“Don’t forget we have Gilded training,” Bleek reminded her as the floor began to tremble, then started moving down…or the blackened walls were moving up, Lory wasn’t quite certain, the opening in the wall becoming smaller and smaller—until they were trapped in a doorless, windowless room too small to breathe. Lory’s heart raced in her chest, her muscles tensing as her body readied to fight, to run, to do anything but wait and watch the way her chance at ever escaping this limited space disappeared. Her fire surged to the surface, a flicker of it threatening to escape.
“Breathe,” Khayrivven said, his arm brushing hers as he shifted his weight, and her flames fell back into slumber. “We’ll be down in a minute.”
When Lory inhaled, the pungent odor of blood filled her nose, and she wondered if she’d been too much in shock to notice it before.
“What do you mean,down?” The floor was still trembling, the walls still moving. “What is this room?”
Khayrivven’s fingers touched hers in that casual way that didn’t give away if it was intentional. “They call it an elevator. Ashthorn has three of them: one that leads from the ice pit to the kitchens, this one, and one at the core of the pyramid that takes you all the way to the top.”
Lory tried not to think of the dead bodies behind her. “Practical.” Her voice came out rough—hoarse.
For a long moment, Khayrivven remained silent. When he spoke again, the elevator rattled and seemed to slow, a growing gap opening above the floor, where the other gap had vanished. “We’re here.”
He didn’t wait for her to take in the large space enclosed by dark stone walls illuminated by torches, as was most of the pyramid’s interior. With two paces, he was out of the elevator, turning and pulling on the front of the cart.
“A little help,” he prompted, pausing to let Lory unfreeze and grab the second handle at the front of the cart.
With all her might, she tugged on it, Khayrivven doing the majority of the work as they moved the cart forward on creaking wheels.
The smell of rot and ashes bit Lory’s nose, making her wish for that of blood as she noticed the gigantic metal barrel at the center of the room. It was as tall as the ceiling and radiating heat.
“What is this place?” Sweat formed on Lory’s forehead as they pulled the cart a few feet closer to the barrel.
Khayrivven whipped his eyes toward her, the mask on his face splintering as they locked on hers. “Crematorium.”
Lory needed to force herself to turn away in order to take in the metal container intended to burn the four ashlings on the cart. A thin line ran in a rectangular shape along the front of the barrel. Right beside it, Lory noticed a wooden crate filled with unidentifiable black items.
When bile rose in her throat this time, she couldn’t hold it back. With a splatter, what little water she had drunk this morning landed on the dusty floor. Only, this wasn’t dust. She squatted on the smooth rock, running her fingertip through the fine layer of gray beside the puddle of her vomit and holding it up in front of her face.
“Ash.”
Coming to her side, Khayrivven dipped his chin, studying her from above.
“Theyburnthe corpses?”
A bitterness entered Khayrivven’s expression as he shook his head in answer, black waves dancing on his forehead, and Lory could have sworn his throat was working not from thedryness and stench in the air, but from the emotions battling in his eyes.
“They don’t,” he eventually said. “I do.” With more force than was necessary, he turned on his heels and started pulling the cart closer to the cremator.
Lory remained on the floor, swallowing the cold deadness threatening to smother her as she watched Khayrivven place the cart in front of the cremator, his movements defined by a dreadful routine she wouldn’t wish upon her worst enemies.
“When I first came here”—he glanced at her over his shoulder, worry pinching his brows together—“the Triad had me kill two Ashlings to prove my loyalty before sending me down here to throw their bodies into the cremator. It was their punishment for what I am and where I hail from.” With a practiced hand, he traced the near-invisible lines on the metal. It opened with a click, revealing a space large enough to place four large or five smaller bodies. Flecks of ash burst into the room like a flock of tiny birds telling tales of lives lost and people forgotten by this place, stealing the air in the room.
“For a long time, I accepted it as punishment,” Khayrivven said, his satin voice low, devoid of the fire Lory knew lived inside of him. “I quarreled with my fate every single day, questioning the Guardians for their cruelty and begging them to get me out of here, to get Elina out of Ulder’s palace so we could flee this cursed city and leave it behind us. Perhaps leave the entire continent behind us.” He paused, considering the cart, the task that lay ahead. “Then I learnedabout Ashthorn’s early history, that Flame-born like us once lived here—helped build the pyramids that today host the palace and the academy. The eternal fire burning in the torches on the walls is enchanted, magic created by my own kind. Perhaps even my ancestors.”
Lory didn’t dare move for fear he would stop talking. She could count on one hand the times he’d shared his feelings openly, and she’d give nothing other than her full attention, let him speak, even when her heart was breaking for him all over again at the cruelties he revealed had been done to him.
Over his shoulder, Khayrivven’s gaze found hers. “The Flames have always sent their dead off through fire. If I cannot prevent these ashlings’ deaths, I can at least honor them by putting them to rest in the loving embrace of a fire I created.”
With both hands, he grabbed the first body, pulling it off the cart with ease and heaving it into the open cremator. The sound of flesh sliding over metal made the hair stand on Lory’s neck, but she didn’t dare make a sound, watching instead how Khayrivven pulled off the young man’s boots and dropped them into the crate next to the cremator. Without a break, he picked up the next body, placing it beside the first, pulling off the boots and dropping them in the crate.
By the time he made it to the two girls, Lory got to her feet, crossing the room, ignoring the stinging in her eyes as she walked through the settling particles like through a rain of tiny gray feathers. Her throat tickled from inhaling them, and nausea rolled in her stomach once more, but she joined Khayrivven anyway, taking Narica’s legs and helping himslide her into the cremator. Together they lifted the fourth body into the cremator, Lory’s chest tight as she wiped the blood from her hands on her shirt. When Khayrivven took off one of the girls’ boots, Lory slid off the other’s black leather boots, carrying them to the crate and placing them on the growing pile.
Behind her, Khayrivven reached into the opening, taking Narica’s hands and folding them above her chest in a peaceful posture like she was praying. He repeated the motion three more times, then stood there with his eyes closed and his hand in front of him, palm open as if waiting for someone to place something in it.
When he opened them again, a small flame sprang to life between his fingers, not the raging beast Lory’s fire had been in the mountains, but a controlled, gentle, orange-gold tongue, awaiting his command.
“May Eroth welcome you behind his Veil,” he said, lowering his hand and setting the flame down in the cremator like it was a precious item he could detach from his body and place anywhere he wanted for safekeeping rather than a deadly power that would consume anything in its path.
