A Desire for Fire & Bone Read online

  “This will not dry before the wedding.” At that, Eren breaks out in hysterical sobs. Isai comes to her side to comfort her. Mother groans once more.

  “Sir Lanstoff,” Mother calls for the tailor. He fidgets on the small stool, nearly dropping the needle from his hand. He jumps to his feet and the sun gleams over his balding head top.

  “Your Majesty.” He bows.

  “Can you fashion her a new dress within the next few days?” I have never seen Mother’s face soften in my presence, but in this horrendously dramatic moment, her eyes brow knit together, her piercing blue eyes dim, and she slips on a gentle cat smile for the tailor. Lanstoff clears his throat and walks over to take the dress from the handmaiden. Another grimace against the soaking fabric.

  “It definitely will not dry before the wedding. Too many layers and the lace.” He shakes his head but catches himself. He calls over his seamstress who scurries to his side, bowing next to mother.

  “I can fashion a new wedding dress the night before the ceremony, however…” His voice draws on and I already know his words. They're for me. Disappointing words that will cost me,

  “Princess Ariene’s dress will not be finished.” And there it is. The words that will surely turn on me in time. Regardless of what I want, my eyes move to Mother. I catch her sight and she shake her head.

  “Do what must be done.” She waves him away. “Begin tonight.” She commands and he does so, beginning to gather his kits and many needles, threads, and yarns.

  “Eren, Isai.” She turns back to them, “Go.” Finally, she speaks to me. Her words are low and coating with a thick layer of disapproval.

  “Do you see what happens when you do not cooperate?” She spits. I scoff.

  “I cooperated quite well, it’s your clumsy saint-of-a-daughter that cannot stay on her own feet.” I fire back. If she wants an argument, I will give her one.

  “Do not speak of your sister that way. This is her time to shine. You have had your way enough.”

  “My way? Mother?” I nearly snarl. “All she does is shine and this one moment when she throws herself into a tub because she can’t learn to stand upright, it’s my fault.” I begin to slip the sleeves of the dress off my arms. The tailor and seamstress look to one another, speeding up their packing.

  “Wear one of your other dresses to the wedding.” Mother says. This time I hear the disdain in her words. Tossing me to the back of her mind, per usual.

  I would say it hurts less each time, but that would be a lie.

  “What if I refuse to go instead?” The room goes silent. There’s a pause in the fabric workers’ shuffling but it resumes, hastily.

  “You would do that to your sister?” Her face scrunches.

  “No,” I slip the remnants of the dress off and stand in nothing but the underclothing I have on. “I would do that for you.”

  She lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’m disappointed in you, Ariene.” My eyes roll so hard into my head I swear they might stay there.

  I want to talk back. Yell. Scream. Shout. Bore into her with all I have. Tell her off about how mistreated I’ve felt. How she abuses the staff. How she hurts me with every word that comes out of her mouth. But it would be pointless. Pointless to move a wall when all I am is a single hand.

  But all I can trust my tongue with is, “get out.”

  “Everyone, get out.” I wait. No one moves. “I said,” anger bubbles inside me. Building pressure in my chest until I feel it lump in my throat. Slowly, I wait. Patiently, I stand and wait for them to file out. And they do. The seamstress followed the tailor. Graceyn behind Isai. But Mother stands and stares at me, offended that her oh-so disappointment child would say such a thing to her.

  “I said….” It pops. “Get ou-” But a hand grips my throat and forces me back, I barely have time to catch my feet and I stumble into the mirror, slipping from her firm grip on my neck. I smash into the mirror with a loud crack and sharp pain splits through my scalp.

  “You will not raise your voice at me.” She glares down at me. Her stream blue eyes darkened, even in the morning light. “I have given you bed, a home to live under, food in your greedy little belly, and you treat me like so?” Her voice rises as her skin begins to glow tomato red from her chest, up her neck, and into her cheeks.

  “Never, ever raise your voice at me, you insolent child. I will not stand for it, and I will not allow it as long as you are to draw breath in this house.” Her words become crueler as the anger continues to swell inside. Something wet trickles down my neck. My fingers graze the skin and feel the warmth of the substance. My blood coats my fingers when I draw it into my sight. Fear splits through me. It took a moment. It took too long of a moment to shake me to my core. No, it rattled my very being as I stared up at her. The woman I called my Mother.

