by Everly Frost
I didn’t ask Treble to ascend into the clouds that drift above the fields, so we will be fully visible as we approach. There’s no point trying to hide when the burned outpost is in plain sight.
I press against Nathaniel’s back and he responds to my shifting body language by tilting his head toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“There are eyes everywhere,” I shout over the wind. “The Queen has sent reinforcements to the border in case your people attack us. The squadrons are concentrated ahead. We’re being watched.”
He remains half-turned to me, the corner of his mouth hitched up into a rare grin, raising his voice to be heard. “You should stop holding on to me then.”
I sigh against his back. I was hoping he wouldn’t make too much of the way I’ve slipped my arms around his waist. “It’s easier to travel this way. It has nothing to do with anything.”
“They won’t see it that way.”
At least the Border Guards didn’t see the way we danced earlier. I shift away from Nathaniel, holding on to Treble with my thighs. It’s hard work sitting apart, but I have no choice. By the time we circle high over the site of the explosion where my first memories began, my stomach muscles are burning from keeping myself upright.
I’m also fighting the fear growing in my stomach.
Landing on this site is like inviting death into my life.
The glitter field is a highly volatile defense system. Every stem is a crystal blade between waist and chest height and the width of my finger. The tiny bulb at the top of each stem has the power to explode with a velocity that shoots its broken pieces high and wide. One exploding bulb will trigger the bulbs beside it, resulting in a catastrophic cascade of explosions. Every few years, the Queen brings all of her guards out here to remind us how powerful the field is. While we remain at a safe distance, she uses her wind power to float a little white mouse across the space between us and drop it into the field.
The moment the mouse’s falling body hits the glitter bulbs far below, the grass explodes with such force that the shards travel high into the sky. It’s a barrage of lethal daggers that become airborne and would cut a thunderbird from the air even if it were flying as high as halfway between the ground and the clouds.
Fae do not kill animals, but the Queen declared that the glitter field demonstration is the only time when it is necessary to kill a small creature so that others may be saved. The field only reacts to living creatures. At any other time, the wind can blow as hard as it likes and it won’t trigger an explosion.
The challenge now is that the burn site is only a few hundred paces wide and the outpost’s remains take up part of that space. It’s a nearly perfect circle of darkness in the middle of the deadly field. To land safely, Treble has to circle lower and lower, and tighter and tighter—a death spiral heading toward the widest patch of clear ground. I’ve only done it twice before and each time, my heart was in my throat.
That is… until I discovered that the glitter field won’t hurt me. It’s the same secret that allowed me to steal a stem to tie around Nathaniel’s hands yesterday morning. But that safety only extends to me. I’ve never tested whether it will protect Treble and it’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
I lean into Nathaniel and slide forward to grip his waist again because staying apart only increases the chances of one of us being flung off into the field. “Hold on!”
At my shout, Treble tucks his wings hard into his sides and dives in a sharp, tight circle toward the ashen ground. The air rushes past us, my stomach plummets, and all I can do is grip Nathaniel tightly, clinging with my thighs around Treble’s back as we spiral, round and round at a sickening speed—
My entire body jolts forward as Treble plunges into the ash, digging in his talons and arching his neck so we don’t fly right over his head.
The world stops spinning, and I take a moment to breathe. Nathaniel’s heart is pounding beneath my palm. Every instinct must be screaming at him to get off this crazy bird, but he moves in increments. Pressing his hands briefly over mine. Shifting his torso. Swinging his legs toward the wing that Treble has carefully extended so we can climb down. I follow Nathaniel to the ground, my legs wobbling, trying not to kick up the ash when I take the final step down.
Nathaniel assesses our surroundings while a wary frown grows on his features. He’s breathing deeply, taking another moment before he pushes his hair out of his eyes and bends to touch the ash covering the ground.
He draws his fingers back with a sharp inhale. “It’s still warm.”
All I can do is nod. Suddenly, the flight down seems like the easy part of this journey.
This place…
The outpost’s scarred remains are like the shadowed bones of a life I can’t remember. The building was burned out so badly that I can’t even picture the rooms inside it. It might have contained a rocking chair in which my mother sang me to sleep. Maybe a table at which I ate meals and laughed with my father.
Nothing is left.
I walk to what used to be a door and reach out to press my palm against the tallest burned pillar, the jagged edges calling me to step through into a home that used to be mine.
My fingertips come away sparkling with soot in the moonlight.
The spot I wiped away glows underneath.
Nathaniel takes another quick breath, jolting away from the pillar he stands near. His hand is covered in ash from brushing the burned wood.
“The embers are still burning.” He turns to me with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “It happened fifteen years ago. How is it still hot?”
I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times, but I don’t have any answers.
“I honestly don’t know,” I say. “Nothing grows here. Birds refuse to fly overhead. It doesn’t matter how often it rains; the ash never washes away. Whatever dark magic was used to create this explosion… it’s still burning.”
I point toward the sky. “The Border Guards may watch us, but they don’t dare set foot here, and it’s not only because of the threat of the glitter field. It’s because of the darkness that lingers here. Even Queen Imatra refuses to come back.”
“But you came back.”
