I didn’t need armor or a sword, I could forge both from nothing but my fire alone, and they'd never failed me. My other things had been strapped to my damn horse.
I lost Camden in the chaos, and I hadn't known where Bowen was when the battle had begun. I downed six men in a sparking ring around my body without even raising a hand, and the ones behind them slid back. Some were even cowardly enough to go searching for an easier target.
With my arms crossed, I formed twin knives, one in each palm, and slew anyone who dared get near. With weapons made of flame, the enemy did not even bleed in death.
Oh, but how they died.
They fell and fell until there were no men anywhere within my striking distance without our emblem ablaze across their arms or chest. The battlefield was filled with a familiar stench of burning flesh. I'd just started thinking we'd claim victory from this attack. That we'd managed to kindle a fire from a few hot ashes, but a cold voice spoke to me.
"It's nice to see you again, Princess," the man said.
It took a moment longer than it should for his name to return to me. So did the sharpness of my tongue. "Hello, Prince Loren," I said, tossing a knife straight for his stupid smirking face.
He washed it away with a watery wave of one hand. I hadn't believed it would harm him, but a lady could hope.
"Even with an ambush, none of your soldiers will leave this clearing alive," I told the prince. I didn't want to think of how many of ours wouldn't leave here, either. I'd grieve later.
"A calculated sacrifice," he said, sending a wave of water in my direction.
It did little good, the air around me was so hot it evaporated before impact. The prince was bluffing, he had to be. I’d bet he thought it was an excellent strategy to attack sleeping men in the night. I was sure he felt robbed of his shallow victory and ached deeply below the stupid grin.
I grasped my second knife and cloaked myself in crimson-flamed armor. The battle around us turned gravely still, as I extended my arm into a long blade made of nothing but fire and moonless night.
The prince was weak, he could not create water, only steal it from around him. I choked that water out of existence with nothing but a look.
Out of the air, it hissed, even out of every felled body. I left nothing but hissing steam and dried-up husks as I stalked my prey.
"You bitch." He coughed, but they always said that.
"You can kill me," he said, and I would before long, "but you'll burn yourself out soon enough."
I laughed as sharp as a crackling flame. "I could burn like this for years.”
"Not without food you can't, Princess. Surely you realize this is not our full army."
I let flames snake their way around his legs, and though he cried out in pain, he would not stop talking.
"Right now, the other half of my men are seeing the Fire Kingdom providence of Greenwich razed to the ground."
I felt my core sputter.
"As it turns out," the prince hacked, "it is as easy as that old expression made it out to be. You can fight fire with fire, and we have. We've burned every farm, every man, and every last stitch of food. There is absolutely nothing you can do—"
I didn't need to hear anything else, my fire raged for the first time in my adult life, completely out of my control. Smoke filled my eyes, angry plumes of it seemed to spring up from every direction at once. Until warm hands trapped my arms in a vice-like hold against my body.
The smoke. I had dispelled my armor. I hadn't even realized.
"Stop it," Bowen hissed, "stop it now, you're hurting our men."
I didn't know how not to hurt.
"He said…" I had to tell Bowen what he said, but I couldn't say the words, I couldn't even think them.
It was Camden's voice that answered me, anyway.
He was still shirtless. Cam had acquired a second blade and cut across one shoulder.
"He said…" I tried again, but it wasn't any easier.
"We know." Bowen spoke as if it pained him as much as it did me.
"Bowen," Camden barked, as he locked blades with two men who had started circling me like sharks, "get her out of here."
I was already too out of breath to notice a difference. One moment the awful smoke threatened to choke even me, and the next minute, I was sitting nude on a plush green carpet covering a stone floor.
A fire blazed to life in a strange hearth, and the space was so eerily still that I had to consider if I'd died.
"Where am I?" I asked, my voice rawer than I could have imagined.
"My manor house," Bowen said, as he draped a blanket across my shoulders.
The door flew open behind me, a plump maid with a stern expression barged in, clearly not expecting to see me. Her eyes went wide, but I couldn't even flinch. I knew the blanket wasn't covering much. I'd burned off my clothes when I'd called my armor.
"Pardon me, my lord, I was surprised to see you, is all. They said—well, never you mind, I'll just be going…"
"Lucy," Bowen addressed the maid, "please fetch the large red box for me on top of my bureau, and hurry."
Lucy left us at once.
