Five of her father’s men were with her. After readying her horse and escorting her through the gate, Hadrian had gone back inside to speak to her father. Seconds ticked by and the sun climbed higher, turning the bleak landscape into an ocean of sparkling ice.
It wasn’t until she caught sight of Hadrian heading toward them, a lone phantom in the morning mist, that Avalon realized the king wouldn’t bother coming to see his daughter off. Clearly, he had more important things to do. She couldn’t help but wonder, if she hadn’t confronted him this morning, if things might’ve turned out differently.
Hadrian’s eyes were apologetic as he swung himself up into his saddle. With a glance her way, he said, “Ready, Princess?”
Avalon gathered the reins into her gloved hands. “As I’ll ever be,” she muttered.
The captain adjusted the emerald brooch on his cloak, and then pulled up the hood for protection against the sharp chill in the air. He said a few words to their companions, and then they nudged their horses into a trot.
Avalon spared one last glance over her shoulder, at the sprawling house glittering beneath the rising sun. There was no telling if or when she would see this place again, this gem of glass and ice and long nights.
When she turned back around, she pulled up her hood, but not because of the cold. She pulled it up because she needed to hide, and because her father had disappointed her so many times that it was hard to keep pretending that it didn’t bother her. So, for the first time in many months, as they rode toward the frozen woods, she let a few tears slip.
No one—not even Hadrian—noticed.
~
The morning passed slowly as they rode.
The frosted forests stretched before them, an endless maze of snow-heavy pine trees and frozen brooks and blackberry thickets. The men in their company talked endlessly, mostly about the fine wine and even finer women waiting for them back in Hilsian. Avalon stayed silent the whole time. Her mind was elsewhere, for last night, while she tossed and turned in her rooms in the hours before finding the mask, another dream of the nameless Fey woman had crept into her mind.
In this dream, the girl was younger than Avalon had ever seen her. Six or seven years old, at the most. And in the dream, there was smoke; the taste of it had settled like ash upon her tongue.
Smoke from a fire that had burned a portion of the castle in the dream. A castle with solid gold pillars and vaulted ceilings decorated with watercolor paintings. Ornamental flower beds and intricate tapestries had scorched to ash.
And death…there was death in this one.
As they rode on, Avalon swore she could taste the smoke again as she remembered…
~
The little girl with the pointed ears, strawberry-blonde hair, and eyes of molten gold stood near the bedroom doors, staring in horror at the wreckage inside.
Everything had burned. What was left of the wallpaper was charred and curling, and the grand chandelier lay blackened and warped upon crumbling wood floors. Smoke undulated through the room like restless spirits, and ash floated from the ceiling. The stink of burning hair and sizzling flesh assaulted her nostrils.
This was exactly what her mother had worried herself sick over: the aftermath of an ancient power that could make the world tremble. The power of Hilandria herself—the Goddess of Fire, who’d birthed and blessed the Firefolk eons ago.
The girl was only trying to help. She’d heard her mother screaming, but before she reached her chambers, breathless and frightened, the rooms had gone up in flames, trapping her on the other side of the closed doors. The only way to reach her mother was if she managed to control the magic erupting in her core, but by the time she had managed to tame it, the screams had quieted—her mother’s, and those of the men inside the rooms with her.
Breathing in through her nose and out her mouth, she shuffled through the wreckage, stepping around the blistered corpses of the men who’d burned to death. She didn’t allow herself to look at them, at the faces mutated by the ruthless hands of fire.
Herfire. There was no one to blame but herself—no hands to blame but her own.
She found her mother’s body draped over the edge of the bed, the hand that bore her wedding ring grazing the floorboards, the white diamond shining like Elven glass. Although the entire room was scorched, her mother didn’t have a single burn mark on her. She was as youthful and lovely as always, for the fire had followed an invisible barrier protecting her from harm.
From several rooms away, the girl had shielded her mother from her magic, instead only burning those who’d harmed her.
Yet her mother had still died.
For a long time, the girl stared at her mother as ash fell from the ceiling in clumps, landing on her shoulders and in her hair. A numbness was settling over her, a lethal silence creeping through her mind until she felt and thought about nothing. The blood soaking her mother’s dress dribbled to the floor and seeped through the cracks in the wood.
The girl merely watched.
She stayed like that until they came to take her away. She didn’t put up a fight as they strapped iron shackles onto her wrists and shoved an iron helmet onto her head. It was so heavy that her chin sank to her collarbone—but not quite as heavy as her heart.
As soon as the iron garb was secured into place, the roaring, untamable magic inside her went silent, like a candle snuffed out by a thorough wind.
Rough hands shoved her through the corridors. Glimpses of gilded walls, white rose gardens, and blossoming apple trees snuck through the slits in the helmet, each sight a blessing she savored and would proudly carry with her into the afterlife. There were some things they simply couldn’t take away.
