. You stay here with the cousin. When the sun is fixed, she can tell you the rest through her phoenix. If it’s urgent, you know how to find us.”

I moved to stand next to Mally, trying to communicate that I went where she did. My cousin shifted her weight to stand closer to me, too. She agreed.

“Not a chance, voiceless girl,” the woman said.

“Sersha,” Prexav corrected.

She tipped her head to him as if conceding. “Not a chance, Sersha. As brutal as it may sound, I still don’t trust your flighty cousin who spills her secrets as a vein spills blood. You’ll be our hostage until she fixes the sky. After that, we’ll talk. We’ve chosen to believe your stories. But trust goes both ways and now you’ll have to trust us, so find a comfy chair and settle in for the ride.”

I frowned, but in her place, I would feel the same way. And if they wanted to separate us, there was nothing I could do to stop it. Not without Kazmerev.

“You can read this,” the old man – Jastomen – said kindly as he passed me. He pushed the tattered book into my hands and pointed very subtly at the mouse medallion that had slipped out of my dress. “Mighty though Small,” he said with a wink, and then he was gone.

And then they were all gone and that left only me and Prexav and he was staring at the medallion around my neck like it was going to burst into flames.

Chapter Eleven

“Where did you get that?” he asked and then waved his hand dismissively as if he either knew I couldn’t answer or didn’t need me to. “I didn’t realize. Please, accept my apologies.”

He gave me a hasty half-bow, his cheeks flushed so red that I thought he might be ill. But when he straightened, he did not seem ill, merely very anxious. He studied me worriedly, and I made a gesture that I hoped he’d understand as saying there was nothing to forgive.

“Even those of us who have never met Judicus Franzer Irault still have heard of him,” he said in a hushed tone. “We know his medallion and what it means.”

Well, I didn’t know what it meant. If only people would start telling me things instead of leaving me to fumble in the dark to find them out. I tucked the medallion back into my bodice. I didn’t want anyone else drawing conclusions.

“Please know, I would never willingly incur his wrath,” Prexav said and he looked more worried than he had when we told him something had happened to the ruler of his city.

My brow furrowed. I knew Judicus. Thoughtful, considerate Judicus. I knew he was fair and kind and a bit absentminded and that he’d been either recovering or injured for most of the time I’d known him. Was that, perhaps, why I couldn’t see whatever it was striking fear into this man’s heart?

“You must be very close to him indeed to wear his medallion.” Prexav sounded tentative. “A wife perhaps?”

He looked so wary that I quickly shook my head. And now I was blushing. What would it be like to be Judicus’s wife? It would involve learning better cures for seasickness, for a start. And probably a life on the run.

“Then his betrothed, for certain,” Prexav said, nodding to himself. “Pray, do not be offended by my advances earlier. We rarely meet other young Flame Riders – especially pretty ones with kind eyes – and I fear I was shameless in trying to make the most of the opportunity. I would never have done so if I realized your loyalties were already claimed.”

But things weren’t as he thought, and I had no way to tell him so. It felt like I should. Like I was making some kind of claim on Judicus that I had no right to make just through this stranger’s words. My cheeks grew hotter.

Words! They made me crazy for not having them and they made others crazy for having them. Because now Prexav had made himself an elaborate fiction he fully believed out of nothing but words and surmises and because I had no words of my own, I could not shatter it.

I felt – as I so often did – that I was weaponless in a battle everyone else was fighting. By their words, they chose the grounds, made the hits, scored the points, drew blood. Without the same advantage, I felt powerless.

“And, of course, no one would provoke our generation’s most powerful and reclusive rope worker,” he said grimly.

Wait. What? I knew Judicus was good – but the most powerful of his generation? That, I had not expected.

“You can tell him that for me,” Prexav said fervently. He stopped awkwardly, hearing that in his mind, and then shook his head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired. Please, eat something and make yourself comfortable with the books.”

He left the platform swiftly, his feet whisper-quiet along the bridge as he practically ran from me, leaving me in his odd little room, alone and utterly confused.

I examined the medallion one more time. Who would have thought a little mouse would make people so crazy? I could imagine Judicus running a bewildered hand through his hair as he sorted this mess out.

“Oh,” he’d say. “No, I don’t think I’m the most powerful. That’s so and so who I knew in my youth.”

Or maybe he’d admit he was and then immediately vomit. That sounded like him, too.

Both those thoughts just made me miss him more.

I turned to the room. Flame Riding and spycraft did not pay. That was my first thought upon inspecting it. For though the colors of the hanging silks and hammocks were bright, and though the curios were shiny, nothing in this room was any finer than what I grew up with at the Hog’s Head Inn. Everything here was just like Prexav, a distracting surface hiding something I didn’t understand. Everything, that was, except the books. They seemed solid enough.

I sat in the chair that Jastomen had occupied and opened up the little book he’d given me. I couldn’t read it properly, but I did know the signs for dates. We’d get casks at the inn or other items with dates scrawled on them and knowing what was fresh and what was not could be the difference between happy patrons and patrons lined up out back to use the privy. I could read dates.

Which was how I realized that the book was very, very old. The most recent entries were made before I was even born – perhaps twenty years ago. The oldest were more than a hundred and fifty years old. I traced the edges of the paper with a fingertip, marveling at the age of the book and picking out the letters Gundt had taught me, trying to form their sounds in my mind.

If ever I saw him again, I’d ask him to teach me more. If I could read and write, I’d be less adrift in this world where my silent voice kept me boxed in from the magical lies everyone else told each other.

“Reading the prophecies?” Prexav asked from the entry between silk hangings.

I shook my head.

“It looks like you are.”

I shook my head again. He frowned and put down the bundle of things he’d been carrying to stride across the makeshift room and look at the book in my hands.

“Is it possible that you cannot read?” I nodded, awkwardly and for the first time since he saw the medallion, he smiled. “Then let me read them to you while you dress. I brought you some of my sister’s things. A simple wool dress is hardly enough protection if we need to fly or fight once the sun sinks low. There’s a screen beside the tea set.”

And then, without waiting for me to acknowledge anything more, he turned his back and began to read aloud.

“Evening and morning will come swift on each other’s heels, the black fox chasing the white fox until they pause in their chase for her advent, they pant and wait and look to see her arrival, they anticipate the end of an age.”

I didn’t know about the ends of ages, but I did know these clothes he’d brought me were very fine indeed. There were tall stockings, beautifully made leather boots, a dress split for riding, a pair of soft breeches to wear under it, and a deep cloak with a large hood. There was even a wide belt with a crisp new pouch. I wondered how much Ceghan would hate me for wearing her clothing.

“And so it will be in the last day that those with bold hearts and the milk of compassion will rise up before her and they will come to the place of darkness and with bold hands will take hold of it and plunge it within.”

I began to dress anyway, shedding my cheap woolen dress for this silky lace-lined finery.

“And healing will come in flames and the darkness will be burnt in the bright light of a new dawn.” Prexav paused in his reading. “That’s what I don’t like about prophesy. It’s all so vague. You’d have to have either the best or the worst luck for any of it to come true. But don’t you think it’s weird that the sun is stuck in place like the white fox pausing as it chases the black fox?”

I did think that was strange, but I was still buckling my new belt and trying not to be too in love with the fine cut and feel of these clothes. Perhaps Prexav and Ceghan were richer than I thought if they could afford such finery.

“Listen to this next one. It’s dated forty years later. ‘The day of disaster will strike suddenly. A coin golden and high that does not blink. A red ribbon flowing from the mouth that once spoke. A black veil over a single eye. And when you see the signs flee. And may all who are innocent flee. And may those who know flee toward trouble for only by the words of this prophesy may they stop the stones.’ See? It’s weird and creepy. And yet there are people who set so much stock in this book that they’re forever training themselves in compassion and boldness, so they’ll be ready.”

I stepped out from behind the screen, and he smiled. “They do fit. I thought they would.”

I thought he was about to say more because he opened his mouth but there was a crash from without and then the older woman stumbled back into the makeshift room.

Blood was running down her chin.

She reached toward Prexav as if desperate and her mouth opened to speak but then she crashed to her knees, her eyes rolling back in her head. She fell to the floor as heavy as the dead.

I scrambled to her side, shuddering, desperately trying everything I knew to help. What had been done to her? And what message had she tried to pass on that failed?

Prexav leapt past me, his wicked dagger flashing in his hand. If there was trouble on her heels, he’d find it. But there would be no saving the woman. Her heart had stopped as she fell and the stream of blood trickling from her mouth had slowed. The dead didn’t bleed.

I pushed myself back from her, swallowing down bile and horror. She’d left here alive not an hour ago. She’d been so full of life. And now – now, look at her.

I bit my lip. I should be mourning how fleeting life was and that this poor woman had suffered as she died. I should be shedding tears for a life lost.

But instead, I was thinking of the words Prexav had just read. The gold coin. The red ribbon. The day of disaster.

It couldn’t just be coincidence. It was happening. Right here, right now in Briccatore.

And I was powerless to tell anyone.

Chapter Twelve

My hands were covered in blood. Her blood. I stared at it stupidly.

She was past my help – past anyone’s help. I found a knife was jammed in her upper back, right in her lungs. It was a plain knife. No indication of its owner. No way to tell who had done it or why.

I didn’t realize how badly I was shaking until Prexav flew back in through the door and stopped suddenly, his eyes wide and knife drawn. Before he closed the door, a reverberating crash sounded outside, reverberating through the city. A second one sounded from somewhere further away.

He froze.

“The gongs. The city is under attack.” 

