In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

  Other books by TS Ward:

  Every Dark Little Thing (The Bright Dark – Book One)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by TS Ward

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced or used in any manner without written

  permission of the copyright owner except for the use of

  quotations in a book review.

  First paperback/hardcover edition August 2021

  Cover art by Olly Kava

  Book design by TS Ward

  ISBN #978-1-7774988-1-8 Hardcover

  ISBN # 978-1-7774988-0-1 Paperback

  ISBN # 978-1-7774988-2-5 E-Book

  Published by Tristyn Ward

  www.tswardauthor.com

  For Jack

  And for every Indigenous child stolen and lost at the hands of Canada’s Residential Schools.

  Every Child Matters. Always.

  PROLOGUE

  This was the light of a single star—pure honey that dripped off the leaves of a dew-showered tree, and, nestled in the tall grass below, bathed in the yellow warmth, a little bear cub boy hummed away with the birdsong.

  Light, pure and divine, simply.

  Light that cracked my marbled skin and shone through to the dark inside, all golden and hot and sugar sweet. The honey was a flood. The warmth was boundless.

  And the boy was a small little heartbeat clutched to my chest in two careful palms. His name was a dew drop on my lip.

  “Percy.” A dream. Nothing more.

  Black curls bounced against his shoulders. The sun he cast off him scattered over the tall sweet grass. The sky was caught in his wide eyes, perfectly blue and perched on freckled, plump cheeks.

  His smile was pure light. Purer than this dewy, sweet grass meadow.

  “I'm going to rescue you,” he told me, the conviction a strike of lightning through his small voice.

  The ground that met my knees beneath the sweet grass was muddied and chilled, soaking into my pants just as those words soaked into my skin.

  I stretched a hand out to him. “Rescue me? From what, little bear?”

  Dark eyelashes made a forest of shadows over his cheeks as he shrugged. “You won't come find me.”

  You aren't real.

  “I will!” I swallowed a lump in my throat and tilted my head, my voice a whisper weighed down by a lie and the honeyed warmth around us. “I'll tell you a secret. I'm out. Out of the Embassy. I'm in the Wastes now. I'll find you, little bear, no rescuing necessary.”

  “You're lying,” he grumbled, “You don't even want to find me.”

  “I do, silly. It's a promise. If you're really out there waiting for me like you say you are, I will find you, alright?”

  Promises weren't something I made lightly anymore. A casual promise was the reason a letter was tucked into a slit in the wall of my dark room that I doubted would ever reach its destination—the hands of the rebel leader, the man no one had set eyes on for nearly two decades.

  A promise to a child conjured in a dream seemed just as impossible to keep.

  You will make the impossible possible, Soren, I know you will. My father's voice was an intrusion in this dream, in my mind, but I shoved it away deep into the wet earth under my fingertips. I buried it. I buried it and every other small thing to do with the—

  “Genesis!”

  A hiss like a snake in the grass, venom on the word from the sharp teeth of it, flicked off the tongue to coil around my chest and squeeze too tight.

  My little bear startled back onto his hands with a gasp.

  The smell of smoke reached my nose before the heat bore into my skin. The Sceptre's hand was on my shoulder. His fingers were matches, burning coals, that dug in hard to bury my fight.

  A pillar of flame in the shape of a man. An ocean of stone with rivers of burning sunlight cracked across his body. He wasn't meant to be here. He wasn't meant to be in this place, in this sweet grass meadow, in this dream.

  Impossible impossible impossible—

  “This isn't the time to burn, James,” I said.

  A shudder of nerves undermined the sternness in my voice. It's only a dream. Please think it's only a dream.

  “It. Isn't. Time.”

  Part One — Into The Fire

  1

  The longing to see the sun was a fire that burned beneath my skin.

  It was half out of the hope that seeing it would bring a light back into my eyes. A spark of life. A heated yearning to witness all things, as my mother used to tell me. There is a fire within you, baby girl. A burning rage to match the sun.

  The other half was an uncertainty that it even existed at all anymore.

  No fire and no burning rage were left inside me now, other than that longing. A cold anger, sometimes, but within the walls of the Embassy, I was empty and hollowed out. I was one with the marble statues that lined the hall I stood in. Carved out in the middle, smoothed into a polish around the edges, shaped by the hands and the tools of others.

  The statues dripped gold and silver from their pale bodies like an insult. To have electricity in my veins wasn’t enough. They wanted more. They wanted their Genesis. They wanted the gold, the silver, the marbled hands that could reach through the fabric of reality, that could touch the sky and bring forth the future.

  A subtle static brushed over my skin.

  I closed my eyes and listened for the sounds of Lumen marching down the hall, or the hard-hitting step of James Carson in his always burning rage, or my father’s sharp black shoes, or my aunt—a shiver ran through me at the thought of her. The clock was silent, and with the quiet footfalls of two humans—humans, not Lumen—my heart thundered louder and louder inside my chest.

  Besides the Pluto Sceptres, besides the Carsons and Lourdes, I hadn’t seen another soul since the last time I saw the sun. When did I last see the sun?