“I need to remember.” My voice catches. “I… need… to know what happened.”
“Will you tell me what you know?” Nathaniel’s hand drops to his side, but he hasn’t tried to wipe away the ash smeared all over his palm. The orange glow from the pillar casts soft light around us.
I press against the jagged wood again, soaking in the burn, fixating on the ebb and flow of the fire inside the pillar.
The heat doesn’t hurt me.
I’ve come back two times—once was the day after I challenged Serena. I didn’t stay long. Only long enough to determine that I can’t remember anything and that the heat has no effect on me.
This fire did all its hurting when I was seven years old.
“I was born in this ash,” I say. “I was born a fully-formed seven-year-old girl with no memory of the life I lived until the moment I woke up after the battle. I don’t remember my mother or my father. I don’t remember the attack. I remember… nothing.”
I turn to him. “At least… that’s what I tell everyone. But the truth is when I say that I remember nothing, I mean I remember a cold expanse, like my mind is filled with…” I struggle to describe my feelings. “Vast, endless space. That’s my nothing.”
The same nothing that surrounds me when I sleep.
“What about when you woke up?” he asks, still keeping his distance.
I shiver against the wood, curling my fingertips around the pillar. “Right before I woke up, I felt more fear and pain than I thought I could survive. My chest hurt… so badly… and I…”
My hand shoots from the burning pillar to my heart. I press the heel of my palm to the space below my collarbone, trying to ease the ache. Just an hour ago, I felt more happiness in my heart than I’d ever felt before, but now…
“I still fe
el it. It still hurts.”
I force air in and out of my chest, focusing on continuing to breathe. Nathaniel takes a step toward me, an intense concern filling his face, but my hand shoots out—stop—because I don’t want help right now. I just want to get the words out, get it all said, and then I can lock it all away again.
“I woke up huddled in the scorched ash. Right there.” I point at an empty spot in the dirt five paces away from the wreckage of the front door. “Fiery embers floated around me. My clothes were burned away. My skin was coated in ash. I looked up and I saw her… Imatra was kneeling in the ash closer to the glitter field. She was reaching for me, begging me to come to her, to come away from the fire. So I crawled through the ash to her.”
I stop speaking. The images flash through my mind quickly now. The ash had smudged Imatra’s bright skin, leaving smears like insults against her perfect neck and arms. I buried my head against her shoulder and curled up in her lap, crying. Not because I was sad, but because I was in pain. Too much pain. Tears had sparkled in her eyes, forming into tiny pearls as they rolled down her cheeks.
“She let them fall to the ground,” I whisper, swaying against the pillar.
“Let what fall?”
“Her perfect tears.” I shake my head. My gaze narrows. “She told me she was the one who pulled me from the flames, but…”
I cast a narrow-eyed gaze across the ash. “I was here and she was there, farther away. I crawled through the dust to her. I pulled myself from the fire.”
I lift my hand from the wooden pillar and stare at my glowing skin.
This fire.
Why doesn’t it hurt me? And why was she kneeling so far away from me, reaching out desperately for me to come to her?
Her grasping hands had pulled me tight, her silver voice whispering to me: I’m sorry, child. I couldn’t stop the Fell. They took everything from you, but one day you will take everything from them.
Nathaniel finally crosses the distance to me, stopping closer than he should. “You don’t have to remember anything else. We can go now.” He glances at Treble urgently. “We need to go.”
I study the tension around his eyes, the way his gaze rushes across my face and his hands hover around my frame as if he’s expecting to need to grab me at any moment.
He carefully laces his fingers through mine, covering my burning palm with his, even though he winces.
The heat is hurting him.
He tugs me toward Treble, but I refuse to budge, forcing him to stop as I dig in my heels.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand.
“Because you’re paler than you should be.”
“I feel fine.”
“You’re not fine. We have to go. Something is very wrong with this place. We’re leaving. Now.”
I never thought I’d see Nathaniel close to panic. He’s cycled through all the emotions. Been angry. Insulted. Raging against my misconceptions about his people. Deadly calm. Quiet when I didn’t expect him to be. He’s challenged me when I made claims he disagrees with. But now he’s tugging me toward Treble in a way that tells me he’s two seconds away from throwing me over his shoulder if I don’t move fast enough.
It only makes me angry. “You’ve never shown any weakness. Why are you afraid of this place?”
He stops and stares at me. “I’m not.”
“Then why are we leaving?”
“Because if you could see yourself right now, you’d run too.”
He’s deadly serious. The pulse at his wrist is racing. I can feel it beneath my fingertips.
I throw my head back, my own self-loathing roaring to the surface. “What would I see? A washed-out woman with dull eyes and hair the color of the dead?”
He holds up our intertwined hands. “Tell me, Aura: What don’t you see?”
I frown at our hands. He’s touching me, but… I’m not glowing. The back of my hand is dusted in ash, a gray color seeping through my fingers, but when I brush at it, the ash doesn’t come off.
I suddenly realize what Crispin said to me that I should have contradicted.
He said that Nathaniel would wake up angry… if Nathaniel thought that Crispin had hurt me.
Nathaniel would be angry if I was hurt.