Our eyes met in horror. And I knew that the armies had withdrawn long enough for the raiders to be here, to leave the city open for attack. To leave it trussed up as bait like a rabbit to lure in wolves.

“We have to go,” he said, rushing to a little crate at the side of the room. He pulled a leather satchel from it, threw it over one shoulder, and then shoved an empty one at me. “Grab scarves, blankets, food, whatever you see that we can use. Expect to be gone for weeks.”

Weeks? What was he talking about?

He made an exasperated sound in the back of this throat, wrenched the satchel open, and began to fill it himself with a decorative woven blanket from one of the chairs, a pair of books from the makeshift shelves, a small hand mirror, food from the tea tray, including all the buns that had been brought by the dead woman.

The poor dead woman. My gaze lingered on her. Would anyone know where she was? Would they know to bury her? Would there be anyone left to do the job when the attack was over?

My eyes were glassy before I realized it. Prexav pulled the prophecy book from my grip and shoved it into the satchel, too, threw a few more items into it,  which my blurry eyes didn’t register, and then buckled the satchel shut and threw it over my shoulder.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

“Your mourning is an honor to both Shasasa and to you. But we have no time for it now. No one could have known she was a spy for the Grand Hadri. And if they did, then they know all of us and we will be as dead as she is unless we flee in time.”

He was right, and yet all I could think of now was Mally, out there somewhere with no idea of the danger.

“Stop fretting,” he said, grabbing my hand. “I’m certain your cousin can take care of herself as easily as my sister can.”

And then he was tugging me through the door and onto the wooden walkway and for just one terrible moment of vertigo, I wobbled there until I realized that the city beneath us was pure chaos.

People ran in every direction on the streets below, horses dancing between them and then thundering down straight stretches. A block of marching soldiers in uniform ran in neat ranks down one street, pushing civilians aside like strands of beads in a doorway. From the other direction, I saw the Grand Hadri’s palace where figures in thick leather had climbed to ring the wall.

“Look,” Prexav said, and he almost seemed gleeful to see them. “The Flamerarch is as grounded as we are right now. Who owns the air now, Flamerarch? Who controls the skies now?”

Those were the fabled Flamearch? Hadn’t Judicus said he witnessed them rain fire down? They must be Flame Riders – but organized and somehow not friends of the charming spy I’d joined ranks with. I would have shaken my head at Prexav, but he was already pulling me down the rickety stairs to the alley below.

“If we get split up, head to the docks,” he said as he pulled me along.

His hand was warm and firm, and he gripped mine like he had no intention of letting me go. I pulled back on it so that he’d pay attention and then shook my head, pointing in the direction of our inn near the river. I wasn’t leaving Mally here.

“She’ll be fine. If we get split up, find the ship called Pleasant Squall and tell them.”

He paused, looked back at me as people jostled all around him, and then shook his head, remembering again that I couldn’t speak. People always forgot. I didn’t see how they could when it was all they ever seemed to bother to know about me. I have a soft heart and I’m good with herbs. I like tea, and frankly, I haven’t had a good cup in a while other than the one his sister just brewed. I like yellow flowers and I don’t like loud noises. I’m fond of children and good with maps. I’m handy with a needle, a decent cook, and even handier with wounds and illnesses, and yet the only thing anyone outside Landsfall ever saw was that I couldn’t speak to them. And for just a flash of a moment, I felt sad and guilty because Aunt Danna had been right when she said it would have been better for me to stay in Landsfall than go to the city. She’d been right because if I hadn’t had Kazmerev bloom within me that’s all anyone would ever have seen and if I’d gone to the city on my own, it would have ended in heartbreak.

“Just show them your medallion and they’ll take you,” he said plunging onward.

But I wouldn’t do that without Mally. Kazmerev had said to stand up for myself even if he wasn’t there and even if I couldn’t speak. He’s said my actions were more important than my words. And he’d been right.

I wasn’t going anywhere without my cousin. Not again.

The next time the crowd surged, I wrenched my hand from Prexav’s and spun back toward the inn. I heard him behind me calling, “Sersha!” but I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t going to be led away. I wasn’t going to spend weeks trying to get to her again. Not this time.

There was nothing else as important as that.

“Sersha!”

Something brushed my hand. Prexav. If he grabbed me again, I would be forced to go with him and I would not do that.

“Wait. Sersha. We need to get to the ship. They’ll meet us there. You’ll never find her in this crowd,” Prexav said, practically yelling in my ear as people jostled us from every side.

Someone knocked into my shoulder. I spun around and found myself face to face with Prexav as he breathed heavily, face flushed, head tilted down until we were practically cheek to cheek so he could yell in my ear. “Please, be reasonable!”

And then all of a sudden, I heard another voice – a familiar voice – raise itself over the clamor.

“That’s usually my line,” the voice said, and I turned, gaping to see the ragged, drawn face of Judicus Franzer Irault just inches from mine.

Our eyes met and I smiled, and his weary smile seemed to light up the whole street so that to me it went from sunset to dawn.

“Sersha,” he said and there was blood streaking one side of his face and a bandage made of Gundt’s cloak over one eye and he was filthy and stinking and here. And I’d never wanted to leave him. I felt that doubly so now.

“Son of Chaos,” Prexas said, and he sounded like he was going to choke.

I ignored him and instead, I reached up and plucked the medallion from my neck and offered to back to its owner.

“Keep it,” Judicus said wearily. Bracing an arm around me to deflect the people who jostled and tugged as they streamed by every side around our little human island. “It suits you more than it does me. And before you introduce me to the troublemaker who addresses me as an enemy, tell me – did Mally break the sun again?”

And it was nice to be around someone who understood exactly what we were dealing with. So nice that I almost cried with relief as I snorted and nodded in a gesture of “what else did you expect?”

Chapter Thirteen

“Where is she?”

I wanted to be the one to ask the questions. I wanted to ask how bad the injury to his eye was. I wanted to ask if he was hurt. I wanted to ask where Gundt was. Instead, I gritted my teeth as Prexav spoke.

“She’s with my sister and Jensen of The Crown and Seal.”

Judicus shot him a look I’d never seen in the face of the leader of my coterie. It was sharp and deadly.

“Alive?” he asked.

Prexav threw up his hands. “Of course, alive! Of course! What do you think is happening here, traitor? The city is under attack.”

“I know.” I hadn’t thought of Judicus as a particularly intimidating person. Perhaps because I’d met him when he was mortally wounded. And it didn’t help that he was still hunched, though he stood half a head taller than Prexav. I knew he was powerful – I’d seen what he could do with his rope work, but I wouldn’t have thought he was ... scary.

Until Prexav backed up half a step into the rushing madness of the crowd and put a hand to the hilt of his knife almost unconsciously.

“I was just taking Sersha to safety. A ship.”

“A ship,” Judicus repeated, his voice clipped and his one eye burning like a phoenix. “And now?” he asked, looking at me and his eye softened when it fell on me.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere without him.

He sighed and it seemed like relief before he suddenly stopped, and his face grew hard again. “I’ll not hold you to the bonds, Sersha. You’re free to leave my coterie to go with him if that’s your desire.”

I was already shaking my head so hard it blurred my vision.

“She’s in your coterie?” Prexav asked, as if Judicus had just announced I was the new Grand Hadri.

“You seem woefully underinformed, my friend.” Judicus spared him a short glance but then he returned his full attention to me as if it were just the two of us on the street and not shoals of people. “I’m hurrying to my sister, Sersha. Gundt is waiting for us in an apt location with ... our other companion.” He shot Prexav another tight look. Clearly, he didn’t have Mally’s problem with spilling secrets. “Will you come with me to secure her safety?”

I nodded quickly.

“And once she’s safe we’ll see to Mally.” He sounded definite about that – as if it were a sure thing.

The gong rang again over the city, reverberating through the crowd. It drowned out anything more he might have said, overwhelming shouts and demands, shrieks, and fearful calls. This time, it struck twice and the faces of those around me turned from worry to terror.

Judicus cursed, beginning to move, but Prexav grabbed his sleeve.

“By the time you find your sister, our ship will have sailed with Sersha’s cousin on it. And the palace won’t let you in while the city is under attack. You’re wasting your time.”

Interesting that Prexav knew where Judicus’ sister lived while I did not.

Judicus looked toward the palace and then back to me as if torn and in that moment of indecision, Prexav grabbed his sleeve. His face was inches from the rope worker’s, yelling over the noise of the crowd.

“I won’t pretend I’m your friend, Son of Chaos. But though I don’t want to be your enemy unless I must, I care about Sersha’s safety. The ship will sail with or without us and it will sail with Mally and my sister on it. If she doesn’t come with me she’ll be trapped here and I can’t spare another moment on this reunion.”

Judicus paused for a moment, cocked his head to the side, and said, “Are you Harmon’s son? The Flame Rider who served Captain Rackham aboard ship? What was that? Ten years ago?”

Prexav colored, standing a little taller, but he looked confused when he replied. “What if I am?”

Judicus smiled cheerfully. “Good. You’re coming with me, too.”

And then he plunged into the crowd not even waiting to see if we’d follow. I was going to follow, of course. Where he went, I would go. But it was totally different than having my hand taken by Prexav. There was no demand here, just an assurance that I’d follow him.

I kind of wish he’d taken my hand anyway. Just to remind me he was there.

“You’re crazy if you think I’ll be drawn into your schemes, Irault!” Prexav said as we plunged through the crowds. He was keeping pace with me right at Judicus’s heels.