  A quiet, sharp breath alerted me to their entrance. Barely audible, and yet it lingered like a chill against the back of my neck. They stood behind me, a few metres back, their presence loud in this hollow space. As if the presence of another human was enough to announce them, like static in the air—and it was, for a Sceptre with lightning in her veins.

  “Is the clock working?” I called back to them.

  It was still mute. Only silence, and that static. A shuffle of clothing as one turned to check the silver lines of the large clock on the wall, and then a cleared throat with a voice that was warm, soft, yet strained.

  “Why don’t you turn around and see?”

  “Jack,” the other, harsher voice hissed.

  So, it wasn’t James. It wasn’t my shadow, my guard, the Sceptre Mercury.

  I closed my eyes and breathed out slowly, certain pieces of my marble would crack if I moved. My ribs would collapse and turn my heart to dust and leave the rest of me shattered on the floor—why don’t you turn around and see? What was there to see, other than a clock that might or might not be ticking away the seconds?

  All the strength I had left held me hostage, frozen in place, waiting for the doors to open.

  “It’s working,” Jack said. “It’s almost nine.”

  “AM or PM?” All the Emperor said was meet me in the Mirror Hall for nine.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  He sounded surprised, but he was in the Embassy. A black shard on the edge of the Empire where the Wastes met the sea, a tower whose bowels were a bone-white hell, cold and unforgiving. It was windowless, except for th
e small corner that jutted out to face the sea. The doors were locked.

  I couldn’t even remember when I first arrived.

  I dared to straighten my spine and square my shoulders. My muscles still ached from training, from fighting off the last Pluto Sceptre. I still felt his hands on my throat.

  The hoarseness left there by his fingers was still in my voice. “I haven’t seen the sun in a very long time.”

  The doors cracked open just as an electric impulse cracked the man’s jaw with a response that never left his tongue. Two black Lumen marched out onto the marble. They were loud, dark marks against the milky stone, making themselves ornamental doorstops to frame the entrance into the Mirror Hall’s antechamber.

  I felt a cold fear snake through my veins because of them. Some innate thing that told me to keep my mouth shut, to not move, to not flinch, to hold my breath, but there was something else in me, too. Something rotten that wouldn’t let me keep my mouth shut even at the worst of times.

  “Have you ever met my father?” I asked the men, peering over my shoulder.

  Empire soldiers dressed all in black. They stood straighter than the Lumen did, hands clasped behind their backs. One wore an eyepatch, but they both had green eyes. A vibrant, beautiful green. A colour I’d nearly forgotten if not for my dreams of a sweet grass meadow. A colour so vibrant that it stilled the pounding in my chest.

  Only one looked back at me as I studied them.

  Freckles were cast thickly across strong cheeks and soft noses. The name Talon was sewn onto their chests. The younger one had messy brown hair and a furrow in his brow as he looked at me, questioning, while the other had a buzz cut as red as the burn on his skin. The strap of an eyepatch cut through the red in a sharp line.

  The younger soldier nodded in response to my question but kept his jaw clamped tightly shut.

  My words were venomously sweet. “What’s he like? I’ve only ever met the Emperor.”

  A second set of Lumen opened the doors into the Mirror Hall and mimicked the first. They waited, still and lifeless, and yet they burned with electricity under their black hulls. Beyond them, the entrance to the room was an open mouth. The smile of a monster with teeth hidden behind the lips. It had a taste for blood and for rage. That room would feed us fire just to plump us up for the kill.

  It showed me an image of a girl, small and fragile, but as I walked forward that girl grew. That girl was the Duchess, the Sceptre Ganymede with lightning bolts burrowed in the palms of her hands. That girl could burn brighter than the sun she longed for.

  There is a fire within you. A burning rage to match the sun. A fire, a fire, a fire.

  His voice was more a command than greeting. “Ganymede.”

  My Sceptre title, not my name.

  He stood at the center of the room with the crystal chandelier framing his head, a crown of antlers made from stars and stardust, voice booming to usher me forward. A flute of golden champagne in his hand. His suit as black and crisp as the night. A sparkle at his wrist where the sleeve was pulled back. Three things he was never without: champagne, a sharp suit, and the heirloom watch that he only removed when Astra visited.

  It’s that ticking, that infernal ticking, she always hissed.

  The Emperor waved us forward as he turned away, gesturing to the chairs lined around the long table. Sit. Like good little hounds.

  Hesitation slowed me as I crossed the threshold. The Mirror Hall had the same white marble floors that plagued the Embassy, but the walls and the ceiling were near seamless mirrors. And, with the chandelier refracting light in droplets, the room became disorienting.

  It was a strange effect, to have infinite reflections arcing into a feigned distance.

  Infinite Emperors, infinite Duchesses, infinite soldiers, infinite infinity. The high-backed chairs around the long table, repeated innumerably with Isaac Carson and Lourdes on either side of the head seat.

  “Quickly, please. I don’t have long.”

  He set the champagne on the table in front of the woman, still turned away, and placed his hand on the back of her chair. In the mirrors, his eyes met mine, ice blue and warning against the anger he saw chilling mine. He held my gaze but spoke to the woman.

  “Lourdes. You haven’t met our soldiers yet. Fitz Talon and Jack Talon, uncle and nephew respectively.”