He’s not afraid for himself right now. He’s afraid for me.
He’s trying to protect me.
“No!” My shout echoes around us. “You aren’t allowed to feel like that.” I try to wrench my hand from his, but he holds on tightly. I shove him instead. “You’re destined to kill me. You’re not allowed to care.”
I smack my fist at his face, but I have no strength or speed, and he easily evades the blow.
My legs wobble and his shoulder is suddenly angled under my stomach and he…
Oh no, he wouldn’t dare.
He swings me up over his shoulder like a sack of wheat.
I kick my legs, fighting everything inside my heart and mind that tells me to stop lashing out—even my survival instincts are screaming that I need his help right now. But I can’t allow him to worry about me because then I have to face the feelings that have crept into my own heart.
The dragon warned me that by the time Nathaniel and I fight, we won’t want to. I’m already full of confusion and doubt. I don’t need Nathaniel’s feelings to add fuel to the war inside my heart and mind.
He strides toward Treble, warding off the blows I land on his back, ignoring the kicks I aim at his legs. “Aura, don’t fight me! Please! You’re turning to ash!”
Shock makes me stop struggling. As my body bounces across Nathaniel’s shoulders with every step he runs, I try desperately to wipe the dust off my hands, but it doesn’t move. It’s like it has sunk into my skin and I can’t get rid of it.
A new panic takes hold of me because my whole world is turning gray. Lifting my head to look behind us, I can see the ash that Nathaniel’s boots are kicking up. It flies into the air and hovers, rising as if it’s coming for me. As if I’m some kind of ash-magnet.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe and the scenery swims around me, a glittering blur of color bleaching pale.
I’m aware of Nathaniel running up Treble’s wing before he drops into position on Treble’s back. At the same time, he drags me down in front of him, scissoring my legs and pulling them around his hips so that I’m facing him, my arms curled against his chest. He’s hugging me as close as possible.
His voice thrums through me. “Fly, Treble,” he shouts. “Now!”
Treble sweeps his wings in one strong beat that propels us into the air in a rush. The wind generated by Treble’s movements ripples through the glitter field, making the stems at the edge of the burn site shriek and clash.
My heart is in my throat as I wait for the glitter field to explode and the shards to cut through us.
Treble’s wings crack, lightning spearing across the night sky and lighting up the air around me, but the glitter field doesn’t shatter. I don’t know if that’s because Treble is carrying me, or whether we just got lucky.
We burst high into the sky, rapidly ascending before we streak through the air. Treble continues to beat his wings in panicked movements while Nathaniel speaks to him, but I’m having trouble hearing anything now. I don’t know which way we’re facing or what’s going on around us. Treble’s blue lightning is the last color I see before darkness closes in and my vision doesn’t extend beyond Nathaniel’s face.
Cradling my head, he returns his focus to me. He lowers his cheek to mine, tilting close to my mouth and nose as if he’s trying to sense whether I’m breathing.
I read my name on his lips: Aura?
I can’t answer him. Despite the wind rushing past me, I have no air.
“Breathe, Aura!” Nathaniel’s command breaks through the silence, his voice deep and angry, the kind of anger that only panic can bring.
He tilts his lips to mine. The hand that was supporting my waist rises to my chest, pressing against my heart. He curls his other arm
behind my head, a precarious balancing act.
He takes a deep breath before our lips connect.
It’s not a gentle kiss. His mouth seals against mine as he exhales, blowing air into me. Oxygen rushes from his mouth, forcing its way into my throat. At the same time, he presses his palm against my heart.
One press. Then two.
He’s trying to breathe for me. He’s trying to make my heart beat.
The burn site was stealing my life away from me and I don’t know why. But I do know that I should already be dead. I’ve gone too long without air. Only the stars know how I’m still awake.
Tears burn behind my eyes as he releases me to shout, “Aura! Breathe!”
He could let me die—the nightmare would be over for him—but he’s trying to keep me alive.
His mouth crashes against mine, and his fist hits my heart so hard that I thud against his supporting arm, a sliver of air gets through, and then—
Oxygen rushes into my chest, a sweet inhalation.
Starlight bursts between us and the constriction inside my throat vanishes.
I scream as I suck air into my starving lungs, dragging oxygen in and out of my mouth, choking and shuddering against his chest. I grip his sides with my weak hands as his heaving chest rises and falls against me. He gave me air, helped my heart beat again, and now all of the emotions raging through me are too much to process.
I start to speak, but his arms close around me, crushing me so close that I have to tip my head back to see him. “Nathaniel?”
The wind destroys my whisper.
His focus has shifted to my right. The muscles in his arms tense up while darkness grows in his eyes.
My vision finally widens far enough from the pinpoint of Nathaniel’s face to see the squadron of thunderbirds diving toward us from all sides. Crackles of lightning fill the air behind me, telling me that more thunderbirds are dropping from the clouds, but I can’t turn to see them.
Evander flies at the head of the squadron soaring toward us on my right. Cadence dives in our direction, her crimson lightning casting violent electricity ahead of her. I’m sure Evander is coming to make sure I’m okay, but my eyes widen when Cadence doesn’t slow down.