Judicus took the stairs out of the plaza two at a time. I could hardly keep up with him. He didn’t pause, didn’t wait, just kept forging ahead through the masses of people.

“I won’t betray the Grand Hadri.” Prexav ran beside me, keeping up despite his verbal protests.

We mounted the last step and Judicus spun, slamming Prexav against a shop wall. A clay pot holding reeds shuddered beside them. The two young men were face to face, Judicus’s nose barely a hair away from Prexav’s. I took a step back.

Surely people were watching. Surely, they’d notice this. I glanced around, waiting for someone to yell or try to break them up.

But no one noticed. No one cared. Everyone was fleeing or quickly boarding up shop windows and doors. One shop over, a man sat a dancing horse, its feet splaying over the cobbles as it stamped at anyone who came near. Every spare bit of attention in the street was on the horse as those rushing past tried to keep from being kicked or trampled.

“You’re still following me,” Judicus said, his mild tone at odds with his firm actions. “Which means you have decided to come along despite your words. Each word you speak is meant to barb me, but I feel no jabs, Bassica. I can see you’re torn. You rightfully understand that Sersha is important, and you want to protect her. You rightfully understand that the king you once served is gone, and an enemy is at the gates. But you misunderstand me. I am neither a traitor, nor the son of a traitor, and my only aim is to save my sister from being ravished and killed when this city falls. You surely must realize that were I to die the crown would pass to her.”

“If she can defend it,” Prexav gritted out.

“Indeed. But while she doubtless could not, she is still going to be killed for the blood in her veins – the blood your father swore to serve.” Judicus barely paused.  “The blood that perhaps you swore to serve. So. The faster you stop getting in my way, the faster we all get her to safety and return to your escape plan.”

“Or?” Prexav asked.

For a moment Judicus frowned and then his eye widened, and he said, “If we all live through this we can talk about ‘or’”

Chapter Fourteen

I had expected a mad dash to the palace and then being let in by the guards and escorted to wherever Judicus’s sister was housed. I had not expected that we wouldn’t bother with gates. We were inside through a secret entrance along the wall before I could so much as breathe the wrong way, though Prexav’s quiet curses were enough to tell me that he hadn’t known about the entrance.

Judicus had found it with a tendril of black rope work and opened it the same way – a magic trick for a magic worker.  

The passage led into the cellars. Which was not a problem since those led to a network of more secret passages, dusty, dark, and lit only by candles. I didn’t need the candles with my night vision – and it seemed Prexav didn’t either – but I was growing tense. By now, Mally should have found the crown. By now, she should have put it on. Yes, the spies with her had said they’d wait until we were all together, but that was before the city was attacked and besides, I’d never expected Mally to wait.

Mally was not the waiting kind.

By now, I’d have expected her to ignore them all, jam it on her head and declare herself the queen of the night.

It bothered me that she hadn’t.

And what was worse, I had a terrible gnawing guilt that I should be going after her and not Judicus’s sister. What if she really did board the ship before we could get to her and then she sailed away? What if the sun never set again and I was forced to follow however I could without Kazmerev?

Fortunately, I didn’t have the option of sharing my fears and so they sat in my belly like a handful of starving mice, chewing at me until I could hardly breathe.

By the time we came out somewhere in the palace, I was looking for anything to distract me from guilt.

Judicus led us quickly through silent halls, narrow and close as if he knew the labyrinthine layout by memory – which, clearly, he did.

I couldn’t have asked for a better distraction. It took effort not to stare at everything in the richly appointed hall. The walls were tiled mosaics, blue and white and gold, patterned with fanciful lions and dragons – both creatures of myth – set into the tiles by an expert hand.  Arches frequently split up the monotony of the long corridors and these were tiled with pink and orange mandala designs. Between the tiling and the decorative urns and tables, mirrors, and bead curtains, I felt like I’d been caught up in a whirlwind of color and design. It was too much for the mind to take in all at once.

“This is where the Grand Hadri houses lesser nobility when he invites them to stay,” Prexev whispered to me.

But where were they? There were no hurrying people, no feet running, or murmurs behind the doors. No whispers – or even screams – and from so far in the thick-walled palace, I couldn’t even hear the gongs. Incense was thick in the air and the smell of oleander and green things was everywhere, but not a living thing stirred in the halls.

I was just about to tug on Judicus’s arm to try to point it out, when he finally turned and wrenched open a door.

The room beyond was chaos. It was a sitting room, as bedecked in brocaded cushions, settees, and woven rugs as the halls had been, but garments were scattered across the floor and trinkets had fallen from tables as if someone had left in a hurry.

“Mother?” Judicus called. “Kristiana?”

He ran to what appeared to be a bedroom in one direction, still calling and then out of that one, to one opposite. I took a moment to look around the room. Opulent, yes, but where was the personality? It wasn’t a plain room, but it looked just like the halls as if those dwelling inside hadn’t been permitted to change anything about this place. Perhaps they weren’t just trapped here but were treated like glorified prisoners, too. I thought of Judicus on the road, accepting of hardship, seemingly uninterested in opulence or comfort. Could that be a reaction from having lived like this once himself?

When he returned to the sitting room, he was wide-eyed and panting. There was no one else here.

“The nobility must be assembled somewhere,” Prexav said. He looked troubled now, too. “This is not what I expected with the city under attack.”

“If they’ve harmed my sister,” Judicus’s voice was low, and he did not say more, just led us from the room and back out to the fancy hall. The bright colors and crowded décor felt oppressive now as if the loud walls might reach down and swallow me up. It didn’t help that Judicus was no longer walking, or even trotting, but had broken out at a full sprint, tension present in his every movement.

I followed him down the corridor, Prexav right at my heels. His curses were quiet, but they came out at a steady stream.

I ran so hard and fast that I tasted blood in my efforts to catch up, but Judicus’s legs were long, and he was so far ahead of us that I almost missed it when he ducked into a tiny corridor. I definitely wouldn’t have noticed that he ducked behind a tapestry in that corridor if the movement of his passage hadn’t left it rippling.

“I’m not here for a vendetta,” Prexav muttered from behind me as we hurried up a rickety, dusty ladder.

Another passageway. My hands felt sweaty with nerves.

When we finally emerged, it was in a narrow, dark corridor that smelled stale and was coated in dust. It led to what must have been a balcony overlooking a grand hall. Judicus stopped dead there. He was so far in front of us that I could see nothing except the railing and the space widening before him, a white-domed ceiling overhead.

My eyes were locked on him as we caught up. I didn’t like the rigid look of his hunched shoulders.

From beyond the balcony, a sound rose up. Chanting. A strange, almost angelic sound, as if a hundred voices had joined in one wish of blessing. It was not the sound of people under siege or a city attacked.

My brow was already furrowing as I slowed my run, snuck to the edge of the balcony, and laid my hands on the dusty ledge beside Judicus’s so I could look down.

We barely fit on either side of him in this tiny nook in the ceiling dome. Clearly, it was meant to be hidden, the laced edge of the balcony blended in perfectly with the scalloped and laced decoration covering the domed ceiling.

There really were hundreds of people below us chanting that beautiful song. They were dressed in finer clothing than I’d ever seen before. A sea of wealth and high blood. And here I was, peeking down like a barn owl flown in the wrong door.

I felt my cheeks grow hot with an embarrassed flush. I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t have the right. At any moment one of them might look up and squint and see me here and they’d know it, too.

It was all I could do not to squirm.

In the center of the flower-like pattern of riotous color and soft, sweet chanting, was a young woman dressed entirely in white, her face young and pale, her hair thick and black and wavy like an ocean tide before a storm.

She looked up just then, but if she saw us, she did nothing to acknowledge it. She sank, instead, to her knees.

I looked at Judicus expecting surprise or curiosity on his face, but what I saw instead was stunned horror.

Were they going to kill her?

I turned back hoping that what I’d taken for a special ceremony was not actually something much more sinister.

But no.

A pair of men carried a golden crown on a pillow between them. The light crown was surrounded by hanging pearl drops on chains and they flowed down artfully as the men lifted it from the pillow and held it up to the indrawn breath of the audience. They paused dramatically and then lowered it onto the girl’s head as the chant reached a crescendo.

Loud as it was, I heard but one voice in an anguished whisper.

“No!”

Chapter Fifteen

Judicus reached out like he could stop the ceremony, his hand clawing through the air, but before I could do anything, Prexav was there. He wrapped a hand around Judicus’s mouth and another around his shoulders and hauled him backward.

“Sersha,” he whispered, breathing wildly. “Help.”

I hesitated. Judicus was fighting against Prexav, trying to get free. And it was to my coterie leader that my loyalties lay.

“If you love him at all, as a friend, as your leader,” Prexav whispered hoarsely. “Then help.”

And his eyes burned with intensity. And that settled it. Because I knew that look. It was the look I wore every time I tried to keep Mally out of trouble.

I grabbed Judicus’s hand with one of mine and with the other shoulder, I leaned in against his chest and shoved.

Between the two of us, we got him back from the balcony and back into the tight dark corridor. His chest was heaving, eyes wide. He gulped in air as if he were drowning, making tiny, agonized sounds on the inhale.

“That’s her. Kristiana.” Prexav told me.

I startled. Had they just crowned Judicus’s sister the next Grand Hadri?

“Calm down, Irault,” Prexav whispered. “I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. If you aren’t quiet when I do, you might get us all killed. We shouldn’t be here. Especially not you, if they’re crowning her. You know this.” A pause. “You must know this.”

The moment his hand was gone Judicus’s whisper tore harshly through the air. “I’ll kill them all.”

