Page 85 of By the Flames of Her Fury

“Are you spying on me?” she spat.

“A simple sound magnifying spell. Privacy is a luxury people like you don’t get.”

I pressed my back against the wall and closed my eyes, straining to hear everything. The scrape of his footsteps, the way her controlled breaths shifted to sharp and sudden inhales. Mortep muttered something under his breath.

Then she screamed.

“No!” I lunged toward my cell door. The chain at my ankle ripped me back, and I slammed into the ground, palms splitting on the stone. But I didn’t feel it. I hauled myself up and threw my weight forward again, but the chains wouldn’t let me go far.

Her screams filled the cells. Heavy, billowing shadows appeared in the corridor. Lightning crackled inside of it, like a storm over the sea, and it all came from her cell. The magic in the air was so thick, I could taste it—sharp, electric, and raw. Whatever Mortep had done, it opened something in her power.

I scrambled back to the hole and pushed my eye against it, pulse hammering. I could hardly see anything. A figure was slumped on the ground, with Mortep’s familiar frame hovering over her.

My stomach dropped. Why wasn’t she moving?

Something sharp gleamed in Mortep’s grip. I watched his shape crouch toward her, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. There was nothing I could do. There was never anything I could do. Two years of this and I still hadn't learned how to make peace with that fact.

Then her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist.

She wrenched him sideways, and they both disappeared from my field of vision. I could only hear bits and pieces—the slap of a body on the ground, Mortep’s grunt, Songbird’s ragged breaths. Shouts rang out as guards ran toward us. I kept my eye at the hole, desperate to know what was going on. Every scream, every bang, every crackle of magic made me jump. I just needed to know she was alright. I just needed⁠—

Suddenly, there was silence. Everything stopped. I couldn’t hear anything, and that was almost worse. I listened for her breath, her cries, her voice, something to tell me she was still alive.

“Songbird?” I whispered. “Songbird, tell me you’re⁠—”

More shouts erupted. Four guards in the hallway stumbled backward past my cell bars, knocked off their feet by something I couldn’t see.

Bright orange and gold flames burst into the corridor, and I had to shield my eyes with my arm. Heat washed over me through the bars. A grinding sound like metal on metal grated my ears.

And then a figure appeared out of thin air directly in front of my cell.

Cloaked in flames, a silhouette of golden wings rose against the fire, blonde hair whipping around her face in a frenzy of her own magic. It was too bright to see her clearly, but I would know her in any lifetime.

Songbird.

She unlocked her striding magic. She had gotten free of her chains and was standing right in front of me in a burning ring of fire.

She was the fire. And she was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen.

“Let’s get out of here, Swift,” she said from the swath of magic. My heart leaped, and I reached for her through the bars.

But the second her hand met mine, another one came out of the darkness behind her and plunged a needle into her neck.

40

Everett

The three strangers walked ahead of us as we crossed farther into the city, their gray robes whispering against the ground. Everywhere I looked, gold and ember tones bled into our surroundings. It was as if the entire city was a living, breathing flame against a black sky. Spires shaped like tongues of fire, archways carved with winged figures, and runes that reminded me of the caves we just came from. Even the air itself thrummed with heat.

I had never seen anything like it.

The weight of where we were staggered into me—a thousand years of hidden history, a kingdom that shouldn’t exist, architecture and magic and life that predated everything I knew. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet…here we were.

People gathered on the streets to watch as we passed. Every eye was on us—well, on Vera. Her wings stretched like a beacon, drawing the attention of passersby who stared with shock and reverence. I shouldn’t have been surprised. If the legend was true, then these people had been here for a millennium. This was their first glimpse of freedom, their first hope of returning to the world. The city gravitated toward Vera as if it had been holding its breath for centuries and could finally exhale. The savior. That was what the elderly man called her.

When she fluttered her wings, the flames made the street waver, like heat waves coming off a dark surface. I blinked, and it was gone.

The wonder of this kingdom slowly settled. As we walked, my mind kept snagging on things I couldn’t explain. The runes on the buildings flashed in the firelight, like magic was embedded in their ancient language. The people gazed at us with such identical reverence that it set my teeth on edge. Perhaps I was still anxious from what we’d just gone through. Nearly dying several times and seeing Mortep again left me on edge. I tried to shake the strange feeling. I was simply looking for problems where there were none yet, as I often did.