Chapter Two
1105 Words
Grace
The cart took two days to climb out of the basin.
I had never been so high in my life. Lowburn sat in the choking bottom of the Caldera, but the road to the Emberhold wound up and up through black rock and cold mist, until the air turned thin and sharp and smelled of pine and snow.
There were eleven of us in the cart. No one spoke much. A boy younger than me cried quietly for the first day, then went silent. An old woman muttered prayers to the Moon Goddess under her breath. I just watched the road and held the moonstone through my shirt, feeling its strange, faint warmth against my chest.
That was the first sign something was wrong with me.
The pendant had been cold when Sorrel gave it to me. But the closer we climbed to the Emberhold, the warmer it grew. And it wasn't only the stone. Something inside me was waking up too.
Vesper.
For the first time in eighteen years, I felt her move.
It started as a flutter, like a moth trapped behind my ribs. Then it grew. By the second night, she was pacing. Restless. Pressing against the old binding magic that had kept her asleep my whole life. I pressed my hand to my chest and whispered for her to stop, but she only paced harder, as if she could smell something I couldn't.
What is it? I asked her silently. What's gotten into you?
She didn't answer. She never had words. But the feeling pouring off her was so strong it made my hands shake.
It felt like longing.
On the morning of the third day, the mist parted, and I saw it.
The Emberhold.
It rose out of the mountain like a thing that had grown there. Black stone walls, taller than anything I had ever seen, streaked with veins of glowing orange where the molten heart of the volcano ran close to the surface. Towers clawed at the grey sky. At the very top of the highest tower, a great fire burned, never going out. They said that flame had burned for a thousand years, fed by the blood of the Ashborne line.
The cart rolled through a gate big enough to swallow my entire town, and the doors boomed shut behind us.
We were herded into a stone yard and lined up. A tall woman in a grey gown walked down the row, looking each of us over the way a butcher looks at meat. She was the Keeper of Hands, she told us, in a voice like a slammed door. We would serve. We would obey. We would not speak unless spoken to, would not look the highborn in the eye, and would never, under any circumstance, set foot in the western tower.
"And tonight," she said, "is the Veiling."
A ripple went through the line. Even I had heard of the Veiling, all the way down in Lowburn. It was the rite. The night the three Ashborne brothers searched the noble daughters for their Keystone.
"You will serve at the rite," the Keeper went on. "You will pour wine, carry trays, and keep your eyes on the floor. The Emberlight is sacred. If even one drop of it touches a Cinder, you will be put to death. Do you understand?"
We nodded. What else could we do?
They put me in a scratchy grey servant's dress and pinned my hair back. I hid the moonstone in the lining of my sleeve, close enough to feel it, hidden enough to keep it safe. All the while, Vesper would not settle. She was howling now, deep in my chest, a sound only I could feel. It made my skin burn and my head swim.
Please, I begged her. Not tonight. Not here. If they sense you, they'll know who I am.
She didn't listen.
The Veiling was held in the great hall, and the great hall took my breath away. The ceiling rose so high it vanished into shadow. Pillars of black stone marched down each side, and between them stood hundreds of noble daughters in gowns of silk and jewels, each one hoping tonight would be the night she became the savior of the realm.
And in the center of it all burned the Emberlight.
It rose from a deep pit in the floor, a column of pure white-gold fire that didn't crackle or roar like normal flame. It hummed. It breathed. Looking at it made my teeth ache and my bones sing. This was the sacred fire that revealed the bond. One by one, the noble girls would step close to it, and the three brothers would watch to see if the fire reached for any of them.
I kept to the edges with the other servants, tray in hand, eyes down. Pour the wine. Stay invisible. Find Wrenna. Don't get killed. That was the whole plan.
Then I saw them.
The three brothers sat on a raised stone dais above the fire. I shouldn't have looked. The Keeper had told us not to look. But Vesper threw herself against my ribs so hard I gasped, and my eyes snapped up before I could stop them.
Three men. All dark-haired, all carved from the same cold, beautiful stone. The one on the left lounged like a wolf about to pounce, a sharp grin on his face. The one on the right sat still and watchful, soft-eyed but somehow the most dangerous of the three.
And the one in the center.
He was the worst of them, and the best. Broad shoulders, a jaw like an axe blade, and eyes the color of a storm about to break. He sat like the whole world belonged to him and bored him at the same time. Even from across the hall, I could feel the weight of him, like a hand pressing down on my chest.
The Emberlight flickered.
It shouldn't have. The fire only moved for the candidates, and no candidate stood near it. But it bent, all at once, like a thousand fingers of flame reaching across the hall.
Reaching toward me.
The whole room went silent. Every head turned. The Keeper of Hands stared at me with her mouth open in horror.
And up on the dais, all three Ashborne brothers slowly rose to their feet, their eyes locked on a Cinder servant trembling at the edge of the hall.
The fire surged.
And deep inside me, after eighteen years of silence, Vesper finally found her voice.
Mates, she howled. All three of them. Ours.
- Writer
