In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

  He couldn’t hear me. He didn’t listen to me. The door of the wardrobe opened slowly, and he poked his head out. “What about her?”

  “Well, kiddo,” James crouched down in front of him. He was using this voice, something clown-like and cartoonish, and it worked like magic on the kid. “I did what I said. I asked her to marry me, and guess what she said? She said yes, Percy! Isn’t that exciting?”

  Percy looked at him, deadpan and certain. “No she didn’t.”

  “Yeah, she did,” he insisted.

  Silence met him, just a pair of blue eyes that stared down pale gray ones, as anger slowly clouded his face.

  He grabbed the wardrobe door and slammed it shut, a muffled scream escaping through the cracks. “No! She didn’t, she didn’t, you’re a lying liar! She hates you! She hates you, she hates you, she hates you!”

  “You’re wrong, kiddo,” James forced a laugh. He stood up, steadied himself against the wardrobe for a minute, and then paced the room in slow circles. “You’re wrong. She will marry me, as soon as she gets here. She won’t have a choice. I’m going to kill that Talon soldier, and I’m going to send you far away, and she’ll have to do it to save you. Or maybe she’ll forget about you and you’ll never see her again. How about that, Io?”

  “No! No, I hate you, I want to go home!”

  The Sceptre paused in front of the mirror, leaning in close to inspect the scars that marred his face with disgust. “She doesn’t care about you, anyway. She told me herself. That’s why she isn’t here yet. She doesn’t want to see you. Now come out. Astra is waiting.”

  “Good! I don’t wanna see her ever!”

  My heart shattered in my chest.

  I felt the pieces of it bounce off glass ribs on the way down to the pit of my stomach. Those words echoed in my mind even as everything went dark and quiet.

  The smell of burning nickel trickled down the back of my throat. I gave in. I let the darkness of my mind overwhelm and consume and swallow me whole and it was a relief.

  ———

  “Shhh, shh,” the ocean waves cooed, “Shhhhh…”

  I felt raw and burnt out. My nerves were a hive of millions of bees starved of pollen for their honey, angry and buzzing. I couldn’t move for the pain of it, but softness and warmth brushed against my cheek.

  “Shhhh,” the soothing sound whispered in my ear.

  In my head, I knew I was half awake and half asleep and that I floated somewhere between reality and a dream.

  The warmth of some place at the edge of the desert did not stop the goosebumps that rose along my skin from the cold interior of a room in the Embassy. Hard marble floors were not diminished by sand and infertile dirt that shifted underfoot.

  Glass windows showed me nothing but the bright blue sky and the raw expanse of ocean that stretched to the horizon. It was beautiful and calm and I knew if I opened my eyes, it would be gone and replaced with the charcoal remains of Conleth.

  Ellie sat at the end of a glass table, legs crossed at the ankle and hands folded together on the edge of the glass. Her face was reflected in it. Wire rimmed glasses framed her eyes and her graying blonde hair was pulled back in a tight up-do, a cerulean blue suit bright in the pale and shiny room.

  “It’s a shame that we can’t smell the salt of the ocean in here,” she smiled at me.

  She was entirely unlike herself in that place.

  I didn’t say a word. I stood at the opposite end of the table and stared at the ocean outside. I forgot what the outside of the Embassy looked like. It was always just the marble floors and the black and white walls and the Mirror Hall and the simulation room and my dark room.

  “Don’t you think?” She kept talking. “Simulated sunlight just isn’t the same, either. I’ve been trying to get them to do more outside of the sim room, but they’re adamant it will ruin what they’re doing—”

  “I need you to put me in sen-dep,” I blurted out, tearing my gaze away from the windows.

  The blazing sun reflected off the ocean waves. It burned my eyes. I blinked it away and looked back to her, at the wide eyed and slack mouthed shock on her face.

  “The tank, Ellie. I need you to put me in the sen-dep tank and volt it.”

  Ellie sat with her mouth agape, leaning back slowly in the chair. “What the hell do you hope to attain by doing that?”

