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I wanted to ask him how anything he ever did could be a bad idea, but my heart pounded so loudly and quickly I could feel it in the base of my skull. I couldn’t form words. His lips hovered so close to mine that I could feel the heat from them. He had stopped moving, stopped leaning toward me, his eyes once again locked on mine, something pensive in his gaze.
His gaze flicked from my eyes to my lips, lingering on the latter in a way that set my core on fire. I wanted him, and I wanted himnow.I took a deep breath and dipped my chin ever so slightly, afraid that if I moved, the moment would dissipate like mist over the harbor.
A smile split his lips, the dimples deep in his cheek as he pulled his hands from the wall, one palm finding my cheek and the other one finding my waist. “The best bad idea I’ve ever had.”
Before he could pull me to him, alarm bells snapped our heads to the street. People began running past the alleyway as shouts began to rise. We looked back at each other the same moment the sunlight that had been spilling into the alleyway turned to swirling shadows. Floating above our heads was a thick cloud of black smoke so dense that it blotted out the sun’s rays. “FIRE!” The word was screeched repeatedly by those running down the street.
We rose, silently joining in the crowd, following their movements. Cal’s hand rested on the hilt of his sword as we ran. What could cause this much smoke?
My heart lurched into my throat as I saw the crowd pivot left from the butcher’s shop, funneling down Copper Street.
My street.
Calomyr reached for my hand as we rounded the bend, a crowd so thick that the street ahead was obscured.
He drew his sword, his other hand still gripping mine. “Royal Guard!” he shouted, ramming his shoulders through bystanders. “Royal Guard! Clear out! Now!” He dragged me behind him, his hand the only thing keeping me standing. I kept my gaze on the dusty ground, sure that if I didn’t look, it wouldn’t be happening.
We finally broke through the crowd as the sound of my mother’s wailing and crackling embers hit my ears, the sound so familiar to me after the last few months that I almost didn’t register it. I couldn’t tell if her screams came from the house or somewhere in the crowd as our house burned. It was a blazing mass of red and orange and black, flames shooting from shattered windows, black smoke rising to the heavens.
Where the hell was she?Every ounce of my body ached as I considered the possibility of her still being inside, screaming for help, watching death creep in on her. “MA!” I screeched, dropping Calomyr’s hand and making a dead sprint for the house. He called out behind me, but his words were garbled by the terror that rattled through me. I heard bits and pieces of her screams, but the noise of the bystanders obscured them. Glass shattered. Planks fell. She was inside.
She was going to die. She was going to die.She was going to die.
The front steps had been charred but were still standing, the door wide open to the inferno inside. I leapt up the few feet to the opening, bracing myself against the suffocating heat, the smoke that choked me.
Her figure emerged through the kitchen, silhouetted by flames, her cries blood curdling. “COME ON!” I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow. She had pulled the hem of her shirt up to carry something. Maybe it was the grief, maybe it was the shock, but her movements were slow.Too slow.Cracking wood sounded from overhead and the entire house shook. She finally reached me just as Cal appeared in the flaming doorway. “Get her out of here!” I choked out, the smoke coating the back of my throat as my eyes watered.
I watched her figure lower into his arms as I moved back toward the door, toward the clean air.Almost there. Almost there. Almost th…
Darkness.
???
My name was being called from some far off place, like the voice that reached me was only an echo that bounced off the mountains and valleys and sky. The darkness was warm, molding to every dip and curve of me. The voice sounded again, a little louder this time. I wanted it to stop.
Let me rest. Please, let me rest now.
My skin was the night sky, the stars freckled across me, a map of everything that was and everything that had ever been and everything that was yearning to be. In this void I was free, I was powerful, I was whole. In this void I felt the Saints calling me home.
“Petra!” It was clear as day, pulling me closer to it. A man’s voice. I willed myself to sink back down, deep in the comfort of the darkness, into the arms of Katia. But my vision shook, my brain rattling in my head.
“Go,” a new voice whispered, soft and feminine. “You cannot stay here yet. Go.”
“She’s waking up!” I heard in a voice so rich it ran over my body like smooth velvet. The darkness faded to pewter, to white until an empty street yawned in front of me. The stars on my skin weren’t stars at all, but rain — pouring rain.
I gasped, the warmth and darkness pushed out as the suddenly overcast sky materialized in my vision and a deluge of fat raindrops kissed every inch of me.
And then he was there.
Cal stared down at me and I realized the darkness I thought cradled me wasn’t darkness at all but his arms under me, his knees propping me up as I lay in the running mud of Copper Street.
Dry.My throat was so, so dry. My eyes burned. My lungs ached. The only respite was the rain that poured down, drenching my skin and hair. “Hello,” Calomyr said quietly with a relieved smile, his dimples appearing cheeks streaked with soot and rain.
Before I had the chance to speak, my mother crouched on my other side, throwing her arms over me, her sobs shaking my body. “Petra!” she screamed over and over, her face buried in my neck. I met Cal’s eyes over her head, his gaze a steady mix of concern and relief and something darker, deeper. My Ma pulled back, grabbing my face, her hysterical words indecipherable. “Y-you inhaled so much s-smoke and y-you weren’t breathing,” she said through broken sobs. “I thought… I thought–”
“I’m sorry,” I rasped, the words scratching my throat. I nodded my head as much as I could, reassuring her that I was alive, that I was here. “I’m sorry you thought you’d lose me.” She threw her head into my neck again and I couldn’t tell if it was my tears or the rain pouring down my cheeks.
My mother peeled herself from me, Calomyr still holding me against him. I turned my head at the sound of footsteps to find Solise running up the muddy street, face creased with worry. “Saints,Petra!” She kneeled beside me, her fingers going to my wrist to check my pulse. “Are you hurt?”