  Her breathing is ragged and uncontrolled.

  “You will be at Eren’s wedding whether or not I have to drag you there myself.” She snarls. I swallow against the dryness in my throat.

  “A servant will come in to clean up this mess. We will see you for breakfast.” Mother pauses, looking back at me and sighing.

  “And to think we wasted Ink on you.” My breath hitches. She spins to stomp out, but Eren stands in the doorway, still wet. Mother freezes at the sight.

  “And you need to dry off.” Her tone falls to a gentle demand. Eren nods and Mother rushes out of the room, screaming for a servant. Who scurries into my room? But I ignore her, my focus on my sister who scans me with her sharp green eyes.

  She doesn’t make the effort to move. Not a single one of her fingers twitches to help me, her sister, her younger sister. No, she just stares.

  Her hand twitches and I think she’s going to help me. I’m mistaken.

  She runs her thumb from the tip of her nose, pressing against her soft pink lips. My chest tightens as a fist covers my heart, wrenching my pulse erratic. I chuckle and copy her movement. Our little way of seeing each other. Yet, every time I feel less seen and more like a shadow against her. She smiles and leaves my room.

  Water drips down my face in streams and I can’t help the sobs that break free. The shame I felt from earlier turns into a flurry of emotions, too many for me to catch, and yet I feel every single one of them as they light my body aflame.

  My blood runs hot and courses in my veins like magma against flesh. I cannot breathe. Feel. Hear. The servant in my room tries to say something to me, probably to stand up but I can’t urge my body to stretch a single muscle. Sobs wrack through me in waves until my tears turn hot and dry.

  First, I was on the ground in nothing but my undergarments. Now, I lay in my bed, heaving dry tears.

  Chapter 3: Adora

  Whispers rang in my ears as the flutter of wind kisses brushed over my skin and sent a shiver racing to my toes. I groan awake, forcing my eyes open, hoping to see the cracked and broken roof of the orphanage, but the piercing blue of the open sky throws me out of my slumber. Confusion bolts me to my feet, but it spreads throughout my entire body when my toes curl over the arid earth of the Desert Plains. Nothing but broken dry earth for miles and miles, for as far as my eye could see. My breath wavers, quiver behind my lips, slipping through my nostrils. My head spins as the heavy heat of the world slathers me in a layer of sweat.

  I snap my head around, hoping to see the expanse of Laurune. The stubby homes and huts, the reed-covered walls, the healing tents, the Temple. But nothing but sand surrounds me. Panic punches out of the chesta in shaky breath. Gods, where am I? I turn to the sky again out of faith to see anything but the vast blue, but it’s all that’s there.

  “Azar?” I speak. No answer.

  “Demetrius?” The dizzy spell from before grows into a swirling tornado as the panic grows in intensity. My breaths turn shallow as my throat thickens.

  “I’ve been taken…” I hold onto the last strain of hope I have, but I’ve heard the stories one too many times. The Raids. The takings. All of it echoes in between my ears like the
screams of my ancestors and friends I never had the chance to meet. My ragged breaths turn into struggling pants. Fear coils in my stomach and I swear I would hurl over the earth.

  “Give her back!” A woman speeds past me in a whoosh of wind. Her golden skin was covered in a sheen of sweat. Her oak brown hair is scattered in streaks of silver. “My daughter!” She cries. The earth cracks open, ruins of sandstone homes and reed huts just from the other like rocks.

  The woman races past each broken home. She tumbles over her bare feet, but she catches herself. Planting her hands on a wall that wasn’t there.

  “She’s mine!” She lunges at the air, grabbing onto it. For a moment, I think of Gaelia, but this is different. Her fingers curl in the air as she’s holding onto something, grabbing at some- someone. I take a step forward, but the world breaks open like an egg and I fall through the black expanse of avoid. Freefalling through the earth, time, space until I crash onto a bunk.

  My body snaps me awake. Pain tears through me like before. And the remnants of my Rising collide into me with more force than a rhynun.