“And what? Kill her, too?” Prexav pushed.

“Never.” His whisper was raw.

“That’s what will happen if you try to interfere. They’ll use her as a hostage against you. Or use your mother. I didn’t see her down there, but she’s somewhere. And then they’ll kill them both with you.”

Judicus ripped at his own hair. He really was going to make himself bald. “Haselhad and Florentin, Gaspard and Prevva, Kastar and Tranjen. Do you know what it means?”

“That the Grand Hadri’s advisors have all turned on him,” Prexav said calmly.

Judicus’s eyes widened, and he let go of his hair long enough to look up. “You know.”

“We suspected. We are his spies, after all. Why do you think Sersha sought us out?”

And now it was Judicus’s chance to look surprised as he looked from Prexav to me and back. What did he think I was doing with Prexav? Had he believed there was some romance here? Or that I just picked up followers wherever I went? I was not him.

Judicus shook his head as if he couldn’t think about that right now.

“I can’t let them do this to her.”

“Make her their ruler?”

“Use her.”

“It’s done. You can’t stop them now. And now that it’s done, she either rules or she dies.”

“With enemies at her gates and her population in terror. Terror leads to atrocity. Every time.” Judicus sounded anguished.

“Think,” Prexav said, and I put a hand on Judicus’s arm trying to show I was with him. Whatever happened next, I was with him. Even if I didn’t understand the politics of all this. He took my hand in his almost mashing the bones he was trying to hold on so tight. “Think. They took her, even though she’s not directly in line. They crowned her. They need a pawn. It means you’re a dead man if they catch sight of you. And Kristiana is worse than dead if they see you. And if, by some miracle, the Grand Hadri survived, they will kill him on sight. Your only option is to flee.”

“I can’t leave her alone.” He bit his lower lip looking away. “I can’t leave her behind.”

“They won’t kill her immediately. If they meant to, then they would have done that rather than crowned her.”

“But they’ll use her.”

“Of course. But what good will it do her to watch you die first? And you will die. The rumors say you’re strong. But there are three armies outside the gates – and some or maybe all are allied to the men in that room. They have rope workers of their own. In that room. At least a dozen. Maybe twice that. And guards. And the Flamerarch, if the sun ever sets again. You are only one man. Wait. Bide your time. Return with allies.”

“Allies,” Judicus spat, as if he couldn’t even say the word.

“Sersha. She’s an ally of yours. So is this Gundt. Yes?”

“Yes,” Judicus admitted reluctantly. But he was looking away, still intent on the dome beyond as if at any moment he would burst past us, run across, and leap from the balcony into the dome on threads of black rope and fight them all.

“Irault?” Prexav said, and he seemed uncertain, like he wasn’t sure he should say what comes next. “If you do this. If you walk away. For now. Until you can come back in strength. If you do this, I pledge to return with you to free Kristiana.”

Judicus whipped his head around, eyes bright. “You do?”

Prexav looked at me and then back at Judicus. “For Sersha’s sake. Look. You’re breaking her up. She’s worried about you.”

Judicus seemed to melt at that.

“For her sake, and for the Grand Hadri who I served, and for revenge in his name,” Prexav said. “I swear it.”

Chapter Sixteen

I was reasonably sure I was trying to sneak out of a palace with two madmen. Worse, they were two mad men who were clearly at odds with each other and only just managing to negotiate a tenuous peace over a vow to save the sister of one of them.

I kept looking between the two of them – Judicus hunched and pale and thin with a burning fire in his eyes like he was being set aflame from the inside out. Prexav, brown-skinned, light-haired, and animated, compactly built and muscular – the picture of health on the outside, but behind his eyes was something black that edged on disillusionment or even despair. Two men. Dark and light on the outside, light and dark on the inside.

And me, silent, between them.

I just kept thinking that though Mally wasn’t right here with me, her luck must still be lingering, twisting fate, for what else would throw these two opposites together? What else would drive a beleaguered nation to crown a hostage girl queen? What would spin circumstances in just the right way that we would enter this fortress undetected and arrive at the moment the crown was placed on her head? Either it was the ai’sletta twisting the fate not just of herself but of the whole city, or it truly was circumstance. And I wasn’t betting on circumstance.

We slipped through the palace the same way we’d slipped in, slowly retracing our steps in secret. No wonder it was so silent. Every soul within was busy crowning a Grand Hadri.

And as we worked backward through our steps, I was working backward mentally through my journey here. How many times had luck turned in my favor? Finding Hallimore as he was dying so he could give me the message about the phoenixes. That was luck. Happening to be on the same ship as Gundt who was both a Greensleeve and a Flame Rider. Luck. Running across Aunt Danna in the quarantine camp. Luck. Horacen sparing our lives when Lady Lightland wanted us dead. Luck. The tunnel collapsing and cutting off the Grand Hadri and me from the rest at just the right point that we walked past the mural. Luck.

Was each of these twistings of fate a result of having brushed against the ai’sletta? Perhaps, all these important people were right to seek her. If not to turn luck for them, then to keep her from wreaking havoc across the countryside.

And I was planning to lead her not just across this countryside, but that of a foreign land, too. I paused in my thinking and also in walking so that Prexav ran into me with a quiet curse.

“Almost there. Don’t stop,” he muttered.

I shook my head at myself. What did I care if we caused chaos in the land of the raiders? After all, they seemed bent on doing that to us generation after generation. And strange luck was better than mass slaughter. We just had to find Mally again and then live long enough to save the world and come back here to rescue Judicus’s sister and hope she wanted to be rescued and didn’t execute us all as her family had a habit of doing to people who threatened their rule or principles.

I didn’t even notice Judicus’s reaction to everything until we stepped from the dark tight passage and out into the sunset past the palace wall.

Orange tears lay wet on his cheeks. He swiped them away angrily, leaving smears of dust. I didn’t meet his eyes. Not when I couldn’t offer hope with my own. Not when looking would just highlight that I saw the most powerful man I knew broken on behalf of his sister.

Instead, I swallowed, and began to push through the crowd, leading the other two. Prexav caught up and took my arm for a moment, guiding me in a slightly different direction.

“This way,” he murmured, and he seemed as shaken as the rest of us, his gaze flicking from one thing to the next as if he wasn’t sure what to be on guard against.

I was so worried for the pair of them that it took me a full minute to realize that the gongs had stopped. There were no rushing citizens in the street. We were the only ones hurrying across the cobbles.

And by the time I noticed why, it was almost too late.

The palace and the streets surrounding it were fully encircled by armed men in the Grand Hadri’s uniform. They spread in a wide ring, holding back the crowds, their stance stiff and formal. Even the breeze which tussled flags and the cloaks of regular people did not seem to touch them. I shivered at the sight of their stiff backs and severe lines.

And as we hurried from one alley to the next, the palace gates opened right in front of us, catching us mid-stride in the street.

I stumbled as, above us, the palace wall filled with massing bodies, like limpets filling gaps in the rocks as the tide receded. They assembled in an ominous line at the top of the wall.

A trumpet sounded, blasting louder than any trumpet I could have imagined – a clear, bold announcement searing through the air. It seared my heart with it – branding it with fear and perilous certainty.

And magnified over all else, a voice broke through from the palace wall, shouting and then echoed by criers on the edge of the crowds held back by the ring of parade soldiers.

“All Hail the Grand Hadri, long may she reign over us!”

And it was at that exact moment that the gate guards seemed to realize we were there.

Chapter Seventeen

My eyes met Judicus’s in horror. His lips dropped open and I thought he might say something but before he could, shouting rang out around us. It slammed into us like a moving wall as the ring of guards, the people waiting within the palace walls, and everyone on top of the wall above us seemed to shout at once.

One of the guards pointed.

They’d spotted us. It was impossible not to. But there’s something about dozens of hostile eyes turning on you at once and dozens of voices raised in approbation that sends terror through a person. My heart was in my throat, hands clammy and sweating, breath rasping, before we even started to run.

A guard broke from the cluster at the palace gates, hurtling toward us impossibly fast. Someone else followed. And then I lost track as a hand grabbed mine and yanked me away.  My feet pounded on cobbles sending shivers up my shins, but I forced them to push, push, push. My breath sawed in my throat, the taste of blood in the back of my mouth. Everything around me was reduced to what I could see or hear between each shuddering smack of my feet.

So much for helping the phoenixes. So much for saving the world. So much for friends and hope. It was over now. We’d be caught and brought before the conspirators who had overthrown the Grand Hadri and maybe Judicus would be spared because his sister was now the Grand Hadri, but a foreign mute girl who couldn’t defend herself? There would be no mercy for me.

I tried to hold back panic and focus on running instead. Thinking too much didn’t make anyone faster. But I couldn’t. The thoughts chased me, as unbidden and relentless as the guards.

I was going to be caught. I was going to be killed.

Like a slap in the face, the world went dark.

I gasped, and with my gasp fire blossomed in my heart, swirling up in a dance of flames that seemed to almost whoop with joy.

Kazmerev!

Thinking his name was almost like a prayer – personal but intense, a hand thrown out hoping to be saved. A heart lurching to life at the advent of unhoped-for news.

He did not disappoint.

He materialized under me, becoming solid in less than a heartbeat. I was just barely quick enough to jerk Judicus backward with the hand I was holding and grab him around the waist with the other hand before we were launched into the air.

Wind whipped under my feet. Joy blew through my heart echoing it.

Not wind. People. Running people chasing you. What is – oh. Flame to flame, I greet you, ancient fire!

He seemed to stutter in his hurry to get the words out.

Flame to flame, I greet you, ancient fire!

