She wished she hadn’t eaten the apple. “This could easily turn lethal.”
He lifted a hand and wind stirred around her. “I’ll be here,” he said simply, eyes shining with an arrogance he’d more than earned in his centuries of living.
“And if I somehow still manage to turn someone into a living torch?”
“Then it’s a good thing the healers are also here to celebrate.”
She gave him a dirty look and rolled her shoulders. “When do you want to start?”
Her stomach clenched as he said, “Now.”
•
She was burning, but remaining steady, even as the sun set and the field became packed with revelers. Musicians took up places by the forest edge and the world filled with their violins and fiddles and flutes and drums, such beautiful, ancient music that her flames moved with it, turning into rubies and citrines and tigereyes and deepest sapphires. Her magic didn’t manifest in only blue wildfire anymore; it had been slowly changing, growing, these past few weeks. No one really noticed her, standing on the outskirts of the fire’s light, though a few marveled at the flames that burned but did not consume the wood.
Sweat ran down every part of her—mostly thanks to the terror of people jumping over the lower-burning bonfires. Yet Rowan remained beside her, murmuring as if she were a nervous horse. She wanted to tell him to go away, to maybe indulge one of those doe-eyed females who kept silently inviting him to dance. But she focused on the flames and on maintaining that shred of control, even though her blood was starting to boil. A knot tightened in her lower back, and she shifted. Gods, she was soaked—every damn crevice was damp.
“Easy,” Rowan said as the flames danced a little higher.
“I know,” she gritted out. The music was already so inviting, the dancing around the fire so joyous, the food on the tables smelling so delicious . . . and here she was, far from it all, just burning. Her stomach grumbled. “When can I stop?” She shifted on her feet again, and the largest bonfire twisted, the flame slithering with her body. No one noticed.
“When I say so,” he said. She knew he was using the people around them, her fear for their safety, to get her to master her control, but . . .
“I’m sweating to death, I’m starving, and I want a break.”
“Resorting to whining?” But a cool breeze licked up her neck, and she closed her eyes, moaning. She could feel him watching her, and after a moment he said, “Just a little while longer.”
She almost sagged with relief, but opened her eyes to focus. She could hold out for a bit, then go eat and eat and eat. Maybe dance. She hadn’t danced in so long. Maybe she would try it out, here in the shadows. See if her body could find room for joy, even though it was currently so hot and aching that she would bet good money that the moment she stopped, she would fall asleep.
But the music was entrancing, the dancers mere shadows swirling around. Unlike in Adarlan, there were no guards monitoring the festivities, no villagers lurking to see who might cross the line into treason and earn a pretty coin for whoever they turned in. There was just the music and the dancing and the food and the fire—her fire.
She tapped a foot, bobbing her head, eyes on the three smokeless fires and the silhouettes dancing around them. She did want to dance. Not from joy, but because she felt her fire and the music meld and pulse against her bones. The music was a tapestry woven of light and dark and color, building delicate links in a chain that latched on to her heart and spread out into the world, binding her to it, connecting everything.
She understood then. The Wyrdmarks were—were a way of harnessing those threads, of weaving and binding the essence of things. Magic could do the same, and from her power, from her imagination and will and core, she could create and shape.
“Easy,” Rowan said, then added with a hint of surprise, “Music. That day on the ice, you were humming.” She registered another cool wind on her neck, but her skin was already pulsing in time with the drums. “Let the music steady you.”
Gods, to be free like this . . . The flames roiled and undulated with the melody.
“Easy.” She could barely hear him above the wave of sound filling her up, making her feel each tether binding her to the earth, each infinite thread. For a breath she wished for a shape-shifter’s heart so she could shed her skin and weave herself into something else, the music or the wind, and blow across the world. Her eyes were stinging, almost blurry from staring so long at the flames, and a muscle in her back twinged.
“Steady.” She didn’t know what he was talking about—the flames were calm, lovely. What would happen if she walked through them? The pulsing in her head seemed to say do it, do it, do it.
“That’s enough for now.” Rowan grabbed her arm, but hissed and let go. “That is enough.”
Slowly, too slowly, she looked at him. His eyes were wide, the light of the fire making them almost blaze. Fire—her fire. She returned to the flame, submitted to it. The music and the dancing continued, bright and merry.
“Look at me,” Rowan said, but didn’t touch her. “Look at me.”
She could hardly hear him, as if she were underwater. There was a pounding in her now—edged with pain. It was a knife that sliced into her mind and her body with each pulse. She couldn’t look at him—didn’t dare take her attention from the fire.
“Let the fires burn on their own,” Rowan ordered. She could have sworn she heard something like fear in his voice. It was an effort of will, and pain sp
iked down the tendons in her neck, but she looked at him. His nostrils flared. “Aelin, stop right now.”
She tried to speak, but her throat was raw, burning. She couldn’t move her body.
“Let go.” She tried to tell him she couldn’t, but it hurt. She was an anvil and the pain was a hammer, striking again and again. “If you don’t let go, you are going to burn out completely.”
Was this the end of her magic, then? A few hours tending fires? Such a relief—such a blessed relief, if it were true.
“You are on the verge of roasting yourself from the inside out,” Rowan snarled.
She blinked, and her eyes ached as if she had sand in them. Agony lashed down her spine, so hard she fell to the grass. Light flared—not from her or Rowan, but from the fires surging. People yelled, the music faltered. The grass hissed beneath her hands, smoking. She groaned, fumbling inside for the three tethers to the fires. But she was a maze, a labyrinth, the strings all tangled, and—
“I’m sorry,” Rowan hissed, swearing again, and the air vanished.
She tried to groan, to move, but she had no air. No air for that inner fire. Blackness swept in.
Oblivion.
Then she was gasping, arcing off the grass, the fires now crackling naturally and Rowan hovering over her. “Breathe. Breathe.”
Though he’d snapped her tethers to the fires, she was still burning.
Not burning on the outside, where even the grass had stopped smoldering.
She was burning up from within. Each breath sent fire down her lungs, her veins. She could not speak or move.
She had shoved herself over some boundary—hadn’t heard the warning signs to turn back—and she was burning alive beneath her skin.