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“Mother,” I said, my own throat stupidly thick. I tried to shove my emotions into the box I usually kept them in, but they were misbehaving today.
“You must not look at anyone on the street, or any temple staff not involved in the ceremony. Until it is over, that is, and you are…”
“No longer your problem.” No longer alive threatened to squeak out of my clamped throat, but my voice failed and I couldn’t say it.
She cut flat eyes at me that warned of provoking her. “You are marrying a man capable of handling you. You will never be anyone’s problem again.”
I angled my chin to the side as if slapped. She always did have the best way of compiling sentences, stacking up words like perfect little hammer strokes to my wellbeing. Eighteen years of hammering me into the earth. Today, for her at least, would be the final nailing of the coffin.
The giving away of her quarter-mage daughter.
The room screamed memories at me: wrestling my brothers, completing schoolwork, sitting in front of the fire, wishing I had the guts to stick my hands into the flames and make the fire obey me.
So rare was my magic’s appearance that in eighteen long years, we had still never witnessed its true manifestation. All the full and half-mages would be graduating next year, and I’d be making babies for some fire lord who only needed a vehicle for his powerful children to enter the world. A vehicle that wouldn’t protest, as my mother assured me I was not to do.
I tugged my eyes from the worn lattice chairs by the window. Archer, with his incessant bouncing, had busted both seats so many times that we’d positioned the biggest books we owned across the frame rather than paying to repair the lattice again. The emptiness of the chairs struck me as a solemn thing, almost like a pair of gravestones. No more evenings crammed beside my younger brother, finishing lessons until the light of day faded into starlight.
Danny, who’d always had to sit on the floor, would take my place in the chair on the right. That was good. But it still hurt.
In a final, desperate attempt to save my own life, I walked over to the burning candles and stretched my palm out over a flickering flame.
“Vera, what are you doing?” my mother snapped.
“I’m not a fire mage, no matter how convenient that would be for you.” And for me.
Her eyes danced between my hand and my face.
My skin smarted from the heat. I jerked my hand away. “See? The fire burns me too.”
Being able to light candles from across a room was not evidence that I was a burner—the other term for fire mages. Every affinity had a title, like architect or burner or, in the case of mind mages, meddler—though I was fairly certain they’d gone by a different name before the war. Some people went as far as calling mind mages vampires, as they fed on the minds of other people. I’d been teased with enough vampire jokes at school to heartily prefer the term meddler to anything else. Though I’d never once shown any signs of having the affinity for mind magic, that was the only other type of magic in my heritage, and mages could only manifest one kind of magic.
“Curse the king’s canaries, Vera,” she hissed. “Your grandfather was a fire mage. It is in your blood. We’re not going through this again. A wealthy man has agreed to marry you, which is more than we could have ever wished for.”
“It’s exactly what you’ve always wished for.” I kept wide, unfeeling eyes on her. My blood was certainly more my maternal grandmother’s than my mother’s or even my father’s, as evidenced by my dark hair, rounded nose, deep set eyes, and stork legs. My mother took after her father, the fire mage, in all but magic. Stocky, blonde, and sharp as icicles.
“And he knows what Nan was, doesn’t he? You promised you would tell him.”
My mother, her long hair piled on top of her head, turned toward the door to our cottage. “We are leaving.”
“You didn’t tell him.”
“It won’t matter once you’re married.” She shrugged and pulled on a traveling cloak from the peg by the back door. Her cloak had been scrubbed of all stains, at least the removable ones. She looked presentable, if a little worn around the eyes, as she sighed and reached for the door.
It was the law to divulge all magical heritage to one’s betrothed. Before the wedding. But in our case, we’d hung every hope on the fact that affinity would turn out to be fire magic. If we were wrong, I’d be dead anyway.
She yanked open the door and stepped into the bright sunlight. Outside, my brothers’ voices launched into so many questions at once that I couldn’t catch a single one.
A wave of panic swept over me. Dead. Burned. Finished. Like punches from my brother, the thoughts pelted my mind. My hand still stung from where I’d held it over the fire a moment ago. I stared at the flame across the room, anger blazing in my chest. Stand still, I commanded it silently.
The flame reached higher, freezing for a single heartbeat. I gasped, but the flame went back to flickering merrily.
Archer popped his head in the doorway, his long hair swishing past his face. “You are finally ready? What were you doing in here so long?”
“Putting on a lace wedding dress.” I lifted my arms and the cloak parted slightly. “I hooked my thumbs in the silly sleeves six times.” I attempted to put out the candles with another silent command, but nothing happened. I marched to the candles and blew them out.
He quirked an eyebrow and stumbled forward into the room. “You’re really leaving us.”
My arms fell back to my sides. Tears immediately welled up. I wanted to quash them, but they dumped over my cheeks and poured off my chin.
