Page 38 of A Chill in the Flame
One had to push it slightly inward, carefully easing the mirror’s pressure into the wall more deeply before it released and revealed a stairwell to the catacombs beneath the castle.Aubade had been built by a rather mistrustful king, and the palace had been littered with false walls, moving bookcases, and ladders that dropped down from the ceiling. The mirror had been a secret that she’d managed to keep to herself. She hadn’t even shared it with her sister. If she was careful, this beautiful escape hatch could last for fifty generations more without ever being found.
Autumn on the sea was chilly, but not too cold for a cloak and the fur-lined pants and tunic that helped her conceal her identity. She summoned the barest ember of fire into the space above her palm, allowing the little flame to illuminate the pressing dark of the stone passage. She could squelch or reignite her flame at any time and was grateful for its glow whenever she found herself picking through the dark of the night.
She’d come in and out of the castle this way on many occasions. The only footprints in the dust appeared to be her own. She knew exactly where to turn and how to navigate the corridors that would eventually release into a wine cellar. A latch allowed her to ease open the solid back of a wooden rack in the depths of the castle’s belly, letting her into the secret space beneath the kitchen. She could easily conceal the rack once more and reenter the castle through more normal means with the argument that she’d simply gone to the kitchen in search of alcohol.
The custard stones wove in a complicated labyrinth beneath the castle. If she followed the smell of fish and salt, she could find where it released onto the cliffs. She extinguished the ember that had hovered in the space above her hand and allowed herself to be guided forward by the moonlight. A small dock of rowboats had been pitched and was replaced every year or so in case escape was ever necessary. Instead, she navigated beyond the boats and picked her way along the slick stones that dotted the shore. There was no sand on this part of the beach, only the slime and barnacle-marred protrusions that met the air during low tide alone.
The reddish cliffs had a particular alcove that revealed itself only at such times of the day or night when the sea was at its lowest. A crab scuttled over her feet, and she kicked aside a piece of kelp as she wandered into the shallow cave just as she’d done so many times in her childhood. This hiding place had been the perfect way to escape without ever going too far. They’d never search for her in this dip of the cliff. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t even know she’d been missing before she was safely back in her room.
Ophir called a ball of light and allowed it to hum in the center of the hollowed limestone. Any wayward sailor would see the warm, ethereal glow of her flame from his ship, but she and her light were invisible to anyone in the castle, as she and her cave were perfectly beneath the structure, embedded in the very cliff on which it sat. Her orange flame hung like a low chandelier, unbound by constraints as it lit the water-slick curves and grooves of the cave.
Now it was time for the reason she’d come. She had manifested once. She was ready to do it again.
She wiggled her hands in front of her and pictured a snake.
Nothing happened.
She narrowed her eyes and focused. Dwyn had forced her to see everything about the serpent for weeks. She knew its size, its weight, even its foul scent. She had believed in the beast and turned the pain of her trauma into a physical, reptilian monster in her mind long before she’d conjured it. It had been anger, pain, and survival that had made her imagination a reality.
She thrust a hand out before her and envisioned the serpent leaping from the tips of her fingers.
Again, she was met with silence. Only the gentle lapping of the waves at the lip of the cave mingled with her frustrated kick and grunt against her failure. She tried again and again, doing her best to recapture the scenario that had led to the monster and its manifestation. She kicked against the wall of the cave with too much force, crying out in pain as the shockof impact lanced up her leg.
An idea pricked her.
Dwyn had ignited her survival instinct. She’d heard of such methods used in some training camps among soldiers. Pain and panic were powerful tools in triggering one’s will to live.
On that stormy cliff in front of Dwyn and Harland, she had manifested the snake from the primal place within her that fought for life. She’d created a warrior to battle on her behalf when she’d been kicked within an inch of consciousness. The princess began to wander around the slippery floor of the cave in search of a loose stone. Unfortunately, the carving nature of the ocean had made every surface exceptionally smooth. A tidal pool had been created toward the back of the cave where the grooves had naturally collected water, allowing a tiny ecosystem of shrimps, colorful corals, and the white-sand bottom of a little beach to live in the sea cave regardless of the tide and its height. She splashed around in the pool, hoping to find a loose rock, but only succeeded in wetting her hand and startling a baby octopus who’d been hiding under an old oyster shell.