"Did you hear…" I began, but it was like a wall I could not seem to scale, no matter how many times I tried it.
"The prince wasn't the only one running his mouth tonight," Bowen said softly.
He wouldn't look at me, and I couldn't look at him, and I hated both of us for it.
Lucy returned and handed Bowen a great red gift box, with a large golden bow attached to the top, he then hastily removed. The whole thing seemed remarkably out of place on a night such as this.
Bowen dropped a new set of smooth fighting leather into my lap, boots and all. I slid them on, not caring if he watched. I was almost in a trance. I felt disconnected from every part of me, and it wasn't as though he hadn't seen it before.
They fit like a second skin.
"I meant to give them to you for last yule, but…" Bowen trailed off, and I knew exactly why he hadn't given them to me.
Because I'd broken his heart that night. I'd crushed it into a thousand pieces, and I hadn't even cared. I could live a thousand lifetimes, and I wouldn't be good enough for him, or Daniel, either.
"Take me to Greenwich," I pleaded.
I knew Bowen would refuse, so I drug myself from the floor to prove I could stand another jump.
"It's on the other side of the country," he rasped, but I could tell he'd considered it, too. "And I already teleported several other times tonight.
"I wasn't in the camp. How do you think they snuck up on us? I'd have sensed them if I had been there, but I was back at the castle because…"
“Because…” Because Bowen was keeping something from me.
"Your grandfather," he said, and nothing else.
No, no.
"How?" I asked.
The fire in the grate roared, but it wasn't half as loud as Bowen. "He was an old man."
"But you don't believe that." I didn't recognize my voice.
Hadn’t the worm lord hinted of this outcome today? It was probably restitution from the punch Camden had thrown his way. Bowen didn’t believe it because he knew better.
"Take me to Greenwich," I repeated.
This time, I didn’t even feel Bowen's hands on me before we were gone.
Chapter 8
It was as though I'd fallen face-first into the fireplace. If the great momentum had taken me only that far. Every part of the world was ablaze, not a corner of it was safe. Bells rang out the moment we arrived, but by the time I'd righted myself, they'd gone deadly silent.
All that was left of them was the electric hum of their memory as it rang in my ears.
Bowen was dragging me back. He could try.
His hands shook, but he refused to let me out of his grasp. I whirled back to him. I'd let him think he'd won. My eyes blazed at his blank face as I tried to decide what was the cause of the weakness I'd never once seen in him. Magic toll? Fatigue? Or merely a nig
ht of failings and sorrow.
He met my eyes, though, finally, and that was when I saw the shadow of it there. A different kind of sadness.
"He's alive," Bowen said, less I misread that anguish.
"Where?" I demanded. Where was Daniel?
Bowen didn't answer as he started down a scarred hill that had already been burned to a fine dark dust. Then he had his black fire ablaze in his fingers, even though I knew it was likely he was still trembling. I was, too. In my new leathers, I called to me a long blade that pulsed with the most profound red flame, and yet my insides that had always raged would not grow warm.
Buildings were going up like haystacks in every direction. It reminded me of the bonfire burnings we held for the solstice, and I'd never stand before one and think it was beautiful again.
Charging through a stream, Bowen did not look back to see if I was on his heels, and I almost faltered. There were so many animals that had come to the stream to seek refuge from the fire. Still, there were men here, too, carrying buckets and wet potato sacks. They were trying to beat back the smallest of sections, even as it raced from every direction to swallow the entire place alive.
There didn’t seem to be anything left to save. I couldn’t find one shack or field that wasn't ruined, this was the aftermath.
It would have been such a useful skill, to be able to control the fires of others or even just natural fire, but it was only the fire in my own veins that willed to my command.
But… "I could use the water from the stream," I said. "I could call for water again."
Bowen didn’t stop, even though my own lungs ached. I'd never been able to keep up with him, not since we were children, and his legs had grown so much longer than mine. Magic could only take you so far, and I was learning that lesson tonight. All this power and none of it could save a thing.
"You'll be too late," Bowen hissed over his shoulder.
I could see Daniel then. He was running through a wall of red fire before a barn just as red. The barn was made of metal, I realized, not wood. Daniel was trying to save the food.
Daniel was trying to save the kingdom.
Only fire was never our real enemy. It had not sprung from lightning or stone; it had sprung from the hands of wicked men who wanted us dead.
