Eira’s scream now felt as if it tore through the lining of her throat. Ice shot out from her in a burst of frost that coated the landscape, briefly snuffing the fires trying to break through the cracks in the earth, holding the remaining rocks together underneath her, Cullen, and Alyss. The ice coated every blade of grass, every grain of dirt, every inch of Eira’s skin. It thickened over the two remaining horses and riders, turning them
into living statues.
Hatred was cold.
It was bitter. It was numb. It was a midnight lake on a late winter’s night. It was a pit where light couldn’t reach. Not even the light of a magic fire stronger than any sorcerer Eira had ever known could touch her.
She slowly stood, shuffling over to the new edge of the mines following the collapse of a huge swath of the upper rim. Rubble had fallen into the vast pit. It was impossible to see anything through all the blazing orange and rippling magic. Tongues of fire hissed against her skin as they lapped against her, trying to consume her, too. Eira held out her hands and spread her feet.
Freeze. She willed it all to freeze.
The condensed, raw, natural magic of the flash shale fought against her. Steam rose into the air higher than smoke. It felt as if the fire was within. Burning her from the inside out. As if she were the one who had been cast into the blaze and not Noelle.
Eira let out a slow cry that built into a raw and animalistic scream. She poured out her magic as tears poured down her cheeks. She would destroy
them all. Cast all of Carsovia and the Pillars and the whole bloody world into an unending tundra where nothing would exist but suffering.
“Eira…” a distant voice called. “Eira.” Closer, now. Two arms circled her waist, trying to pull her back. When she didn’t move, Cullen came to her. His front pressed against her back. He hissed softly, no doubt in pain from the biting cold.
He’d held her once like this before…or tried to. It was after the incident. So long ago, when things seemed so complicated but were really so simple.
Oh, that girl then knew nothing of problems and pain…
“Eira, we have to go,” he said softly, holding his position through what was surely agony.
“She’s—she’s a Firebearer. Fire can’t hurt her…” Eira bit out. “If I can clear a path of flames… She… We can get her back…”
“You saw the hole in her chest, the fall,” he whispered, temple pressing against her head. “I’m sorry.”
“No. We—we’re all going back. Every one of us,” Eira insisted. More ice. More power. With enough power, no one she loved would ever die again. She was so much stronger than she had been when Ferro killed Marcus. This… “This should be nothing for me. I’m saving her.”
“You can’t bring her back.”
“I will be so mighty that Death himself will fear me. I will fight him for her if I must,” Eira bit out the words. They quivered around the tears.
“Eira…we need you. We need your help, or we’re all going to die here.” The words jarred her enough that Eira looked over her shoulder. Snow and ash were falling, coating the world as an appropriately somber gray. The knights that had been pursuing them were all frozen, dead, in Eira’s stasis. Olivin clung to Yonlin, inspecting his brother as he lay prone on the ground. Alyss clutched Ducot, who howled as if he’d lost a limb. If not for her holding him, he might have launched himself over the edge. He trembled, lunged, and rocked. It was as if his heart had been ripped out and the sound had even more space to echo within, magnifying, becoming
heartbreak incarnate.
They needed her…
What had her help ever done for them? She’d lied to them. Hidden things from them. And when she had tried not to—tried to consult on everything. To ensure she wasn’t unilaterally deciding…this had happened.
We are going to need a leader in there. Someone to make decisions if— when chaos inevitably happens. Lavette’s words echoed back to her. Was all this because Eira hadn’t made decisions for them?
Was it because of her that Noelle was dead? What else should she have done? Her head pounded; her heart was still.
“Eira, please.” Cullen leaned away. His skin was blue and white from where he’d clutched on to her. His teeth were chattering.
Eira looked from him to the fire. To the inferno that continued to rage and smolder…perhaps these fires would blaze, fueled by shale, for eternity. Even in death, Noelle would burn brightly. She’d make her mark upon the earth well beyond her years. Eira eased away, turning, drawing her magic to her. The land was brittle and barren, frost-burnt.
She staggered away from the rim and every step felt like a betrayal. Part of her wanted to run back and try against all odds, even when hope was lost. Part of her felt like it was down in that blazing pit, clutching Noelle.
“We have to go.” Her voice was detached, vacant, as she loomed over Ducot and Alyss.