This voice boomed with a barely suppressed joviality, and I glanced to one side to see a grim Prexav trembling as he sat astride the biggest phoenix I’d seen yet. The magical creature was orange and so smoky that he almost looked shaggy. He tossed his head as he laughed.

I am Kazmerev, Bright Flame, Bound in Oath and Heart to Sersha of Landsfall.

I am Grevankin, Smoke Cloud, Bound in Oath to Prexav of Briccatore. But now, what’s all this? You’re being chased my dear boy.

“I know that!”  Prexav’s voice was testy, though I could barely hear it over the wind. “We’re trying to get to the ai’sletta and flee the city.”

The ai’sletta! A grand quest worthy of a phoenix. You’ve done well, my boy. I should rest more often if I wake to these kinds of surprises.

I glanced over my shoulder and froze. We were not the only fires in the sky. Over the palace flame after flame rose into view, dark figures clinging to the bright backs of phoenixes. There were at least a dozen. They must be the Flamerarch everyone kept speaking of. In front of me, I heard Judicus give a low curse. He’d seen them, too.

I sense Huxabrand not far from here, Kazmerev told me.

We should go to her. The quicker we found Gundt, the faster we could start to group together and flee this place.

He was already moving, angling into a new heading.

“I’m hopeful that you’ve asked Kazmerev to join Gundt,” Judicus told me. And I knew he was afraid because his voice was as calm as still water. “With the Flamerarch launching, our moments are limited.”

Limited? What could he mean by that?

Did you hear the Flamerarch greet me?

Of course not. Their soldiers had been chasing me.

They also did not greet Grevankin. You asked me once what would happen if a phoenix did not greet another immediately upon being seen. You may just find out.

That sounded ominous.

Have not a fear, little she-human, Grevankin boomed. I liked him already. You are with me and noble Kazmerev. We will handle the phoenix problems and you can handle the human problems, and all will be well.

I was pretty sure I heard Prexav muttering. He was not so certain.

Poor Prexav was cursed at birth with a rainy spirit, and he cannot see the shining sun for all the clouds he drags along behind him.

Yes, I was definitely loving Grevankin.

A flurry of bright pink and yellow flame erupted ahead of us and like a falling star falling in the wrong direction, Huxabrand rose, Gundt on her back, his sister trussed up behind him.

We were all here. Now, if we could only find Mally.

The Flamerarch is preparing to come after us, Kazmerev warned.

Kaz? I asked in my mind.

His tone softened. Little Hawk.

I missed you. I thought I might not see you again and I was afraid I wouldn’t get to tell you how much you mean to me.

There will be time for that.

But there might not be. I plowed on. I needed him to know how much he mattered to me. I needed him to know that he had saved me from a life of futility in my village and then saved me again and again from death, capture, pain, and loneliness, that he was my true friend and my savior all wrapped into one. That even if I failed and died right now, I would never regret leaving Landsfall with him. I’d always be grateful for every time he’d been reborn in my heart.

I know it little hawk. I know your heart, for it is my home. Now, know mine. I will be your friend always until your life is snuffed like a candle wick. But that day won’t be today.

Chapter Eighteen

A phoenix is a glorious, beautiful thing. A song of fire and smoke, of light and shadow, of bird-grace and brilliant mind and the strange brave trust that makes a thing of legend breathe.

But there had never been one after me before and I found the notion of it horrifying.

“That’s the Flamerarch,” Judicus said, looking over his shoulder and mine to see the phoenixes rising from the palace behind us. “I have watched them as they stood down hosts. I have watched them as they guarded those who tore my father from his throne and set up my uncle in his place.”

I could hear the horror edging his voice. But phoenixes were only supposed to do what was good.

And if you don’t realize yet that good is complicated, Kazmerev said, that sometimes people think that they’re doing right when they’re wrong to the extreme, then you haven’t understood good yet. You haven’t understood why humility must be sewn into it and woven through its warp and woof.

A sudden picture of the weaver at home – Marla of the rocky bay – sprang to mind. I’d seen her loom before. She worked there tirelessly making cloth for Landsfall, her shutter moving so fast I could hardly keep up with the flow of threads as they moved from raw strands into whole cloth.

Humility didn’t seem like something Kazmerev would preach. He wasn’t a primary example of it.

I’ve never found much of a reason to be humble. But even I know that it’s the only way to prevent being burnt up.

“Perhaps, I can talk to them,” Judicus said contemplatively.

I met his eyes, and let mine widen. He didn’t think Gundt or Prexav should do that? Below us, a square spread out with a huge statue in the center. I hadn’t seen this in my journey through town.

“Sometimes people surprise you,” he said and now his mouth was firming into determination. I wanted to throw my hands in the air. He was supposedly the most powerful rope worker of his generation. So, of course, when faced with pursuit by an enemy he wanted to talk through their grievances. It was so ... Judicus.

Triumph Square, Kazmerev told me. The statue at the center is a bronze rendering of Judicus’s father at the gibbet. His brother thought it would serve as a reminder to all.

How horrifying.

I have always thought so. Veela thought that perhaps we could not understand because we were not human.

It wasn’t a human thing. It was an arrogant thing.

See? Humility is a safeguard. That’s what I was trying to convince you of.

“I just need to think of what to say,” Judicus said. “What do you say to stop a war?”

I was staring so intently at the square around the gibbet, that I hardly noticed the small figures on the statue until we were nearly upon it.

Was that? It couldn’t be –

And then we whirled in a sudden almost panicked flurry as Judicus’s voice rang out.

“Come and reason together with us, Flamerarch. Surely phoenix should not be pitted against phoenix.”

Kazmerev made his angry shriek sound I was starting to realize was a phoenix curse. This is when I wish you could speak. Then you can tell him how foolish that was. We were not greeted by them and that means they plan to duel us.

Duel?

Flame to flame, feather to feather – to the death.

I did not like this at all! They must not do it.

Or rather, we are to fight to the ultimate death. There will be no rebirth from a phoenix duel.

My breath froze in my throat. It felt like my heart was beating so hard it was going to stop.

Easy now. Easy.

I told myself to breathe. I had to keep breathing. There had to be a way to stop this. And if there wasn’t, passing out and missing it all was not an option. If Kazmerev could be here for me until the end – well, could I not do the same for him?

We can flee. Which is what we were doing before the rope worker just had to stick his nose in things.

We spiraled around Triumph Square, the horrific statue of Judicus’s father growing larger as we descended. In the distance, I could see the dark armies closing in on the city, growing steadily closer. Ahead of them was a wall of darkness. Stryxex, I realized.

We couldn’t afford phoenixes to fight phoenixes – not with Stryxex to fight, too.

Maybe Judicus was right. Maybe we should try to talk to them.

You can’t talk if they won’t greet you. It’s a terrible breach of protocol!

He’s not wrong, a feminine phoenix voice joined in. I was relieved to see Huxabrand flying to join our spiral, a resigned-looking Gundt on her back. He looked no better than Judicus, battered and dirty, but whole. If they did not greet you then it is war.

But no. I didn’t accept that.

Hadn’t Kazmerev just been going on about humility? Maybe humility broke protocol. Maybe it didn’t pridefully defend its honor but was willing to eat the insult and try for peace a second time.

That isn’t our way.

But maybe it should be. Wasn’t he the one who said that humility must be woven through goodness? Wasn’t he the one who said I didn’t understand how nuanced goodness was? Then maybe honor was nuanced, too. Maybe it was time to bend a little.

Maybe it is. To my surprise, that voice was the booming voice of Grevankin. Maybe there is wisdom in this small Fledgling’s voice.

Prexav’s face from the back of his phoenix looked hard and unbending. But after a moment, he shook his head and swung Gravankin in closer to us.

“Ask them to speak to us at the monument,” Prexav called over to Judicus. “If we have any hope of being listened to, it will be there.”

Judicus nodded sharply, clearly satisfied that everyone was falling in with his plan, and called back with his voice amplified by his rope work.

“Meet us at the statue in Triumph Square. What better place to negotiate peace than where it was bought with blood?”

And then we were descending again, hurrying to beat out the other phoenixes and the closing Stryxex and I’d been right. There was a figure in the square sitting on the gallows as if she cared not at all what they depicted. She wore a black dripping crown on her chestnut head, her arms crossed over her chest irritably.

Mally.

Thank the heavens, we’d found her again.

Just in time to embroil her in another battle.

Chapter Nineteen

“Well, here we are, then,” Mally said when we landed. “All the trouble-makers in one place. The creeps from the temple caves, the glowing phoenixes, Judicus, the woman who killed my mother – still not brought to justice, I see – and Ceghan’s brother. How lovely. You’re accumulating quite the following, Sersha. It’s a shame you can’t pull them from a higher quality of people.”

All I felt was relief. Even a cranky Mally was still Mally.

“Do we have plans to leave this place yet?” she asked. Beside her, Ceghan stood, looking worried. She clearly had not adapted yet to Mally’s unique brand of general snideness.

“Where’s Jensen?” Prexav asked as Grevankin settled on the ground. The smoking phoenix winked at me, and he shook a little as if he were barely containing laughter. I liked that phoenix. I hoped there wouldn’t really be a duel. I didn’t want him hurt.

I’m starting to feel jealous.

“Jensen heard the ship was launching without us and he ran to stop it. He left me with her,” Ceghan nodded at Mally. “And she put on the crown and refused to budge once he was gone.”

That was Mally exactly.

