A Spark of White Fire

  I couldn’t bear it. Without Rickard, my tenuous link to Kali and my family was gone. Without Rickard, Rickard was gone.

  I was convinced, utterly convinced, that home and love and family would only be possible for me if I was better than I was—less me, more Alexi. My lessons were the only way I knew how to chart a path across the stars back to my family.

  And so I did the unforgivable. After everything Rickard gave me, I repaid him with a lie.

  I waited until Amba said she’d be spending some time on Anga, the celestial planet where she rules the great beasts and forges the gods’ divine weapons. Time passes differently there, and what was only weeks there could be months in our time. Once she was gone, I contacted Rickard over one of Rama’s tech screens. I told him I had pleaded with Amba and she had relented. She had released him from his promise to her.

  He didn’t doubt me. Rickard never lied, and he believed his students never would either. Certainly not to him.

  Amba was gone almost three years, an unprecedented absence. I got three more years with Rickard.

  Then came the day it all went up in flames.

  I went to see him without the slightest expectation of what was to come. He looked at me, so calm and steady. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Esmae?”

  Perhaps he would have been less harsh if I had confessed.

  I shook my head and I watched as his eyes turned to fire. “You tricked me into breaking my word. Amba is a war goddess and I am a warrior. I owe her loyalty, I owe her truth. You made me break my promise. You lied to me. Not once, not twice, but every day I’ve laid eyes on you for the past three years.”

  His voice rumbled like thunder and I shivered all the way down to my bones as I felt the crack of a curse. And then I remembered the old saying: The gods’ favorites can wreak havoc with just a handful of words.

  “You stole knowledge you weren’t entitled to, so when you need it most, that knowledge will fail you. When you are at your most helpless, you will forget every lesson I ever gave you.”

  I told him how sorry I was. I begged him to take it back.

  As he left Wychstar for good, Rickard looked back at me one last time. “I understand why you did it, Esmae. I understand it was not out of malice or greed. You will always have a place in my heart.”

  And he’s always had a place in mine.

  “That day you won Titania wasn’t the day the curse came to pass,” Max says. His eyes are kind. “That would have been an ideal time for the curse to take effect.”

  I shake my head. “It must not have been the time of my greatest need.”

  “So then it’s still to come.”

  A duel. A broken arrow. Blood on the grass. “I suppose so.”

  “I can’t believe he did that,” Max says. He can’t reconcile the Rickard who cursed me with the one he’s known all his life.

  “He loves us,” I explain. “And that’s as irrefutable as the existence of the sun. But so is the fact that he’ll never break his word. His promises will always come first.”

  There’s not much either of us can say after that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’m halfway to the seamstress on an errand for the queen when an asteroid hits the shields and the elevator comes to an emergency halt. The floor trembles, but I keep my balance.

  The elevator opens at the floor where it stopped; it won’t go any farther until the rock assault has passed. I’ll take the stairs.

  The hallways here are quiet, lined with stone and wood. It’s a part of the palace I haven’t been to before, up in one of the sharp spiky towers, and I don’t know where to look for exits and stairways. My feet clatter across the floor, noisy and lonely in the silence. I search the hallways until I come to a door that must have been slammed open in the rock assault.

  I stop in the doorway. It’s a simple room, warm and woody. Bookshelves line all the walls, loose sketches are scattered on a desk, and I spot a worn, tattered armchair. A long worktable stretches out beside one of the windows. The furniture is bolted to the floor or to the walls, but a number of objects have tumbled to the ground—birds and miniatures of starships and a bow with no arrows. Except, when I look closer, I see that these models are more than they first appear. The birds have been sculpted out of feathers and buttons; the starships have been built from twigs; and the bow is thorny twine that would cut you if you touched it.

  It’s at once beautiful and terrible, lovely and brutal. There’s quiet fury and loneliness in this room, as real as if it were flesh and blood.

  So I’m not entirely surprised to see that the person in the middle of the room, picking objects up off the floor, is Max.

  Beautiful. Terrible. Furious. Lonely. Words I wouldn’t have expected I’d ever use to describe him, and yet they fit.

  “Are you lost?” he asks.

  “A little.”

  I don’t ask him for directions, and he doesn’t offer any. A miniature of Titania is on a table close by, a patchwork of scrap metal fused together into her distinctive arrowhead shape. I want to touch it, to touch everything, but I resist. It doesn’t feel right. It would be as though I’d put my fingers all over his soul.

  “Why are you shut up here in a tower like a gargoyle?” I ask. “Don’t you have a study downstairs near your father’s?”