  “The electrical conductivity of sodium chloride in water is far greater than water without any solutions dissolved in it. It’s just a saltwater circuit—and I need the sensory deprivation or I can’t do it. The shock and the calm are all I need.” I rested my hands against the edge of the table and let the glass dig into my palms. “I already tried it. In the pool. That’s why Arden died. She helped me do it.”

  “Soren,” she said slowly, “You aren’t planning on following suit, are you?”

  “By the stars, Ellie, I just—it’s easy to root through other people’s brains, it’s easy when they are susceptible to even tiny amounts of electricity. It’s getting into my own head that’s the problem. I need something strong enough to get through. That’s all.” I sat in the chair, straight backed with my hands curled over the ends of the arm rests. I was nervous just talking about it.

  Ellie closed her eyes, her hands steepled together under her nose. She shook her head and chuckled softly under her breath. “You’re already in your head.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Everything that I’m being asked to do goes against what’s in my head. I just want to make it easier. I’ll be a clean slate.” My voice broke at the end. The very idea of what that meant was terrifying and ate away at me. It filled me with guilt.

  “Oh. Oh, sweetheart, you want to erase your memories, don’t you?”

  I smiled carefully, lifting my chin a touch. I clutched the arms of the chair under white knuckles and took an unsteady breath. “Astra, Vulta, my father—they all want certain things from me. Things that Pilot said have to happen—I can’t. I can’t go through with it. I would rather die, Ellie. I would rather die than continue with the knowledge that they—I can’t do this to my family.”

  Ellie tapped a finger against the glass. “Your mother and your grandfather—”

  “I don’t mean them.” I stood up, the chair rolling backwards. I ran my hands under my eyes to wipe the tears away before they spilled over. “Just make it happen. Please.”

  ———

  The smell of burnt wood and the taste of blood—it was in my nose, my mouth.

  My ears rang with a sharp sound.

  I was lying against a blackened floor, cheek pressed to it, breathing in bursts through tightly clamped teeth. Pain shot through my bones in matching pulses, reverberated through every little part of me.

  Roam knelt over me, silent panic on her face, as her hands struggled to figure out what to do.

  I uncurled my fists, pressed my shaking hands to the floor, and pushed myself back upright. I wiped the spit from my mouth. You’ve done this before. You’re alright. You’re okay.

  My head fought to keep me down. It weighed a ton, full of cement, while the rest of me was made of air. I breathed in slowly, steadily. You’re in the bar, in Conleth. You’re in Conleth. Not the Embassy.

  “Soren? What happened? What was that?” Roam cupped my face with her uninjured hand, tilting my chin up. Her cheeks were damp with tears and mud. “Oh, god, look at you—you’re burning up.”

  I pushed her hand away and caught a glint of light off a tiny piece of metal on my finger.

  “I… is this real? Are you… is…?” I clutched my hands to my chest and pressed my thumb against the ring I thought I only dreamed about. It was cold. It dug into my skin. My heart was racing a thousand miles a minute—it wasn’t there before. It didn’t exist before. “By the stars—”

  Why does Jack say that, when it comes from Astra? From me?

  “It’s real, yes. You’re okay. You’re okay, now, we just need Ellie to look at you, alright? God, Soren, you scare me to death.” S
he dropped her face into her hand and sucked in a sharp breath.

  She was so small and thin that I wondered how such a pained wail could come from her, but then, I wasn’t much bigger. She sobbed into her sleeves, doubled over, and I had no idea what to do.

  I wiped my hand under my nose, smearing the slow trickle of dark blood that dripped over my lips. It was in the back of my throat, metallic and sour.

  “Stop it. Stop that, stand up. Roam. I’m serious. Stand up and help me get to Ellie.”

  She looked at me, doe eyed and quivering, and then relief relaxed the taut muscles in her face when her eyes drifted past me. She was looking at someone, and the hollow sound of the wood floor under heavy boots only reminded me that I wasn’t wearing mine.

  “Jack! Jack, come help, she had a fever, a fainting spell, again. Help, please.”

