Page 2 of By the Flames of Her Fury

“Careful,” I said, barely awake. “You can’t use your magic here.”

Something hit the wall. “Who said that?”

I peered through the hole leading to her cell and saw a figure outlined in the darkness. She was average height with light hair, but that was all I could make out. “On your left,” I responded. She spun to face the wall, everything above her chest still cloaked in shadows. “Lower,” I said.

She crouched to the floor, disappearing from view. The corner of my lip tugged upward. “Higher.”

“For Fate’s sake,” she muttered. “There’s nothing there!”

“Come closer.”

She made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat. “Sure, because I’m gonna listen to the invisible man in my cell.”

“I’m not invisible, and I’m not in your cell.” This girl. I poked a finger through the hole. “See?”

She went quiet. I removed my finger and put my face against the wall, taking a second to adjust as I stared ahead.

And she stared back.

My breath caught in my throat. Her eyes. I’d never seen anything like them. They were bright gold, even in the darkness, with flecks of amber and yellow beams threaded throughout. A vivid memory slammed into me, one I hadn’t thought of in years, and warmth slipped over me like a blanket. I was playing in the sand with my mother as the high tide rushed in, spraying seafoam on our faces. I looked up at Mother with a grin and caught the sun haloing her head in brilliant golden beams.

I remember. This was what the sun looked like.

It was her eyes.

“Hi,” she whispered. The simple word sank into me, settling among the bitterness and dulled edges this life had transformed me into.

I took a breath. “Hello.”

Part One: Spark

1

Vera

“We shouldn’t be here, Vera,” Captain Starke’s uneasy voice echoed behind me.

I brushed aside a tangled mess of seaweed hanging from the cave’s ceiling. “Never stopped me before,” I muttered.

The smell hit me first. Salt, rust, and that faint, coppery tang of decay clung to the damp caverns. My boots skimmed through shallow pools of seawater leaking in from the high tide.

Somewhere behind me, Starke sighed. “If the Twin Tides patrol finds us⁠—”

“We’ll tell them we’re lost.” I pushed off from the wall, reddish-brown dust rubbing against my palm. “Honestly, Starke, you worry too much.”

My tone was dry, but my pulse thudded. Every nerve was stretched taut, tuned to the distant echo of the tide rushing against the shore just beyond the tunnel entrance, the drip of condensation at our feet, the skittering of rodents along the path. Farther out in the Imarian Sea, the rest of Starke’s crew waited aboard the White Moonstone, ready to set sail at the first sign of trouble.

Starke wasn’t wrong. We didn’t exactly have permission to be sneaking around Twin Tides. But my motto was “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

“There’s nothing here, Vera,” Starke said. “I don’t see the point in⁠—”

“Because the rumors said he was here,” I shot back, then swallowed my sharp tone. I took a breath. “Sorry. I know you’re risking everything for me. Again. I just…” I trailed off, scratching absentmindedly at the scar on the inside of my forearm. “This could be different. I feel like it was really him this time.”

Starke’s features softened beneath his dark blond scruff. His blue eyes met mine, reading far deeper than I felt comfortable. He sighed again, then tied his shoulder-length blond hair back with a strap of leather, letting it rest at the nape of his neck. “Okay, V. Let’s keep looking.”

A spider scuttled across the wall by his shoulder, its body as large as my hand. Starke swore under his breath and jumped away. I snorted. “Fates, Starke. You’re the jumpiest pirate I’ve ever seen.”

“For the last time, I’m not a pirate.”