  “That study is for Max Rey, Crown Prince of Kali, commander of the Hundred and One, secondary ruler of the realm. This is where I come when I don’t want to be that version of myself anymore.”

  I look at him in surprise. He looks surprised, too, like he didn’t expect to admit that to me.

  “These things you make are beautiful,” I say, changing the subject quickly. “Why have I never seen any of it before?”

  “I don’t show them off. Most people don’t know I make them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not approved of.”

  At first, I think he means he feels like he has to hide the rage, the loneliness, but then I realize he means the actual literal act of making objects out of scraps.

  “What possible reason could the king and queen have to not approve of your work? Wych folk would call you a genius if they could see this.”

  He looks amused. “Is that so? The people of Wychstar would call the thief prince a genius?”

  “Well, perhaps not you specifically. You’re not very popular there.”

  He lets out a sharp, thorny laugh.

  I look again at the model of Titania, scraps of metal layered like armor, like there’s something precious inside that needs to be protected. “There’s an awful sort of beauty here,” I tell him, more honestly than I intended. “It makes me wonder what it is that goes on in your mind.”

  He’s silent for a minute, then says, so quietly I almost miss it, “I’m tired. It’s that simple.”

  “None of this says tired to me.”

  “I’m not the kind of son my parents wanted, as I’m sure you must have realized by now.”

  “So? You don’t have to be something you’re not just for them.”

  “You should have seen their faces when I first spoke with them after the competition. Mother tried the whole You did your best, Max thing, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice. Father didn’t even try to hide his.” Max makes a sound in this throat. “I’m not a child anymore. You’d think I would be able to just not care that I’ll never be what they want. The problem is, I do.”

  My teeth snap together. “You spend too much time breaking yourself for your parents’ sake.”

  “They’re all I have left.” His eyes are dark and faraway. “I’m not what they need me to be, but still I try to get as close to it as I can. And I know you understand that, Esmae, because you gave up years of your life just to prove yourself worthy—”

  I take an involuntary step back. “That’s not true.”

  “What’s not true?”

  “That I gave up years of my life. I didn’t give up that time. I loved those years wit
h Rickard—”

  “I know that. It still doesn’t mean it’s how you would have chosen to spend your time if you had been allowed to live your life as Alexa Rey.”

  “How do you know what I would have done with my time?”

  “It’s an assumption. You don’t seem to enjoy battle much. You spend more time in the library than in the simulation rooms or out on the training fields with the Hundred and One.”

  My mouth feels dry, my heart squeezed inside a fist. The look in his eyes is unbearable, so I look away. “Your assumption isn’t incorrect. I loved my lessons with Rickard, but I didn’t enjoy battle. My heart wanted the games and theory, not the blood and glory. Rickard, the perfect warrior, would talk about how he hoped he would die with honor in battle instead of peacefully in his bed. I was a pitiful excuse for a Kalian and hoped for the opposite.” I risk a glance at Max and see that there’s a smile in his eyes. “I loved the books better than the swordplay. I wanted to see the stars, not fight battles across them.”

  My voice fades into silence. I can’t believe I admitted all of that to him. Him, of all people.

  “We’re not so different,” says Max, an echo of the first time he said that to me. “We’ve both done whatever we had to for the sake of our families.”

  “Yes, I suppose we have.”

  It’s a raw, naked moment. And then, just when I think I have to leave before the electric energy in the room becomes too much to bear, there’s a rumble in the distance like thunder, and the room tips. Books rattle on the shelves. I retreat to a spot on the floor, up against the wall, and wait out the tremors.

  Max has done the same across the room, his eyes fixed on the window. I can see the nebula reflected in his eyes.

  “What will you do if this impasse turns into open war?” he asks me unexpectedly.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You’re not here to fight for Father, Esmae.”

  So dangerous. How much has he guessed? Does he know about the pages and pages of cyphered secrets in a little blue notebook that I’ve hidden away? Does he know I plan to hand them over to Alexi as soon as I have a chance?

  “I suppose not,” I admit. Give a little of the truth to hide the lie. “I don’t want to fight at all.”

  He nods. “Neither do I.”

  “Maybe you should try to persuade your father to give up the throne,” I suggest, keeping my tone light like a joke. “It would solve the war problem.”

  “He won’t give it up. He’s wanted this all his life. He didn’t feel like he was worthy of respect until the day he wore that crown. I can’t take that from him.”

  “And Alexi won’t let it go either, I assume?”

  Max is silent for a minute or two, as though he isn’t sure how much to say. “Alex’s greatest pride is in his identity as a warrior. He believes his talent and his honor define him. He has too much pride and love for this kingdom to let it go.”