  “Alright, Sparky, come on,” he crouched down next to me, pulled my arm around his neck, and slipped his around my back and under my knees.

  “No, I can—” I closed my eyes when the world fell away so quickly. “I can walk.”

  “It’s okay.” He looked down at me with worry in the lines of his face as he bit his lip. “I have you.”

  “Put me down,” I growled.

  I remembered him in that strange sort of dream, standing in a barren field with tears and stars in his eyes. The way the silver glow of a fractioned moon fell across his face now was similar to the way it did then.

  It was similar to the way it did on the shore of the lake in Redbird, and it was similar to the way it did when we stood on the Sailer—it was familiar now, more than anything.

  And I knew why.

  There was something that had once been gold, something that had once been ruby, and in the same moonlight that highlighted the edges of this Redbird soldier, it became silver and diamond.

  It became the moonlight and the stars—it existed where it hadn’t before. I wore it in a dream. In a memory. I wore it in a memory that came like a dream and I tore it out in a way that I wasn’t sure was possible. I ripped a hole in the fabric of reality and made it exist—just like Emma, just like the Genesis.

  “I… I think I did something.” My voice was hushed in the night air.

  Jack adjusted his grip on me. “What’s that?”

  “Are you real?” I asked him, slipping my arm from around his neck to press my hand to his cheek. He was warm. He was so much warmer than me. “Really real. I still don’t know for sure.”

  He laughed softly. “Of course I’m real.”

  “Am I awake for real?”

  “Yes.” The world swayed and blurred behind him, the stars turned to thin and pale streaks behind smoke clouds. “You’re awake. But you need some sleep. You need to rest. I’ll still be here when you close your eyes, Sparky.”

  29

  I was chewing on my own heart. It was a tough thing to swallow, and it fought back. Thick and warm, it shuddered against my tongue, sitting halfway up my throat as a pulsating and wet thing. Air wheezed past its obtrusive form. I wanted it out. I wanted it gone. I wanted to breathe—

  The ground greeted my hands and knees with a heavy smack and I coughed, gagged on the heart that wouldn’t stay in its place inside my chest. I didn’t know why it wouldn't. It was hollow in there, with more room for it to breathe, to beat freely, and all it wanted was to climb up my throat and make me choke and make itself known to every damn person around me.

  Stay hidden, stay away, I told it.

  The oxygen hurt—but you need it, the heart whispered back.

  A hand rubbed my back. Another held my hair out of the way. Hands that were too gentle for a monster like me. A voice that was too warm for talking to a weapon like me.

  “Hey, it’s okay, darling, it’s okay.”

  “Mm—” the contents of my empty stomach stopped the words in their tracks.

  “I know,” he hushed me, letting me collapse back against him. My head was liquid heat. My brain was a wildfire that burned through my skull and his hand that ran over my hair felt so cold. The rest of me was chilled to the bone still. “Ellie, by the stars, if you don’t do something…”

  There was a light chuckle from somewhere behind us. “She’s fine. You’re a great help, Talon.”

  “Won’t be much help when I die of a bloody heart attack,” he muttered.

  Behind my eyelids there was another kaleidoscope, one of yellow—the yellow flowers in that field, collected by a woman who was remembered by another.

  All of them were yellow, like the sun, shining and soft and delicate, and if I closed my eyes long enough, they filled my arms and littered the streets of Redbird and filled the meadow of sweet grass in my dreams.

  “Why yellow?” I croaked out, lifting a hand up to find him behind me. He leaned his head into my fingers. “Yellow.”

  “Yellow what?”

  I rested my palm against the heat of his head. He had a fever—no, I had the fever. My hands were made of ice.

  “The… the flowers. Yellow flowers. Lots… lots of…”

  He pressed his warm hand over mine, warmer than the heart that fought its final battle against the backs of my teeth.

  His chest rose and fell under me in shallow breaths, cautious and quick. “Do you mean in Redbird, in the parades? I don’t know why. It’s just what we had. Do you remember that?”

  “…Do you?”