“I’m not going anywhere without Sersha and I figured she’d find me if Kazmerev could help her.” Mally seemed smug as she looked from face to face. When she caught my gaze, she winked. And the thing was, she wasn’t wrong. If she’d gone without me, I might have missed her but by putting on the crown, she gave us all a chance.

“Did you break the sky, Mally?” Judicus asked. He looked exhausted. I held on to him even though we’ve landed, certain he needed my arms to hold him up.

“I might have.” Her lip trembled a little. She hadn’t meant to.

“Are you manipulating luck so that weird things keep happening around the city?” he pushed.

“Not intentionally.” She rolled her eyes.

He nodded as if all of this was completely normal. But it was nice to have him here understanding.

I think he understands, Kazmerev said dryly.

I could finally tell him that we needed to get Mally to the raider islands to stop something that was making Stryxex from destroying the world.

Kazmerev repeated that back in my mind.

“We need to what?” Gundt’s head whipped around and so did Prexav’s. They were staring at me.

Well, the Grand Hadri had seen it, too, which is why he’d sent me to them. To get his spies to help. They’d been seeing indications that there was a big problem only the ai’sletta could solve. Now we knew what it was. This – whatever it was – hole in the earth or magic well or something that was spewing out dark magic. She needed to stop it and only she could. I’d promised him I’d do it.

Kazmerev relayed my thoughts crisply.  

Prexav responded by cursing quietly but Grevankin seemed unconcerned. He rolled his head as if trying to scratch an itch. I wished I could be as calm about this as he was.

Gundt cleared his throat, listening as Kazmerev relayed it all to them. “Why would you promise that, Sersha?”

Well, I hadn’t promised exactly. I hadn’t said anything, but the Grand Hadri had taken my silence as a promise, and it felt like a promise now that I’d found Jensen like he’d said.

The Grand Hadri took her silence as a promise. Now that he’s dead, she feels obligated to keep it.

“Whoa,” Prexav said, blowing out through his mouth dramatically.

“I think maybe you should tell the rest of us what’s going on,” Ceghan said pointing at the sky. “Before the Flamerarch gets here.”

“It seems that Sersha promised the former Grand Hadri that she would bring the ai’sletta to the islands of the Hand of the Rat to destroy a threat to mankind,” Prexav said.

“Former Grand Hadri?” Gundt said at the same time that Judicus said “Promised?” and Mally grunted a laugh and rolled her eyes. She suspected this. Sometimes I wondered how much smarter she was than she appeared.

But none of them were able to do more than that. The Flamerarch was here, drifting down around us like red leaves from a maple in the Fall. And in there, in the center of the square, was the bronze casting Judicus couldn’t look at. Mally was perched on it like the guest of honor, head held high, crown black and burning and eyes even blacker and more fiery.

“I’m not sure it really is me who is twisting fate, Sersha,” she said, laughing. “I think it might be you.”

As the last phoenix plunged to the earth and settled, shaking out its plumage, even Mally fell silent as the Flamerarch raised their wings together, as one, arching over us in fiery condemnation.

Who is it who has asked to speak rather than fight? one of them asked. His words boomed in my mind.

And while I was sure that all of us were thinking of Judicus, we didn’t want to say his name. A minute passed in which windows around the square opened as citizens peered out into the night at the assemblage of bright phoenixes and we grew more nervous and then one of the phoenix riders spoke,

“You are declared traitors and as such, we will take the humans into our custody and the phoenixes will fight to the death as is custom.”

“Again, Reichus?” Judicus said softly, and the man leading the phoenixes gaped as the rope worker disentangled himself from my hold and slipped down from Kazmerev’s back to stride to the center of the square and place his hand gently on the foot of the casting of his dead father. “Once you declared a man a traitor who had done nothing but fight for you and your loved ones and all who lived in this city. Now, you do it again with me. I am here to help, but you only see my blood. We are here to save, and you only see that we are not you. Our enemies gather beyond the gates, and you are busy fighting those who would stand with you. Where is your goodness, rider of flame? Where is the righteousness of your cause and quest.”

“It’s here,” Reichus said.

“Then forget this nonsense of phoenix fighting phoenix and countryman, countryman and stand up on this memorial to the worst day of my life and reason with me and if I cannot sway you with my thoughts and heart then you can kill me as he was killed. But if I can sway you, then we will stand together instead of apart and cleanse the black mark on the name of Flamerarch.”

And I wanted to call to him to come back, that this wasn’t going to work, that we were just going to lose him, too. Or failing that, I wanted to give him one last word of encouragement, but I had nothing to give him but a grim smile to meet his kind one when his eyes flickered to mine for just a moment before he mounted the gibbet and stood beside the casting of his doomed father to beg for peace.

Chapter Twenty

The Flamerarch were showy, dressed in dark leathers with highly polished bands of metal around their wrists and ankles. They wore wide girdles of brightly polished metal around their middles and heavy torques hanging over their collarbones. It was not hard to see that they used their dress to reflect the flames and smoke of their phoenixes as a way to make themselves appear grander. Beside the bright creatures, or atop them, these men and women dazzled. Their heads were capped in fitted metal helms with black plumes running like rooster combs along the top and down to the nape of the neck.

I didn’t like the pageantry. I didn’t like that it made their phoenixes look like props. Kazmerev grunted in my mind in agreement, clearly not willing to say anything they might hear.

I disliked that even more. Why did their phoenixes not speak? They acted more like mounts than independent beings and if there was one thing Kazmerev had taught me since I met him – it was that phoenixes were most certainly not mounts.

He shuffled under me and then bent his head back in a way I hadn’t seen him do before. It let him rub his flaming cheek against me affectionately and to my surprise, tears welled up in my eyes and my arms went out automatically to hug him closer, tighter. My nose was full of woodsmoke and cedar, of hot sparks and heavy musk, and for just a moment I let the scent of my burning phoenix comfort me for what was to come. It would be fine. He was here. And he always rose again.

We would rise from this, too.

The leader of the Flamerarch – or whoever it was that was willing to negotiate – dismounted and strode to join Judicus at the statue. He walked stiffly. A frisson of worry tickled the edges of my focus. A man didn’t walk like that if he felt confident. Or if he felt merciful. A man walked like that if he was on edge – afraid or angry or vicious.

I gritted my teeth against the worry that automatically whipped to the surface, but Judicus lounged easily against the statue. Every eye was on him as he slowly looked up at the man approaching him.

“I am Judicus Franzer Irault,” he said calmly, looking first at the man approaching him and then letting his gaze sweep over the others ringing us. He looked like a man choosing a fish for dinner from a stall, not a single man facing up against a ring of enemies. He hardly seemed to mind the bandage covering one eye, though on that intent face, it only made him look more dangerous. “A rope worker and the leader of this coterie.”

Prexav moved uncomfortably at the word “coterie.” He likely resented being included in that, but this wasn’t the time to mention the finer details.

“We know who you are, Son of Chaos,” the Flamerarch representative said coldly.

“And you have no introductions to offer?” Judicus asked, picking at one of his fingernails absently.

The other man bristled. “None I’d give to such as you.”

“Hmm,” Judicus said, looking up from his nails.

It’s a strange certainty that if a man appears very casual in a tense situation, every eye goes to him. Every mind wonders if he knows something they do not. That was what was happening here, and I realized after a heartbeat that it must be deliberate, because as he had been drawing all their eyes, Mally and Ceghan had left the statue and joined us a little back from it. Ceghan slipped up on Grevankin’s back with her brother and Mally was suddenly right beside me, meeting my eyes with a look that said she expected trouble and didn’t like it but wasn’t sure what to do about it.

I was right there with her. I didn’t know what was coming, either, but I hoped Judicus had a plan.

Judicus cleared his throat. “Well then, Reichus, if you will not offer the names of your friends, then please know that we have no quarrel with you and wish only to depart your city in peace.”

“That’s no longer an option.” The man representing the Flamerarch – Reichus – was short and stocky, at least fifty by my guess, with pouches under his eyes and a shock of thick grey hair. I wondered if he had children our age, but then remembered that Kazmerev had said phoenix riders rarely married. If only I could talk to my phoenix without us being overheard. He would certainly have observations to share.

Judicus was speaking again, hands spread out as if to reason with the other man. “Why pit brother against brother? Why pit phoenix against phoenix? We would all lose, and for what?”

“You’re in the wrong, Irault. You and your coterie. You’re a danger to the city and the nation of Calicarn. The best thing for everyone is if we subdue you and put you under guard for the judgment of the Grand Hadri.”

“My sister?” Judicus asked mildly.

The man flinched at that.

“Was she asked if she wanted to be Grand Hadri?” His mild voice had a dangerous edge.

“We all must do our part.”

“Indeed. And the part she will play was forced on her in the most unchivalrous fashion. But leaving that aside, and leaving aside that I would be in my rights as her brother to call the court to account, there are Stryxex outside the walls and they’re bent on the destruction of all phoenixes. Each one of you to fall will be one less to hold them off. And each one of us to fall is another less in that good fight. The best for Calicarn requires every phoenix and every person available to fight with all their strength. And it demands we put aside our differences – me, my revenge, and you, your prejudice.”

“They aren’t here for us,” the man said, but he was playing with his metal wristband almost unconsciously and I thought he was nervous. “We don’t need your help. And your claims of being owed vengeance are null now that your sister wears a crown. No one has ever made a case against becoming Grand Hadri.”

“They Stryxex are here for everyone. If you think otherwise, you’re twice the fool. But I care not for your folly. If you don’t want us in your city, that’s fine. My coterie and I were just leaving.”

“I can’t allow that. You’re as much a danger without as you are within.”

