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It’s not the gods who free us but the fairy who must have bolted after burying us in flames.
The Crow slides off me in the fire-free hallway, and I turn my head to the side, wondering what Crow wouldn’t delight in my death.
Ephegos’s pained eyes stare back at me, and I realize his feathers have been singed all the way to his skin, leaving a pattern similar to a barren winter forest on his arms. Arms that look more human now that they are lacking the layers of silky black.
“By the Guardians—” I cough into the fading smoke and scramble to my knees, dropping the dagger as I try to figure out how to help him.
“It’s nothing,” Ephegos grits out, trying to push himself into a sitting position. But his arms are weak, and his breath is shallow as he asks, “Didn’t I tell you to stay in Myron’s room?”
I don’t have a chance to respond or to thank him for saving me, for he collapses in front of me, and a wall of flames surges up from the stairwell, and I finally know why I couldn’t see fire in the hallway to begin with: it was confined to the lower levels by whatever magic the attackers possess.
But now it is here, eating up the space and the bodies scattered along the stone.
I tug at Ephegos’s claws, urging him to wake up, to run with me, but he isn’t moving. Isn’t even breathing, and I have a moment to wonder if he is just one more Crow whose life was ended by the fairy attack. To wonder if Myron and Royad are among the fallen Crows, too. Then the fire rushes toward us like a tidal wave, eating up everything in its path, and there is nothing I can do but run.
The fire is fast. Faster than my human legs, the distance a few feet shorter each time I check over my shoulder. I’d like to run for the nearest window, for an unaffected stairwell, a nearby door. Basically, anywhere but back to Myron’s room. But it’s the only free path, and I really want to live.
I haven’t realized how much I want to live until the fire closes in, backing me farther and farther into what used to be the only safe space in this palace.
A glance at the table tells me there isn’t enough water in the jar, and there’s no vase or other source of water. The basin in the bathing room might be enough to wet my clothes and hair so they don’t immediately catch fire.
But if I’m honest, there is only one place in this room where I might not die by fire—I might drown though, and that is almost as horrible a prospect.
Almost.
Especially with the flames licking past the threshold.
It is enough to help me make my choice as I dart across the room, dagger forgotten and begging any deity who would listen to save me.
Only, there is no god interested in my survival. When I tear at the doorknob, it doesn’t budge, doesn’t move as much as an inch. Neither does the door.
“Come on, come on, come on.” I throw my full weight in—which isn’t remotely enough to level a solid wooden door—and hope for a miracle.
The flames have reached wooden panels along my side of the wall, but they are spreading toward Myron’s personal library—the only source of information that won’t bleed to death or suffocate when I ask questions—and I see red. My panic is overpowered by a surge of adrenaline, and as I throw my shoulder against the door once more, the wood gives, and it swings open, granting me entrance into the chamber of death.
But the stone room isn’t the only thing waiting for me. As if a creature of sentience, the water is climbing from its dark bed, sneaking toward me in tendrils of crystal liquid. My throat closes up as if I’m drowning, but the water isn’t coming for me. As if sensing my rage, it grows taller and taller until it forms a wall behind me that equals the flames in both its fearsomeness and its power.
I ready myself to be eaten up by it as it lashes out.
Not a droplet hits my skin as it parts like a curtain, washing around me and filing through the door into the bedroom where it puts out the fire in a life-taking embrace. Spellbound, I watch as the smoke turns into steam and the steam turns into rain and the rain falls back into the puddles collecting on the hardwood floor. Larger and larger they grow until they marry into one mirror-like surface that covers everything between the burnt wood at the other end of the room and the toes of my boots.
Something at the back of my mind tells me to run, but I don’t have another step in me, my abused lungs worn out, my heart near exertion, and my limbs shaking as I wonder if that’s the price of the Guardians’ mercy, if I’ll pay with my own life after all and running has been in vain.
Then the sound of footsteps splashing through the water draws my attention, and my eyes snap to the dark shape tearing through the spilled lake.
It’s the last thing I see before the world turns to night.
* * *
My eyes barely open when the rustling of feathers wakes me what could be minutes or days later. I assume it’s minutes since my bladder isn’t killing me this time. The room is dark except for a low-hanging fairy light hovering near the couch where my head is propped up on a pillow and my legs draped over the armrest.
“Good morning.” Myron greets me with a half-distressed, half-gentle tone as I peel my eyes open and tip my head up until I find him sitting behind me, one wing draped over the backrest so the feathers fall over the edge and out of view, save for the outline of his long, muscled arm.
The sight brings back images of Ephegos’s singed feathers and the way he threw himself into harm’s way to protect me from the onslaught of flames—how I left him behind—and shame fills me top to bottom before I can even wonder what happened to him.
It’s really nothing to wonder about; he sacrificed himself to save me.
Ice slides down my back, and I shudder even in the toasty warm room, which I recognize as Myron’s bedroom.