  “I remember,” he whispered. “That was a long time ago, back when we were kids. Everyone brought yellow flowers and gave them to you, and the roads were always covered in them because you couldn’t carry them all—not that you didn't try to.”

  I swallowed my heart easier this time. It nestled soundly back where it was meant to be. “Why? Why did they do that?”

  He shook his head and stared straight ahead. The spaces between his eyelashes were red, and his cheek was caught between his teeth, and then his eyes fell on the small sliver of moonlight wrapped around my finger. “Things were different, I guess. You were the Emperor's only heir.”

  “Tell me about it,” I breathed out.

  “Hey, Ellie? I think we’ll be okay for a while.”

  He shifted under me, got his feet under himself, and then he scooped me up like it was nothing and set me back on a cot. I caught the grimace that flashed over him, the pain of his cut that pulled a dimple into his cheek. He reached for a blanket, but glanced over his shoulder at the woman.

  “That’s a hint for you to leave, please and thank you.”

  “Please and thank you, he says! But only after he picks me up and tosses me out onto my ass!” She laughed, but she left with a heavy sigh.

  Jack tucked the blanket around me and the cold that leaked from my bones. He sat on the edge of the cot, warm like the sun, a gentle warmth that didn’t rage like an inferno—it was less fire and lava and ash, and more golden sunlight and honey and a handful of flowers like little yellow stars.

  “The parades, or this?”

  He touched a finger to the ring.

  “I already know, I just… I want to hear it. I want you to tell me so that I know it’s real.” I curled tighter around the husk of myself that I slowly returned to.

  If this strangeness between sleep and waking was what waited for me in my Sceptre blood, I didn’t want it. I wanted to feel real. I wanted the world to be solid and steady and straightforward in the way that reaching out and taking his hand in mine felt solid and steady and straightforward.

  What I said to Roam—it was true, and I was scared, but I needed it.

  He held on as if I could tether him to this reality from the memory that he dove into. “I went to the market because I was a farmer. I went to the parades because we wanted a chance to see the Emperor and the Empress and the Duchess. We climbed up onto the roof of a porch. We sat there while the parade passed. You saw us. Me and my brother. Every time.”

  Yellow flowers seemed to fall from the sky. The ground under my feet was smooth and dark. People lined the streets and flooded the alleys and
leaned out of windows and waved and smiled.

  My mother and father held hands, walked behind me, and smiled and waved back. And then one day, there were two scrawny boys sitting on the veranda roof of a restaurant. Sun reddened noses and freckled cheeks. The older one with bright red hair.

  “Grey,” I murmured.

  Jack froze, swallowed his tongue and closed his eyes. “That’s the one.”

  “He gave you your knife.”

  “Is that a guess, or do you remember?” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and then looked away again as he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, you’re right, anyway. We went to the parades and climbed up and sat on that roof and watched the soldiers go by and then you would go by and he’d say some smart-ass remark. You smiled at us no matter the face I was making—or if I was halfway to throwing him into the crowd.”

  A small smile flickered across my face. I saw it, or remembered it, Jack and his brother as they laughed and pushed each other around. Grey pulled Jack into a headlock and messed up his hair and my father put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, those are the Talon boys. Two of them, at least. The Talons are our best farmers.

  “I started looking forward to those days, just to… just to see you smile up at me. I know, it’s stupid, but—”

  “It’s not,” I told him.

  He squeezed my hand and laughed softly. A flush warmed his cheeks, and then he sobered, cleared his throat, and started again. “Market days were never something I was big on, but I got to spend time with Grey and get away from my family, and having you to look forward to was what got me through until the next one—and then my father had to go visit my uncle Sean. He brought Grey with him, and usually my father would be looking after my younger brother and our stall, so I got stuck there with him while they were gone, until Grey… he didn’t come back, and I didn’t go back to the parade. I stayed where I should have been the entire time.”

  “Jack? You don’t have to tell me this—”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and tightened his grip on my hand. “I want to. You remember the yellow flowers, you’ll remember eventually. They were a part of it. Might as well hear it, so at least you know I don’t blame you. That it wasn’t your fault.”