Page 25 of A Chill in the Flame
“Where’s your will to live!”
“You’re insane,” Ophir said, bewildered.
Through gritted teeth, Dwyn said, “I haven’t shown you a drop of insanity yet. You have no idea how much I have to give.”
Dwyn wound her foot up and kicked Ophir in the ribs. She reeled against the pain, stars populating her vision. That was the signal to intervene. Harland moved quickly toward them, his hand on his hilt, but Dwyn thrust a powerful stream of water directly from the ocean below at the guard that threw him against solid stone. His body made impact with a loud thud as her power crashed around him, cracking his body against the cream-colored outer walls of the castle. Water and chaos and pain erupted in a way that filled the very air, as if the impending storm was only a player in their terrible game. Dwyn pulled her foot back again and kicked Ophir in the stomach this time. The princess gagged and choked on her pain, feeling loss, betrayal, and terror consume her.
“What are you!” Her foot drew backward, ready to come down in another terrible blow. Her next kick would surelydraw blood.
With anger, Ophir spun on the siren. She pushed herself up with one hand and began to call her flame with the other, but Dwyn was too fast. The wind was the wail of a legion of banshees as it whipped off of the ocean’s choppy surface, whistling and crying around them. Ophir’s toffee hair had become painful whips of rope as they slashed and bit into the skin of her face and cheeks. Thunder cracked just beyond the bay, announcing its arrival to any who dared to remain on the seaside. Dwyn doused the emerging fire with her water and crunched the princess’s hand beneath her foot.
“What are you!”
With a shriek so loud and unholy that it washed out the ocean around them, Ophir unleashed an explosion of anger. Her hands flew out in front of her as if to send another wall of flame at Dwyn in their death match. Her banshee cry opened a bottle of fury and the madness of long-held violence as she released a raw, untethered scream. “I’m a snake!”
And there it was.
Dwyn began to back away quickly, lips parted, eyes wide with surprise.
Harland had just begun to stand from where he’d been knocked nearly unconscious against the wall of the castle. He was gasping for air after having nearly drowned on dry land from the siren’s blast of power and perhaps thought he might be hallucinating from the swallow of seawater.
Ophir stared in horror at the vile evil that had emerged from her explosion of rage.
A large, black serpent was poised to strike, its vitriol focused fully on Dwyn.
Manifestation was said to be the power of the All Mother. In her infinite wisdom and selflessness, she had breathed the earth and all its creatures into existence through the power of thought, energy, and air. The goddess had desired lush, green lands, and so she’d manifested vegetation. She’d wanted toquench her thirst, and so she’d filled the world with water. Animals filled her world, from the gentle herbivores to the terrible predators that kept the balance of life in check. The All Mother had desired companions and had crafted humans to live alongside her. They’d grown jealous and afraid of her power, so she’d made the fae to bridge the gap between the mortal and the holy.
Throughout recorded history, manifestation had been reported only three times. The first was said to have been possessed by a religious Speaker for the All Mother who used her words to bring harmony in war times, conjuring walls to end battles, chains to shackle enemies, and dividing the kingdoms to prevent their lust for blood. The second was said to have belonged to the original fae king of Farehold, as he’d created for himself the wealth and armies he’d needed to take hold of a kingdom, leveling the lands. The third had been killed at the gentle age of eleven when she’d shown the first inclinations of manifestation. Her parents had attempted to hide her gift, but the moment word spread, it had been decided by the church and crown alike that the gift was too powerful to be wielded on these lands.
Dwyn’s shock and surprise had given way to a slow, private smile. She didn’t seem to fear the monster before her, not even as the thunder cracked and the lightning of the approaching storm reflected against its scales. The edges of her lips twinged upward as the fallen princess, who still clung to the cliff’s edge, and the shocked bodyguard examined the large, black serpent.
The siren motioned to Harland. “Can you take care of this for us?”
The serpent was the size of a large dog. Ophir wasn’t sure how Harland was supposed to “take care of it” and keep his life and limbs intact, but Dwyn didn’t seem concerned.
Ophir had manifested.
What was more, the siren had seemed to know she could. This was why she’d spent weeks forcing the princessto envision the beast. She’d created a nightly meditation of how the creature looked, how it made her feel, the powers it possessed. She’d gone so far as to beat Ophir within an inch of her life to activate whatever remnants of survival remained in her weak, pathetic body.
The snake was enormous. It was the living embodiment of rage, venom, and fear. Still, it did not seem emboldened to move of its own accord. The creature remained coiled, as if waiting for a command. Seeing his opportunity, Harland brought his sword down in a sharp, clean arc. The unnatural viscosity of the black, thick blood that sprayed from its beheading was as horrifying as the appearance of the creature itself. Dwyn immediately began the process of shoving the serpent’s body over the cliff’s edge, as if her first priority was concealing the evidence. The wind fought against her efforts as the storm around them began to thunder over the sea, but Harland joined the siren in shoving the serpent’s body over the edge of the cliff into the waters below.
They were joined in a mission to hide the evidence of what the princess had just done. No one could know about this, and they knew it intrinsically.
The rain began to pour down over them with the flurry of rocks and fists. Any evidence of the snake’s blackened blood was washing away under the pounding of water as lightning cracked over the ocean. The waves were crashing with such intensity that their sea spray began to join the rain soaking the three who remained on the cliff.
Shock glued Ophir to the ground.
Harland scooped up the princess as Dwyn opened the castle door, guiding them through the corridors. She’d become familiar enough with Castle Aubade over the past few weeks to know how to navigate from the cliffs to the princess’s chambers. Her rooms had changed a number of times, as the severity of her flame would often leave the bedchamber in such a state of charred disrepair that they’d need to relocate to a new wing until something could bedone about Ophir, Flame Heart.
***
“What do I do?” Ophir’s voice sounded so small to her ears. She had been strong, once. Those parts of her had been laid to rest with Caris. She hadn’t thought she was capable of signs of life until she’d created one of her own.
In the seconds that followed, she had gone directly from the storm-swept cliffs to her room where thoughts could flood through her mind just as the waters beyond the fortress. Her guard disappeared, presumably to clean up after her as he’d done so many times before. She was rife with anxiety, twisting her fingers against the wet fabric of her skirt as she flipped through the events of the evening like a tattered, paperbound novel, reading it forward and backward and again and again until the spine cracked. She’d waited in agonizing silence for Dwyn, Harland, or anyone to burst in through her door and demand to know how she’d created a snake.
She had summoned a serpent. No—she hadn’t summoned it, for it had not existed.
Summoners called to that which occurred naturally. Some could speak to only present elements, like those who crafted metal, fire, or stone by wielding the elements before them. Ophir had been gifted with the ability to summon an element even when she found herself lacking its presence. She could summon fire, rather than simply move that which existed in hearths, candles, lanterns, and torches.