Ducot tilted his head up at her. Eira knew what was going to happen well before it did. He lunged up, grabbing for her, balling her shirt into his fist. He reared back with his other hand and found his mark. Eira didn’t fight. Not when he pulled back and struck her for the second time. Eira knew how to take a beating.
“She died for you!”
She didn’t fight when the third blow landed. “Because you let her!”
Nor the fourth.
But Eira stopped him the fifth time, her cheeks stinging as much as her eyes. Blood dribbled down her nose and split lip.
“I know.” She held his trembling fist in her palm. “But this isn’t going to bring her back. And we must keep going.”
“Have you…did you even look? What if she’s—”
“She’s gone. I looked. I tried.” But it took all her willpower not to run back and check again. Not to hope that Noelle would emerge, against all odds, with one of her usual, arrogant quips.
“I’d rather die with her.”
“I know.” And she meant it. But she didn’t let him go and launch himself into the pit after her.
Ducot trembled and hung his head. He wept until his tears caught in his throat. Until he vomited.
Eira waited until he was finished. When he was, Alyss slipped her arm under his shoulders. She supported him with a strength Eira was in awe that she still had.
They left, starting for the woods and toward the distant town and the ship they were owed. That they had sacrificed everything for.
 |
Noelle didn’t have a proper Rite of Sunset.
There was no body for it.
But at least she had been immolated. So Cullen led the prayers that night from the deck of the boat Lavette and Varren had successfully procured. They stared at the shoreline of Carsovia in the distance, a bloody sky mirroring the fires that still burned in the distance—bright enough to light up a spot on the horizon when all else had turned to shadow.
There wasn’t much talking after the prayers were over.
Ducot kept to himself. Everyone gave him space. Except Alyss. Even though, during their time at the clinics, Eira was the one who had dealt with the dying specifically, it was Alyss who went to check on Ducot. Eira was sure she was the last person he wanted to see. She felt like she was the last person whom any of them would’ve wanted to be around.
So even though he had the most experience sailing out of all of them, Eira didn’t demand he help them with the rigging. With tacking against the wind. Or with finding the Stormfrost.
She’d asked enough of him…of all of them.
Eira continued to replay every word. Every decision and choice that she’d made or didn’t make. Should she have ordered Noelle to come with her? If she had decreed that Noelle, Olivin, and Yonlin stay above the mines no matter what, they could’ve shaken the knights after Eira’s capture, sneaked out quietly, and met in the forest.
There were a thousand ways she could’ve acted differently. Any of them would’ve saved her. All of them added up to, once more, she hadn’t been good enough. She should have protected her friends better.
I did what I wanted.
Eira could almost hear Noelle’s retort on the wind. Even knowing it to be true—Noelle was, had been a woman who listened to her own desires— that knowledge didn’t stop Eira from laying blame at her own feet.
Two arms slid around her middle. Eira knew it was Cullen from the movement alone; he’d done it countless times now to pull her back from the brink. She knew him from the shape of his forearms. From the soft breath against her neck. She knew him almost like her own magic—as an extension of herself.
And she knew it was him because Olivin and Yonlin had made themselves scarce. Even though they’d respectfully joined in prayers, and offered some of their own to Yargen…neither of them had been as close to Noelle. This pain wasn’t as deep for them. The mourning not as real. They’d gone off with Lavette and Varren belowdecks. Olivin had been even more of a shadow over his brother. The few shadowed glances he’d cast in Eira’s direction had become harder and harder to decipher.
“I’m sorry,” Cullen whispered against her ear.
Eira tilted her head slightly, pressing into him. “What are you sorry for?”
“I should have saved her. Should have done more.” “We all should have…and yet none of us could.”
I made my choices, Noelle seemed to challenge again between the beats of Eira’s heart. But it was hard to listen to the murmurings of a ghost when grief was real and present.
Eira pulled away from him, stepping to the side. “We should be respectful. Ducot just lost the woman he loved. We don’t want to rub in his face that we still have each other.”
“Of course,” Cullen said softly as Eira went to leave so she could pretend to attend to something. “But Eira”—she stopped—“grief is a burden best shared. Don’t go through this alone.”
“I know,” she said softly. If there was one lesson she’d learned following Marcus, it was that.
But, sometimes, grief demanded solitude and silence. And those were the private battlefields that Eira chose to fight her guilt upon.