  “Ah!’ A scream punch through me. Demetrius rushes in, his eyes planting on me before he slips to his knees, not daring to touch me.

  “Adora,” he says but all I can process is pain. Burning, blistering, white-hot pain singeing through me. I look to him, and his face contorts, sympathy and regret shadowing his features. But there’s a glimpse of something else in his eyes. The way his brows knit together, how his eyes almost glaze over with tears, the way his lip’s part. It feels so familiar, a second heartbeat going unrecognized. But it’s there. And its pity that holds his eyes.

  And I slip back into darkness.

  * * *

  “When will she wake?” A sharp whisper shot through the air.

  “Soon.” Another responded, low and gentle.

  “We need her now before the Raiders catch ear.”

  “I can’t raise her even if I wanted to, Iradesa.” The gravel behind the words was thick but they stayed contained. My chest fluttered when I realized it was Azar.

  “What if she doesn’t wake up? Hm, Azar?” Iradesa hissed back. I want to jolt from this bed and strangle. Her voice is glass scraping on glass. Sharp yet so, so annoying. But my body refuses any movement, even my eyes won’t open.

  There was a long pause. Too long.

  What if I don't wake up, Azar?

  “Then the gods made a mistake.” Gods don’t make a mistake!

  “They don’t make mistakes!” Iradesa spat back. “Azar, we need her. We need her soon. Our people are starving out of fear of being taken again. I’m tired of looking my people in the eyes and telling them to keep practicing. The wind can only travel so far.” Her sharp tongue shrinks. The air grew thick and heavy, and I feel the grief of what she was feeling.

  “She will wake.” Azar’s gentle hand presses against my cheek. My neck strains to push my face into his touch but I can’t. “Wake up, Adora.”

  * * *

  The world jostles around me. I swim in the darkness behind my eyelids and wait for my body to reconnect with my mind. It feels like forever. I can hear everything, feel it all. How the wind changes. The way the room gets warmer with each new body that steps into the orphanage. My skin is so sensitive that the slightest of breath sends my nerves into overdrive, mimicking the feel of a hand, an arm, something, anything against my body.

  “We need to wake her.” Azar’s gentle tone comes back. Each time he has visited warms my heart. But I don’t just feel him. Someone else is here.

  “Azar,” her voice is strained and worn. “She’s in a sleeping state. If I could wake her—”

  “Yvette,” he stops her. “You are the most experienced healer in all of Laurune, in all of Atrevi for that matter, I do not want to hear that you cannot wake a sleeping girl.” That same gravel in his throat grinds together. I can only imagine his face. Stoned and stern, staring the woman down with those autumn dull eyes. Pale amber surrounded by brown olive skin. Wrinkles stretched into fine lines as he glared at her.

  I almost feel a smile twitch on my lips.

  “Did you see that?” The gravel turns to dust and his gentle tone returns.

  “Azar.”

  “No. Her face moved.”

  “It was a muscle twitch. It happens to even Terranites.”

  “Try,” is all he says. A moment goes by. Then a second. And a minute.

  “You saw what I saw,” the thud of boots follows Yvette’s voice. “This isn’t the mistake of Gaelia and her storms. Or a broken arm from a reckless Terranite. Not even the Aecor have seen this, and some of us have drowned.” My throat thickens when a memory of a girl in the Arena. I was barely ten and she had conjured waves so large that she pulled them from the coast into a tsunami that hit us. She nearly drowned, suffocated by her own relentless ability.

  That was the price we paid for Rising. Breaking ourselves for the sole purpose of being seen in the eyes of Gods, of men.

  “She has been blessed with something you and I haven’t seen since…” She stopped short.

  “I need her awake. I promised—” His voice cracked. My heart skips a beat. I have never seen Azar shed a single tear but hearing that crack in his throat. It swelled inside me, filling each and every inch of my body cavities until I felt ready to burst. And burst I did.

  Popped like a bubble.

  Warmth spread through me. Familiar heat rush through my veins until settling in my chest, licking at my heart like hungry tongues from wolves. I want to let it go. It wants to be set free. But the feeling of the ceremony rushed through me, as did a spike of fear. I pushed the heat down, forcing it back down, forcing it away from me.