  Fitz was unflinching, but Jack was pale.

  I didn’t blame him. The room was meant to make ambassadors uneasy.

  He looked at me then, still with that questioning look wrinkling his brow. Talon. Like one of the Empire’s farming families. Farmers. Built like soldiers. All square edges and sharp lines and that manicured stance, trained to perfection just like the Sceptres. It was unnerving.

  And the way he looked at me, with my father in the room—like I was an animal in a zoo to marvel at, a museum piece he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. The Duchess, real and in person!

  I had been a myth to the Empire the past few years.

  I pulled out a chair on the long side of the table, if only to avoid having to look my father directly in the eye. Jack Talon was across from me, Lourdes beside me.

  “Ganymede—”

  “I am certain that you know my name,” I interrupted. You’re the one who gave it to me. And a tongue too sharp for this mouth. “Use it.”

  He stepped back from the table and stood straight. His chin tipped up as he closed his eyes with a sigh. When he spoke it was a whisper, a wisp of wind through drying stalks of corn, a storm cloud over the mountains. “I do not have time for this. The Talons are accompanying you across the Wastes to Redbird.”

  Redbird. I could barely breathe. Redbird! Home. The sun. The sun! The stars!

  My heart swelled at the thought of it. Relief washed over me and melted the tenseness from my muscles. To stand in the sun, to walk the hedge maze in the Manor’s garden, to feel the golden warmth against my skin and in the stone path, the chill of wind from the storm clouds trapped over the mountain peaks—I was going to hear the birds sing.

  The relief and the excitement were brief. I wasn’t done training. I wasn’t done here.

  I frowned and worked out a wary question. “Why?”

  The Emperor waved a hand. “Show her. Tell her.”

  He paced away, the champagne taken up again and pressed to his lip.

  Carson pushed his tablet across the table, clearing his throat and averting his eyes. He wasn’t one to be indirect with me. He passed the tablet to Lourdes, who hesitated before sliding it along to me.

  The dark screen stared up at me.

  I sat forward. Uneasiness gripped me as I touched it tentatively, waking the screen. Every remaining ounce of relief and excitement for going home vanished in a split second. The image was taken at a distance, but it was crisp and clear, obvious enough to drain the blood from me.

  The woman was raven haired and thin, cloaked in a ruby fabric. Her eyes were honeyed amber glowing in the light of a fire. Fire, fire, fire. There is a fire within you, baby girl. A burning rage to match the sun. Those words came from her.

  Those words were whispered to me in the dark, in a place I couldn’t remember, but they were hers and they were said with such conviction that I believed them. I could see them on those lips. I could hear them.

  “Romana Mendel—”

  “Beckett,” I snapped, startling Lourdes into silence. Sparks burst in the air around me.

  “Mind yourself, Soren,” my father warned.

  Lourdes pressed her palms to the arms of her chair and straightened her back. “Romana is alive, living in a rebel camp, but she… she’s not the focus.”

  A fire, a fire, a fire. I felt it burning in the pit of my stomach. A flame to challenge Mercury’s.

  “Not the focus?” I hissed, twisting in my chair to look at the woman directly. “She’s not—my mother is dead. She is dead. You told me she’s dead and you’re going to show me a picture of someone who looks like her, tell me she’s alive, and that’s it? Tha
t’s all? As if that’s okay. Let’s just gloss over that like it was never mentioned. Right.”

  I fought back the urge to snatch the champagne from my father’s hand, to smash the glass against the table. I leaned back in the chair, tried to relax and breathe, white knuckled fingers curled around the chair’s arms.

  Her next words burned hot into my mind. “We aren’t concerned about her. It’s the boy. The child.”

  The boy. The child.

  My heart was a lump in my throat, hammering a panicked rhythm into my veins. My hands shook as I gripped the tablet and swiped to the next photo, searching for the small figure curled up against the side of an old man—a man who looked like my grandfather.

  She’s alive. She’s alive, and he’s… real.

  I set the tablet on the table and squeezed my hands together on my lap, my eyes closing against tears as the boy’s face swam before me in my mind.

  His curled black hair, the round cheeks, the freckles cast across a button nose—the Beckett blue of his eyes. I saw him in golden light. I saw him surrounded by tall sweet grass. I saw him in a dream.

  “What about him?” I muttered, trying to hide the fear that tightened my throat. “He’s just some kid.”

  “He’s old enough for you to know who and what he is,” the Emperor said quietly, forcing the words out between his teeth. I just shook my head. “Play the recording.”

  I watched him press the champagne to his lips as he paced, but he didn’t drink it. He wasn’t there, in the Mirror Hall. He was an illusion. He was the captain of a carefully crafted ship, trying hard to make it seem like he made the effort to be here. Trying to make it look like he wasn’t afraid of his own daughter. It was him in there, but it was a Lumen under that skin.

  Carson took the tablet back and swiped through files until the speakers burst to life. Lourdes’ voice filled the room.

  “State your full name and rank for the record, please.”

  “James Daniel Carson, the Sceptre Mercury.”

  “You’re reporting an incident involving another Sceptre, is that correct?”