“We’ll fight our way out but we’d rather not.” Judicus’s lounging suddenly seemed to look more like a predator on a branch of a tree waiting to fall on its prey than a man taking his ease. “We’d rather talk. After all, everyone here is associated with phoenixes and they can only associate with the good. That means we all think our causes are just. Can we not come to some agreement? Can we not find something in common in all this goodness?”

The other man looked uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable, too. What would happen if Judicus couldn’t talk us out of a fight? Could we possibly win against them?

No.  Kazmerev sounded very certain.

Not even with Mally?

No.

But it could work if she removed the crown. Kazmerev shuffled under me uneasily. But what if that broke the sky even more? What if he couldn’t come back ... ever?

Exactly.

I swallowed down a burst of worry. No need to fret about what-ifs when I had so much to worry about right in front of me.

Hope that Judicus talks them into peace.

Around us, the ring of phoenixes seemed to ripple as if responding to Kazmerev’s words. I hoped they were responding favorably.

“Would it help if I told you we’re following the wishes of the last Grand Hadri?” Judicus said, seeming to weigh his words.

He was looking for any argument. Any wedge in the man’s determined refusal to simply let us leave. But we had to leave. Unless Mally went on the quest assigned her by their dead leader, utter destruction would be unleashed upon the earth.

The other man’s eyes flashed up to Judicus, his brows rising in disbelief. “You, Son of Chaos? You would work for the man who took your father’s life?”

“My uncle,” Judicus reminded him.

The other man scoffed. “I don’t believe you care about blood as much as you do revenge. I need an act of good faith if I’m to take you at your word.”

“My word is yours. That should be enough,” Judicus said.

From across the square, I saw Gundt dismount as the man scoffed again.

“Your word is nothing, Son of Chaos. I need a hostage. How about the pretty girl with the angry eyes?” He pointed at Mally.

“Is my word nothing, too, Reichus?” Gundt asked, swaggering up to them. “Will you not trust me? We were friends once, I think.”

“Greensleeve,” Reichus acknowledged. “I know you, but the Greensleeves are not to be trusted, either. Your hearts are not with us. Your strange cult cares only for a bygone time. So, no, your word is not enough.”

“Then take me as your hostage,” Gundt said.

Huxabrand made a sound like a sheep bleating.

“I think you’d make a poor hostage, Gundt, bastard that you are. There are none who care whether you live or die, though if I am not mistaken, that is your half-sister across the back of your phoenix, and no one will be going anywhere unless she is given over to us.”

Gundt and Judicus exchanged a look.

“Of course,” Gundt said after a moment. “You are welcome to take her as hostage.”

“No,” Reichus said. “We take her as is our right as enforcers of the law of Bricatorre which outlaws kidnapping.”

“Does it really?” Judicus asked in mock surprise. And no wonder. Was his sister not the victim of kidnapping?

Reichus ignored him, continuing on, “And we will take a real hostage on top of that.”

Judicus shot Mally a look and shook his head, which I found hilarious. She would never offer herself and only Judicus would have so much faith in her good heart that he thought that was possible.

“Prexav, perhaps, since you don’t like Gundt,” Judicus offered.

I didn’t want him to offer himself. I didn’t want it, and yet I was surprised he did not.

A leader is not worth much set on the sidelines, Kazmerev offered. And that was true enough, but I wondered how much of that was because he was worried about being used against his sister.  

Beside me, Prexav snarled. “Neither myself nor my sister will be hostages of the Flamerarch. We are free people.”

“I am already reconsidering,” the Flamerarch said. “It’s better, perhaps, to take all of you back to the palace. Dead or alive.”

Take them all, the Flamerarch phoenixes said with one mental voice. I flinched from it. It was so – uniform. As if they couldn’t think for themselves. As if they didn’t want to. I swallowed down horror.

Mally had to get out and away from people like that. She needed to go to the raider’s islands. She needed Prexav and his spy ring to hire the ship and know where to sail it. She needed Judicus to guide her and Gundt to protect her. And they all needed to be far, far from these terribly similar Flamerarch phoenixes. What she didn’t need – what none of them needed – was me.

I took a deep breath.

Tell the others that they need to get her to the islands, I told Kazmerev.

Wait.

Sersha.

And then I stepped forward.

No!

There was no one else. I was the only one expendable enough to be a hostage.

Chapter Twenty-One

No, don’t do this.

But just like he’d said he was not my pet, I was not his pet, either. I could choose to sacrifice for the people I loved if I wanted to. Or, in this case, if I thought it was the only way forward.

I took the first few steps slowly enough that though every phoenix was looking at me, no one else seemed to notice at first.

I salute you, mighty heart, Grevankin said in my mind, his booming voice blocking out everything else and then every Flame Rider looked at me and Judicus hissed in a breath as he saw what they were looking at and focused on the grim expression on my face.

His eyes flicked from me to Mally and back to me again. I could tell he know what I was doing – that I was giving myself so the plan could go on. He could tell how I’d reached the conclusion that he should have reached – that I was the one person here, except for maybe Ceghan, who they could afford to offer up. Gundt would have done the job, but they’d already said no to Gundt. My allies didn’t need Kazmerev and me for this job. They did need everyone else.

I took another step and drew in a breath to steady myself.

But the look in Judicus’s eye was almost too much for me. He looked as if someone was ripping him down the middle. His utter loyalty was touching. His absolute dedication to keeping his word – to being there for me, and providing for me, and keeping me out of danger just because I was in his coterie – it made my heart ache just a bit. Where else in all the world was there a man of character like Judicus? And how had he learned to be like that in a world that had only ever used and betrayed him?

He didn’t even have a phoenix.

Behind me, my own phoenix keened sadly, quietly, just on the edge of hearing as if he was trying to suppress it and just couldn’t.

I looked over my shoulder and met his eyes.

Bright and liquid, they were so full of hurt that it felt like a physical blow. I flinched from it, aching with what I was doing to both of us. But if I didn’t choose this, then what? Did he want to fight and lose and ... die? Did he want to watch our friends die around us? Did he want to see the ai’sletta die before she could save us all? Did he want to watch phoenixes fall one by one with no one to stop the targeted attack against them?

No.

It was such a little word to hold so much emotion.

But how can I see you sacrifice yourself and not be gutted by it?

I wasn’t going to die. And neither was he. Not now. Not with this sacrifice of my freedom for a little while.

I took another step and met Judicus’s eye again.

“The Flame Rider?” Reichus asked. “Yes, she’ll do, I suppose. I can see she’s dear to you and that’s the key. A hostage is only worth what she’s worth to the one you must control. Why doesn’t she speak?”

“She’s voiceless,” Judicus said, and it was almost a gasp as his eyes stayed on mine. His eyes were exact reflections of Kazmerev’s with exactly the same pain in them.

He didn’t ask if I was sure. He didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t my decision to make or that he would take my place. We both knew he couldn’t. We both knew it would be the wrong choice. He just stood there, his face drained of its last dregs of color, his eyes burning with regret and pain. His mouth hung open between words, as if he didn’t remember how to shut it, or as if he was in the kind of pain you couldn’t close your lips over.

“We keep her for as long as you are gone. Return to the Flamerarch when you’re done saving us from this threat you claim exists and she’ll be yours again,” Reichus said grimly. “Refuse to leave her with us, and we fight right now. And she’ll die with her phoenix along with all the rest of you. You know us, Irault. You know we are warriors of flame and smoke. The best of the best. You will not survive if we want you dead.”

“Yes,” Judicus said grimly.

And then, to my shock, he stepped forward and drew me into a hug.

He was warm as a phoenix, his heart hammering so fast I was worried for his health, and his arms trembled as he held me against him as gently as a boy might hold a wounded songbird.

He whispered into my hair, “Hold on and we will return for you. You and my sister. Be brave. I will not abandon you.”

I looked up at him and I wanted to say, “Don’t stop until you’ve saved the world. Don’t die while you’re doing it. Ask the spies to watch out for you while you’re on the ship because seasickness makes you miserable.”

But I couldn’t say any of it.

He knows, Kazmerev said.

And the look in Judicus’s eyes told me he did.

And then strong hands ripped me from him and Reichus said, “Be gone by the count of twenty, or the deal is off.”

Judicus reached out, and to my utter shock, his fingers found the side of my cheek, and his touch – light as a breeze – was half a last caress and half as if he wished he could cling to me, and then he turned and strode to Gundt’s side. Lady Lightland had already been pulled from Huxabrand’s back and left on the ground and Mally was hurrying to join them – three to a phoenix. Gundt and Prexav didn’t have my limitations.

Gundt saluted me, his face hard as stone, and then he kicked off into the air with his two precious passengers. Grevankin leapt up behind him, bearing Prexav and Ceghan.

And my friends were gone just like that.

I watched them sailing up, up, up, above me, ashes and sparks gently fluttering down in their wake until it was only me, surrounded by my enemies, with only my dear phoenix with me, still keening his sad song.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I still had my heart.

I still had Kazmerev.

He shifted uncomfortably, unable to speak without being heard by the other phoenixes, but clearly, he wished he was flying away, too.

We waited in silence, Reichus watching to be sure that my allies were truly away, his hand held up until the last glimmer of their flames were gone.

His men relaxed their tight formation, melting into casual knots and speaking quietly together. It bothered me that their phoenixes remained in a stiff ring – unwilling or unable to disperse as the humans had. What kept them so tight and unbending. Were they not free? Had they been enslaved in some way? The idea of it horrified me.

Perhaps it was not only Stryxex who would have to be stopped.