  I pushed and pushed and pushed until flames flickered behind over my lids. And a face. The face of that same woman with the black hair and silver streaks. Her eyes were dark, but they mocked mine with uncanny precision. Utter terror filled her eyes. Damaged. Broken. Horrified, but her lips split into a smirk as she smiled, her teeth stark white.

  Then she spoke.

  “Wake up, Adora.” Her words latched on between my ears and hung, rattling my brain until fire lit across her face.

  I jolted awake. Gasping for breathing, brushing at my face and eyes to get the flames away. I screamed in horror, trying to get the image of her melting face from my mind.

  “Adora!” I shot my eyes open. It was her face. Her sharp features and high cheekbones. Those white streaks. The black hair. Those eyes are void of all color. I reacted. It was a reflex.

  My hand shot up and flames burst through, singeing the skin of my palm. Quickly, Yvette whipped her arms through the air, conjuring the water from small bowl beside my bunk and threw it against me. Snuffing out the fire.

  Silence fell over the three of us. My eyes wandered their faces. Azar’s wrinkles. Yvette’s scars. Her golden hair and pale brown complexion.

  “Welcome back, Adora.” Azar reached for my hand. I wanted to jerk away but the gentle touch of his skin against mine was a well-needed comfort.

  “How- How long was I out?” Time has been nothing but a blur behind my shut eyes. It feels like an eternity went by while I was under.

  “A fortnight.” He said simply.

  “What?!” I shout. I had been stuck in sleep for that long? For nearly half a month? Gods...What happened? I clenched my fingers. I hissed at the burns in my palms. My back ached. Pain was all over my body. My arms. My hand. Blistered burns.

  I looked for Yvette’s tall stance but where I expected her was not towering over me. NO, she was on the wooden floor, kneeling with her head pressed to the floor.

  “Mei’aadya.” I swallowed hard.

  “Azar.” I looked at him in disbelief. But he quickly followed the healer’s suit.

  “Mei’aadya.” That word rang through me in a cascade of fear and shock. I had read about it. Azar told me stories of them. Those blessed by the gods. I believed them to be nothing but fables of the hopeless. The unfaithful. The ones the gods did
n’t give a gift—Fallen. But no. I was worse off. Now, I wish I had fallen. The gods did not give me a gift. They cursed me with their burden, their cruel pawn, their choice.

  “Benivadth, Mei’aadya.” Welcome, Flame of Mine.

  Chapter 4: Ariene

  I swallow, hard. Staring longingly at my reflection in the cracks of the mirror in front of me all I saw was a pitiful girl in a dress I had been given that Mother saw fit for

  “A girl of your size.” Even in my head her words hurt more than the bruised skin around my throat. My fingers trail over the purpling skin. I hiss at the sharp pain that sings behind my eyes. I move on to some other part of my body.

  Palms running over my waist. I cringe at the way I slope over my own body. Rolling hills. Rolling hips. My heart wrenches through me. Warmth spills over my face and it’s not the sunlight that beams through my window, but the tears I’ve cried a million times before.

  Imperfect. Wide. Private. Lumpy.

  A knock rattles me back to the world. I wipe away the tears and refit the dress the best I could to hide myself.

  “Come in.” I say, wiping away the remnants of my wet cheek. The door clicks open, Eren stepping in.

  “Hello, my beautiful sister.” Liar.

  I fake a smile. “And the bride to has arrived.” I scan her. Following the fall of her dress into the poof of the golden skirt that bells around her legs.

  “Mother said this was too much?” She’s asking me. I shake my head. The only reason she’s here is for pity. For me to call her beautiful. I want to say no, but who am I not to indulge her?

  “Marcellus would be a fool not to bed you.” Her mouth falls agape. She charges over, removing her glove before hitting me. It’s meant to be playful, but I flinch. See Mother in her eyes. I would be lying if I said they weren’t the spitting image of one another. Perfection. Beautiful. Pure. Clean.

  She stops. Seeing my face contorted in fear. Eren’s eyes fall to my neck. She takes my hand. Soft. Undamaged.