Page 32 of Flame and Sparrow

And the mark he’d left on my arm, the one he’d promised would help protect me...

It was gone.

Chapter10

I came to a swift,terrible realization: The God of Fire had never been here at all. It had been a hallucination, my mind’s attempt to spare me from the painful death I was seconds away from suffering.

The flames roared higher.

All of the moisture was sucked from both the air and my body alike. I felt like dust, soon to be swept away and scattered so completely by the wind that I would cease to exist. Or matter.

Then I felt myself slumping,heavily, and I realized I still had weight to me yet.

Down, down, and farther down—

How?

I was bound so tightly I shouldn’t have been able to fall to the platform like this, yet I felt myself crumpling, sinking, colliding with the charred metal and wood beneath me.

A pair of arms wrapped around my body, lifting me up. My head lolled about. I was so dazed and dizzy from inhaling smoke that it took me a moment to realize I was moving, someone was carrying me away from the building flames—and I could control my hands and feet. They were numb, but no longer bound. A few of the binding ropes were dangling from my body, the ends of them cut and frayed.

I turned toward my carrier. I couldn’t manage to lift my head and see their face, so I just pressed my cheek into the dark coat they wore and inhaled. I still smelled mostly smoke and ash, but there was also an undercurrent of something spicy and woodsy in the rough fabric I curled against. Something familiar—though my battered mind couldn’t quite place who the scent belonged to.

After what might have been seconds—or minutes, or longer—more familiarity beckoned my senses back to life; I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my vision, and heard the recognizablehissandpop!that accompanied them. Screams went up from the crowd that hadn’t yet fled, and I heard muffled voices shouting warnings and evacuation directions.

The flashes of white diffused into large, puffy clouds of white smoke. I summoned every ounce of strength I had left to turn my head and study them closer. To make certain of what I was seeing. Decoys made of oil, damp wood, and a dusting of crushed limestone powder…

I’d know those smoking bombs anywhere.

Cillian’s handiwork.

My friends had come for me.

It might have been another hallucination, but I didn’t care. If I was going to die, I wanted to die believing they had tried to save me, their faces the last clear images in my mind before I burned away.

I closed my eyes, letting these thoughts soothe me until the world went silent and still.

* * *

I woketo the sight of tall trees reaching into a steel-grey sky and countless bright colors spinning around me.

Little by little I came back, testing the sensation in each of my toes and fingers before attempting larger, more coordinated movements. I seemed to be in one piece, fully functioning, even though I felt like I’d been tied to a horse and dragged down a mountainside.

A mountainside that had been on fire.

Groaning, I sat up. The forest and all its colors spun faster, but as it eventually slowed, I recognized most of the people who turned my way.

Cillian and Andrel were here, along with several of our familiar allies. Andrel stopped speaking mid-sentence to Saphiel—a longtime co-conspirator of ours who lived near Cauldra—and hurried over to me, dropping to my side and gathering me up in his arms. He held me so tightly that it instantly, painfully reminded me of the damage the prison guard had done to my ribs.

I was too weak to pull free, but eventually I managed a muffled“Ouch,”which sent Andrel scrambling backward and apologizing. He didn’t go far, staying close enough to grab my hands when my balance swayed.

“You’re okay,” he kept saying, over and over.

I nodded, wincing at the pain from shifting my bruised jaw. “Thank you for saving me,” I said, voice still scratchy from smoke and dehydration. “Though I have to say, your timing could have been better.”

He returned the wry smile I gave him, squeezing my hands. He started to speak several times only to press his lips back together, shaking his head. Finally, he managed another weak smile, but he still didn’t sound like his normal confident self as he said, “We were much later than we meant to be, I’ll grant you that.”

Cillian was at our side by this point, and Andrel finally released his hold on me and allowed Cillian to step between us and pull me to my feet. His embrace was even tighter than Andrel’s, though not as long. He stepped away and immediately started to explain the reasons they’d taken so long—which was what I truly craved. The facts, the details, the process of their rescue…hearing him list these things calmed me better than any touch or embrace could.

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