Above us, the darkness of the sky rippled, and I thought I saw the edges of Stryxex in the distance, settling in over the city. The barest suggestion of them made my blood feel cold in my veins. I hoped I was wrong – that it was only my imagination, that I was working myself up over nothing.

I see them, too.

Kazmerev was so quiet. And it felt so unlike him to be that quiet. I ached for him to speak freely, to tell me what he was thinking. Did he feel betrayed by my choice to sacrifice ourselves?

Never. We are one in this.

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting relief fill me. He was more gracious than I had been. If we were together, we could face whatever came next.

“Gather in your phoenix,” Reichus told me. “You will not be permitted to ride him.”

I couldn’t. Not with Stryxex all around and the future so uncertain. I caught Kazmerev’s eye, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking but he seemed agitated, looking at the sky and then the other phoenixes.

Do not forget, one of them said suddenly, and I did not like the wooden sound of his voice. This could still end in a duel.

Kazmerev’s feathers seemed to crackle with renewed sparks and his eye glittered as he said to me, Do as the man asks.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax and trust and gather him into my heart.

I failed.

I couldn’t relax. Not when I didn’t know what was going to happen.

I couldn’t be calm. Not when I was worried for him.

What if he didn’t come back?

I will always come back for you.

What if they did something to prevent it?

No one can prevent it.

Reichus made an annoyed sound in his throat. “Has he not assured you enough? Are you a child that you cannot go a moment without being cossetted and caressed?”

My face flamed hot.

Do not fear. I –

And then Kazmerev’s voice cut off.

I gasped, blinded by the sudden light of gold and pink dawn. Around me, shouts of alarm told me I was not alone. Mally must have taken off the Dark Diadem. When my eyes adjusted, there was nothing but lingering smoke where Kazmerev and the other phoenixes had been.

I swallowed, clutching my hand to my chest as if I could keep all my fears bottled up with him. But I was worried. What if the sky was stuck again? What if night never returned?

Beside me, Reichus cursed.

He didn’t know how bad it was if that was the only curse he could muster. But I did. I could see the edges of the Stryxex around us. I could see them gathering over the city. Light did not affect them. The dawn did not dismiss them.

And while the Flamerarch around me was still reeling from the sudden change from night to morning a Stryxex dropped down in the square, seemingly unconcerned by the Flame Riders. It screeched like an angry raven, shrill and furious. Any attempt to look at it made my eyes roll away, my head aching behind them from the way the edges of the great bird turned light away and tangled its shape into mirror-like darkness and nothingness.

From the back of the impossible creature, a figure leapt, ripping the veil from its face.

The red-headed Stryex rider. I nearly choked at the sight of him.

“The girl is ours,” he said coldly. “Hand her over.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I froze, paralyzed by his demand. I tried to will my knees to work, to run, to ... anything. But they weren’t listening to me.

To my shock, Reichus shoved me roughly behind him. “I don’t think so, stranger. Who are you who comes flying in here, mounted on an aberration and making demands?”

The red-haired man sneered, and his boney face looked almost skeletal with the expression.

“I’m the one with the mount when yours are nothing but memories. I’m the one whose people now rule this city. I’m the one to whom you will bend, and all your play authority will melt away like fat crackling over a fire. A few loud protests, and then it’s gone leaving only a stink behind.”

If Reichus was worried, he didn’t show it. And neither did his Flame Riders, who, to my surprise, moved light as phoenix feathers as they surrounded us. I had expected harsh treatment and angry demands. I had not expected defense. I found the sudden consideration almost overwhelming.

Tears pricked my eyes when one of the Flamerarch reached out to clasp my arm for just a moment. I shot the rider a furtive look and saw it was a woman of maybe forty, her hair cut very short and shot with silver threads, and her leathers under the polished metal flare, worn with hard use. The look in her eyes was both firm and kind, as if she were trying to reassure me.

The raider laughed.

“Wrong girl,” he said, and the twist of his mouth was so mocking that for a moment I couldn’t seem to grasp what he meant, and then his men were hauling Lady Lightland to her feet.

I gasped.

“To think,” he said, laughing even harder, “that you would have the ai’sletta with you and not even know it.”

“The ai’sletta?” Reichus asked as warily as I would have, if I had a voice.

“She turns fate just by being near. Just by being in the same city as you. How do you think we found the Grand Hadri when he tried to flee us? How do you think we took your city? Look.” Behind him was the sound of marching boots across cobbles and as I looked out at the streets surrounding Triumph Square, I realized the enemy had come through the gates at last and was taking the city without resistance. “We are here without a drop of blood spilled, our ruler installed without a voice raised in protest, our ai’sletta has made it all possible. And now, with her help, we will do what the ai’sletta was always meant to.”

“And what is that?” Reichus asked, and for the first time since I met him, his voice wavered.

“We will perform the Great Transformation. We will turn men into gods and phoenixes into Stryxex. We will open the bowels of the earth and let forth her wrath to purge the land and the air and make what was weak and temporary become strong and eternal.”

And I did not like those words at all. They sounded religious, worshipful. It sounded like he believed every one of them. A flickering memory of fleeing down the underground passage with the Grand Hadri washed over me. I realized, suddenly, what I had seen. Phoenixes. Being made into Stryxex.

I looked at the Stryxex before me – the terrible inverting of everything a phoenix was – and my heart froze within me.

The mural.

I should have realized.

The great evil on the other side of the ocean. The thing the Grand Hadri had been warned of. It was all the same thing. And it had come to our shores. It had come after our phoenixes.

I swayed and the steady Flame Rider beside me caught my arm in her firm grip, keeping me upright.

How had I not seen it?

How had I not known?

Casanetta Lightland shook herself as her bonds were cut and she looked through the Flamerarch, her eyes sparkling with triumph until they met mine. She winked. She knew as well as I did that she was no ai’sletta. And she knew I could tell no one.

“Keep a hold of them,” she told the red-haired rider, her voice ringing out as if it was meant to carry to us more than to him. “When the sun sets, we’ll turn their phoenixes. They might even survive the process.”

She rested a hand lightly on his shoulder and then leapt onto his Stryxex as if it were hers.

“Let’s go, Andretti, the soldiers will mop them up for us. I’ll let you be the one to turn them.”

She snapped her fingers, looking past me and I spun to see that while we had been distracted, a cart had drawn up. A cart with a large cage on it as if to hold mythic lions within. But the door was being opened and the soldiers that spilled into the square were all looking at us.

It dawned on me what the cage was for – who it was for. And I wished I could speak to negotiate with them. I wished I could fight. But there were hundreds of bodies pressing quietly in, weapons drawn. We couldn’t fight them all. Not without our phoenixes.

“Seize them,” Cassanetta said lightly. “And be sure none of them die. It would be a shame to lose a phoenix.”

***

Read more of Sersha’s tale in Phoenix Heart: Season Two, Episode Three “Endless Dawn.”

Behind the Scenes:

USA Today bestselling author, Sarah K. L. Wilson loves happy endings, stories that push things just a little further than you expect, heroes who actually act heroic, selfless acts of bravery, and second chances. She writes young adult fantasy because fantasy is her home and apparently her internal monologue is stuck in the late teens

Sarah would like to thank Melissa Wright & Eugenia Kollia for their incredible work in beta reading and proofreading this book. Without their big hearts and passion for stories, this book would not be the same.

Sarah has the deepest regard for the talent of her phenomenal artist Luciano Fleitas who created the gorgeous cover art that accompanies this book. Without his work, it would be so much harder to show off this story the way it deserves!

Thanks also to the Noble Order of Female Fantasy Authors who keep me sane – sort of. And for my beloved husband, Cale and sons Neville and Leif who are endlessly patient as I talk to them about bookish passions.

And a HUGE THANK YOU to my patrons, Mike Burgess, Jennifer Wood and Carly Salsbury for their support. I couldn’t do this without readers like you!

Visit Sarah’s website for more information:

www.sarahklwilson.com

OTHER BOOK SERIES BY SARAH K. L. WILSON

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When a fae trickster meets a caged human seer, his thoughts are how to turn this to his advantage, until she starts to slip into his dreams and changes everything. Romantic, dreamy & sweet – this stand-alone short novel is for romantic fantasy lovers.

Bluebeard’s Secret Series (2021)

When Izolda is stolen away as the wife of a mysterious Wittenbrand she thinks only of saving her family – certainly not about his fifteen previous wives or their mysterious deaths, certainly not about the insanity of this upside-down fae world, and certainly not about whether she might be falling in love despite herself. If you loved Alice in Wonderland but wished it was a fairytale romance, this book might be for you.

Empire of War & Wings Series (2020)

When an evil prince arrives on her doorstep, Aella discovers a rage-powered magic inside herself. It’s the perfect weapon to beat back the injustices of her empire – but can she control this magic when it manifests as an angry swarm of bees?

Tangled Fae Series (2020)

Twisted Fae have invaded her world and stolen her sister. Can she save her village and her family by learning to fight and bargain like the fae?

Bridge of Legends Series (2019)

He is possessed by ancient magic. She can smell spiritual residues.

Together they seem unstoppable, but is their love doomed?

And if you liked this episodic story, you’ll certainly like her other episodic fiction:

Dragon Tide Series (2019)

Can Seleska and her baby dragon bring magic back to the world?

Dragon Chameleon Series (2018)

He’s a trickster with the most unique dragon out there. Together, they’ll have to be heroes.

Dragon School Series (2018)

A disabled teen, a telepathic dragon, a bond that will save the world.

Reviews are always welcome! If you liked this book, please tell someone!