Page 17 of The Incendiary

My throat tightened. How vividly I remembered that feeling.

“I don’t remember my mother or littermates.” She sighed sadly. “I think I was dying, maybe, but one day I woke up tucked against a very large human’s chest, inside a warm jacket, and realized I might live. He told me you would be my new home and that I needed to protect you. He left me with an elderly woman who cared for me. She brought me to Damond, who brought me to you.”

Something hard bumped against my knee. Shera had dislodged a jar from my bag and rolled it close.

“He also told me not to let you stop eating. It’s been three hours since breakfast.”

I laughed and soaked up the reminder of how deeply I was cared for while trying not to wish he was here to nag me himself.

SIX

ARYELLA

Over four hundred years ago, you came into my blacksmith’s shop and demanded a blade. The dagger I gave you in Warrich is the same one. I kept it sharp for you.

When they go for your head, duck and strike lower.

—FROM THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA’S LAST KNOWN LETTERS TO QUEEN ARYELLA I

The next day, Shera and I stood in a cluster of cliffside redwoods overlooking our destination.

Elias Winterton’s barracks was a south-facing, mammoth wooden fortress tucked between the twin mountains Cyrus and Childir, named after two of the alleged children of Sussurro. It was only legend, since it was forbidden for gods to mate with humans. But Gemma once said in jest that Sussurro may have had so many offspring because he couldn’t stop his own wind power from carrying him from one whorehouse to another.

She’d also told me that when tensions were high in the Barracks, close quarters, high stakes, and the need to blow off steam made the fortress its own kind of whorehouse.

I wasn’t interested in that after what I’d felt kissing Gavin in Brinnea. Heat gathered in my clenching core at the memory of him touching me. How soaked he’d made me between my⁠—

“You won’t stand a chance in there if you can’t keep your skin from flushing every time you’re nervous,” Shera said, cutting off my thoughts. She sat beside me, licking her front right paw.

Nervous wasn’t how I’d describe what the memory of him did to me. I shot her a glare.

“Do you do anything other than groom yourself?” I asked. She was constantly licking her paw, her stomach, her rear. “It’s excessive.”

“Felines are superior when it comes to cleanliness.” Unbothered, she began to wash her ears. “Stop being distracted.”

I refocused on the fortress before me in obedience.

In his letters, Gavin theorized that the more my body realized its power, the more I’d be able to sense power. He was right. Months ago, I hadn’t felt the wards around Tovick or Brinnea, but I could feel the protective energy around the Barracks. Thankfully, Simeon’s wards were crafted to keep out dark, unnatural forces like Molochai’s corrupted shadows. The wards didn’t work against the power of the gods. It was why I’d been able to heal that little boy in Tovick, a warded city, and why, if Elias and his soldiers did try to kill the girl I was pretending to be, I’d be able to save myself.

But it was vital for my plan that my magic stayed secret. I didn’t want to use it to find my place. I needed to understand who and what I was fighting for, and I wanted to earn respect the same way they all did.

In his letters to me, he made me confident that I could.

You are instinct, he wrote. You are light and life and air and warmth. You are everything natural and inevitable. You are pure, breathtaking majesty.

Some of his letters he’d written before he came to me in Warrich, others during our travels to Brinnea. I emblazoned every one of his words in my memory.

“It’s a lot bigger than I expected,” I told Shera.

The walls were built from redwoods just like the ones around us, at least thirty feet high with spikes carved into the top of each log. Watchtowers broke the surrounding wall into sections, with more spikes protruding from the uppermost ridge of each roof.

The entire place was a living, breathing warning.

Do not enter.

But that was exactly what I wanted to do.

Early-morning mist impaired my view of the main entrance, but I saw the outline of a tall stone bridge connecting the fortress to level ground.