Laughter rang out from the haze of smoke. Sparks showed up and out from their feet as they stepped toward Daniel and the other farmers. Daniel saw them come, his head whipped back to spit at them, but he remained near the flames by the door.
Those men were going to make him stop, though.
Daniel hadn't noticed us, and I didn't dare call his name, I didn't dare pull his attention yet another direction.
"Bowen," I hissed instead.
I didn't know what to do. The Water Kingdom soldiers, with white rags tied to their faces like masks, were so much closer to the barn and our men than we were, but Bowen always had plans. He was still two steps ahead of me, and tonight, I relied on that.
Black flames shot from him in a straight line, as though he'd cracked a well into the center of the earth, as though his black flame was hellfire.
Some thought that was precisely what it was, that Bowen had been damned since birth. Perhaps I'd believe that, too, and if it was, I willed him to take us all to hell tonight. I'd willingly go there if we could just save Daniel, who was still trying to spare the barn with nothing but his will and a sorry bit of empty sack.
There was a single support left of an outside wooden structure that had been mostly burned to ash. The last section of it gave out, then it fell in a waterfall of flaming bits of wood and hot ash.
Daniel cried out at the exact moment I did, and that had been a mistake.
Because the Water soldiers were still closer than we were, even as we raced forward.
Bowen's wall of black flame was in place. Still, the place where the wood had fallen into it refused to entirely reignite again. One of the soldiers stepped through it like a great cat before Bowen could double the wall back around, closing the hole another way.
These were farmers, though, not fighters, and one soldier was enough.
One soot-streaked man who had been handling a pitchfork had worked out this man was the enemy, and he charged him, sharp black teeth of the tool shining, but he was beaten back as if he weighed nothing.
Daniel was still fighting fires. He didn’t know the man was behind him. He knew nothing but of his task that I knew in my aching heart would fail, anyway.
The man was too close, I had to do it—we wouldn't make it in time.
"Daniel," Bowen shouted.
"Look behind you," I screamed.
He didn’t glance back, though. He was staring at me.
And that was what killed him.
A silver sword the color of choked-out moonlight, and right through the chest.
The blood of the wound bled into the fire, and then everywhere around us was blood and soot.
Then it wasn't the world that burned and raged.
It was me.
The fire these men had started could not continue if there was nothing left to burn. I wiped out all but the last one, the one whose sword was still slick with Daniel's blood in a raging inferno that ate up everything and left only charred earth in its wake.
"Crazy bitch," the man hissed, flames ripping at his shirt sleeves, but I didn't dare get closer. I wouldn't burn his body, I couldn't.
"The Fire Kingdom will certainly burn to the ground with you wearing your crooked crown!" the soldier shouted as he held his blistering arm tight to his side.
"Lucky for all of us," I raged, "that Camden will treat everyone so well. I, on the contrary, am planning on personally escorting you to hell."
I raised the blade in my hand, it pulsed and sparked in my palm, but the man was not afraid. He was amused as he roared with laughter. "Prince Camden has fallen in the north."
My flame sword blazed.
"You are a murderer and a fool," I spat. "We have only just returned from the north after assuring our victory!" I pulled my rolling fire back to me then, I was going to burn this bastard from the inside out.
"I guess you should have stayed for the second wave, Princess," the man said. "Perhaps you could have saved Prince Camden. Then again, you'd probably be dead, same as him."
The soldier's body was gone, and in its place was a raging little river of black water. Somehow the water's edge was razor sharp. I heard it whistle as it hurtled toward me like a spear, and I closed my eyes.
The fire should have died that night.
It no longer seemed to exist inside me.
Black flames shot out around me: a dome, a shield. The waterman splashed out of existence and vanished in a puff of smoke from the fiery earth.
Bowen panted behind me; he was just as soot streaked as everything else.
"You should have let me die," I said, and my breath alone made ash fly.
He looked at me then, really looked at me, in a way that he hadn't all year. It was as dark as his black flame, and just as encompassing.
"There's one thing in all this miserable world that I love more than you," he said, "and that is my country, my kingdom, and right now, you're its only hope."
THE END… FOR NOW.
This is a prequel of the new Fire Queen Series. To stay up to date with all things Angela Kulig, go to her website where she blogs about bookish things, her characters, and everything in between.
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About the Author
Angela Kulig is an American gypsy, and former pirate. She has been from sea to shining sea--and though she is currently trapped in the desert against her will, she escapes every day in the form of many books.
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Queens of Wings & Storms Page 87