CHAPTER 82
BEATRICE'S POV
Fire has a language.
Most people think it only knows destruction, that it devours without thought and leaves behind nothing but soot and regret. They are wrong. Fire remembers. It reveals what people try hardest to bury. It strips away the decoration until only truth remains.
Tonight, truth is burning.
I push my car harder than I should along the deserted road, my fingers white around the steering wheel. The old map folded in the passenger seat has been memorized years ago, but I still carry it with me. Superstition, perhaps. Or guilt.
Probably both.
The call that warns me the archives have been compromised lasts less than ten seconds.
"They know," the voice says, and that is it.
Just enough to make my stomach sink.
By the time I reach the clearing, flam