Ophir scanned the space around her, searching for anything that might effectively trigger her survival instincts.
Perhaps her half-formed plan to smash herself over the head with a stone was best left thwarted. Besides, she wasn’t sure if she could provoke survival instincts while knowing that she would doubtlessly hold back on the true danger she needed as a catalyst. She wouldn’t have hit herself hard enough to genuinely believe she was about to die. She supposed she could jump into the ocean, but she wasn’t sure if conjuring a serpent would serve her well if she was in the midst of drowning. Ophir needed to feel like she was dying—not actually die.
She sat on the cave floor and allowed the damp seawater to leach into her clothes, soaking through to her legs. The warm glow of the flame she’d conjured cast interestingshadows on the far wall. It made her think of bonfires on the beach with her sister, or how they’d curled up against the hearth on late winter nights to drink melted chocolate and discuss their hopes and loves and dreams. Ophir would tell her all about her latest conquest, and Caris would gasp and hit her playfully as she lived vicariously through Firi’s immoral ways, soaking in every detail.
Tears licked at her lower lids.
Her first reaction was to slam down the cover on her emotion and to sink back into the numbness that had protected her for months. The feeling stirred something in her greater than memory. She realized that there were more excruciating pains than the physical. There were horrible, terrible ways to feel like you were dying without ever letting anyone touch you. So, she did what she’d spent months and months preventing herself from doing. She did the very thing that caused her to jolt awake screaming, burning her clothes and her bed.
Ophir opened herself up, and she let herself feel.
She went to the place in her mind that she’d never let herself go while awake.
She opened the darkened door once again to see the men who’d crowded around her sister. She allowed herself to see every single detail. She looked into their faces, soaking in the lines around their eyes, the shades of their hair, the presence of stubble, their builds, their heights, the shapes of their jaws. She looked into her memory and stared unflinchingly at Caris and how they’d kept her alive. Harland had suggested they’d wanted her to stay a virgin. While the idea that she had not been forced had comforted her parents, he’d stiffened with a darker horror. It was as though Ophir’s heart ripped in two.
The pain lanced through her with excruciating slowness as she lived her waking nightmare. Tears spilled over her lids before she knew what was happening. She heard the sound echo and reverberate off the walls as if listening to someone else’s suffering. Her disembodied, uncontrollable sobs turnedinto the angry, howling screams of the unhinged. She was not sad. She was not hurt. She was not afraid. She was furious. Her mouth grew wider as she bared her teeth against the sound. Her lips pulled back. She allowed her anger to burn hotter and brighter than the fire in the room. She let it eat her, filling every membrane and curve and cell. Her muscles sizzled with her fury. Her tendons ached against the blistering heat of her pain. Her face had contorted into the supernatural, open-mouthed, full-bodied scream of a banshee. There was no sound in her ears but that of her own searing, thrashing rage. She didn’t care if they heard her in the castle. She hoped all of Aubade stirred in their beds and jolted awake at the feral, otherworldly sound of her hot, scorching misery.
She forced her pain into anger.
She envisioned the savory, satisfying ways she would peel Berinth’s skin away from the muscle and bone, burn his eyeballs until they melted in the sockets, and make him beg for forgiveness before leaving him to die like a dog in a ditch. She’d cut his compatriots from neck to navel and punch her fist into the cavities of their stomach while they lived, watching the torment in their eyes as she cooked them from the inside out. She’d be the serpent, sinking her fangs into them time after time until every last one of them twitched and gasped and begged for mercy at her feet.
Her trauma went from a murky, bloody thing to a strong, firm shape.
Still screaming with the raw and unbridled rage of the woman on the brink of living hell, she brought her hands in front of her and brought her pain to life.
Her anger gave birth to an enormous, black serpent.
She was stunned. She hadn’t known if this would work. She was bewildered at her own power.
