Page 6 of Queen of Fire

Spinning on the spot, I looked down to see a very familiar pair of ice blue eyes looking up at me. Instead of the tall, imposing frame of Cyrus, though, there was a girl; no older than eight. Her head was tilted to the side and her dark hair had fallen over one of her shoulders as she stared back at me. I blinked, again and again, trying to register what, orwho, I was staring at.

Slowly, her expression morphed into a smile, and her small face softened.

“You are Kira.” She said confidently.

“I am,” I replied, my eyebrows furrowing. I had never seen this child moving around the castle until now. Where had she been hiding? I lifted my head, my eyes scanning the nearby book stacks and aisles, trying to figure out where she had appeared from. “And who are you?”

“Caliara Cafirou.” She smiled, holding out her little hand for me to shake. I hesitated, but took her hand in mine anyway, giving it a gentle shake before releasing her. She clasped her hands in front of her, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet.

“Pleasure to meet you, Caliara.” My voice still sounded distracted as I looked over the girl’s head, trying to signal for Iris, but to my surprise her desk lay empty. “What are you doing in here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“It’s my library.” Caliara’s face broke into a cheek-splitting grin, and I felt my eyebrows raise nearly enough to meet my hairline.

“Oh?”

“Yes. This is my castle.”

“I’m very sorry, lovely girl, but I am confused.” I said slowly, crouching down so I was closer to her height, with her now looking down at me. Something I had learned when I was at school — if you wanted someone smaller than you to tell you more, or trust you, you get asclose to their height as you can. “What do you mean,yourcastle?”

“I mean,” Caliara said slowly, as if she thought me stupid, “I live here. With my brother and sister.”

A realisation hit me square in the chest, and I had to stop myself from gasping out loud. A memory of Cyrus telling me about his two younger sisters. They all had the same father, but the two girls had a different mother. Cyrus had said he worked hard to keep them away from the parties and the eyes of the Kingdom’s noble families, and clearly, he had done a wonderful job at it so far. Looking at the young girl now, the similarities screamed out at me. The shape of her nose, the same ice blue eyes… it was unnerving.

If the resemblance between Cyrus and his other sister was anywhere near as obvious as it was between himself and Caliara, it was no wonder he tried to keep them a secret.

Standing back up straight, I cleared my throat, unsure of what to say to her now. Her eyes searched the small reading nook I had been curled up in with a look of polite interest in her small features.

“The library is supposed to be closed now,” She started, meeting my gaze again. “Do you want to play with me?”

I froze, no words making their way out of my body before my head was nodding and Caliara slipped her hand into mine. I reacted quick enough to grab my book from where I had sat it on the small table, a slip of paperin between two pages to keep my place and tucked it under my free arm.

Caliara talked the whole time we walked together, her small hand still clasping mine. She filled me in about everything I could possibly wonder about her. She was eight years old, her favourite colour was red —“Nice red, though, like your hair. Not like blood.”— and her horse was called Echo. She told me how Cyrus was teaching her how to play chess, and how her sister, Calliope, was showing her how to paint. Her favourite lesson was History, and she loved reading.

My heart warmed in my chest as she spoke, the ease at which she felt with me making me feel more at home here than I had felt anywhere.

Following her into her chambers, my mouth dropped open at the opulence. She had a double sized bed decked out with pink pillows and fluffy blankets. A wooden dollhouse that was an exact replica of the castle stood underneath one of her windows, with small dolls scattered throughout the rooms, and an uncountable number of stuffed animals occupied nearly every other open space.

Caliara kicked off her slippers, leaving them to lie where they landed and dragged me over to the large doll house, patting the floor next to her and waiting for me to kneel before she started to explain the current happenings in the small world in front of us.

“This is Cyrus, obviously.” She said, pointing towardsthe dark-haired male doll sitting in a throne, the seat next to him empty. “I wasn’t sure what you looked like, since Cyrus wouldn’t let me meet you yet, so I don’t have you doll yet.” She rolled her eyes, and I could not help but laugh at the innocent honesty of her.

“This is me, and this is Iris, and this is Cirro —“ I snorted when I realised the doll she had chosen to portray Cirro was, in fact, a troll — “And this is Calliope.” She held up a doll with golden hair that had been cut short and coloured with purple ink.

“Who is this one?” I asked, reaching forward to pluck a doll from the unnervingly accurate looking dungeon.

“That is my other br — I don’t know who that is.” She cut herself off, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion as she did so. It was as if she did not know why she had stopped herself from talking. I watched her closely, the blank, confused look on her face soon disappearing and turning back to her happy smile as she turned back to her dolls.

I placed the doll back into the dungeon, my mind whirring as I did so. Was there someone down there that I did not know about? Someone meant to be a secret?

Caliara kept playing as if the situation we had found ourselves in had never happened, but the uneasy feeling in my chest stayed until long after I left her.

5

Cyrus

Isat back in my chair, arms crossed, as I watched my littlest sister think through her next move.

When Caliara had come to me six months ago asking me to teach her how to play chess, I laughed. The girl before me had never sat still for more than thirty-seconds since she was old enough to walk; her little mind was always busy with something, whether that be making up her own stories, or obsessively researching something she had learned in one of her lessons, she did not have the attention span for chess.

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