  I nod. “So neither side will back down.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  Not at the moment is a ray of hope. It tells me carnage isn’t the only possible way this will all end. I’m supposed to be that other way, I remind myself. I need to find Alexi the means to win his crown so easily that there won’t be any more bloodshed.

  “If there is a war,” Max says, “you could still remain apart from it. You could stay here or go back to Rama on Wychstar until it’s over.”

  “If there’s a war over Kali, my home, do you really think I could just stay out of it?”

  “For your own sake, I wish you would.”

  I almost smile. “Then make it easy for me. Don’t let it get that far.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Another rumble like thunder and more vibrations in the walls. I pick up a book that’s fallen off its shelf and run my thumb over the embossed text on its cover—a copy of The Gods’ Codex, a history of the major gods.

  “When I was ten or eleven,” I say, still tracing the letters of the book’s title, “Amba told me the story of her birth.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Max look up in surprise. “And what was this story?” he asks, but his tone is careful, unsure.

  “The god Ness was a wind god, a force of nature, capricious and cruel. Many centuries ago, he was told that one of his children would kill him one day. He wasn’t too concerned about this prophecy at first; gods mate with stars all the time, and only very rarely are new gods born out of those stars.”

  Max smiles slightly. “But then a god was born after all?”

  “Yes. The sun god Suya. Angry and determined to circumvent the future that had been foretold for him, Ness went after the godling, who was just a few days old at the time and had not even fully taken his true celestial form. Ness swallowed him to prevent him ever growing up, so he could not kill him.” I trace the letters, over and over, again and again. “After Suya came Valin, a god of wisdom and choices, and then came Kirrin, god of tricks—”

  “—and bargains,” Max reminds me.

  “Yes. Apparently, he doesn’t like it when people forget that part. And after Kirrin came Thea, a goddess of hearth and home, and after her came Tyre, a god of justice. One by one, Ness swallowed them all and grew more confident, more smug, certain he had defeated his prophesied future.” I glance up at Max. “And then Amba was born.”

  “The child who rose up.”

  “A war goddess. Fitting, really. She would have been swallowed up, too, had it not been for the great beast that happened to pass by the star from which she was born.” Majestic, glorious, the great beasts are all but gone from the world—the last few live only on Anga. Once, they were everywhere, dragon-like and powerful, and they could fly across space just like ships, gods, and demons. “The beast took pity on the new godling and hid her under one of her wings. Then she devoured the star that Amba was born from. When Ness came, the great beast lied and said she had swallowed the star before Amba had even come out of it. Ness left without suspicion, and the great beast flew back to Anga to raise Amba in secret.”

  “And the war goddess told you all this?” Max asks curiously, his eyes alight with fascination. “I know The Gods’ Codex chronicles part of the story, but some of those details must be hers. It’s a very private story to tell a mortal.”

  “She knew I liked stories.” I suppose I’m so accustomed to Amba flitting in and out of my life that I sometimes forget it’s unusual for a mortal to see so much of a goddess. I think she cares about me, but I can never be sure. Maybe she feels responsible because of her role in my mother’s past. Maybe I just entertain her.

  Max asks, “What happened next?”

  “Amba grew into her godhood in the care of the great beast who told her the story of her father and her devoured brothers and sister. Taking heart in the fact that Ness swallowed his children instead of murdering them, Amba decided there was a chance that they were still alive and resolved that she would save them. When she was grown, she faced off against her father, and she won. She split him open with an arrow from a divine bow she had forged herself—the Black Bow.” My bow. “When Ness died, his godling children tumbled out of him. Suya, Valin, Kirrin, Thea, and Tyre, all of them, still alive, still unformed. And Amba, who had been born last, was now the oldest. The others grew into their godhoods in turn and—” I shrug, somewhat at a loss because the story doesn’t really have an ending. “And all was well, I suppose? The end?”

  “Creative.”

  I flash him a smile, but it doesn’t last. “I told you that story because I wonder about Ness. If he’d left his children alone, if he’d ignored that vision of his future, would they have ever had reason to rise up against him? Would that future have been avoided?”

  “Maybe,” Max says, “or maybe one of his children would have found a different reason to kill him somewhere else down the line.”

  I try not to show how important this is to me. “So you don’t think it’s possible for such a vision to be averted?”

&n
bsp; “Is this about your mother?” he asks gently. “You wonder what would have happened if she’d ignored Grandmother’s curse and kept you?”

  I can’t tell him that it’s about something else entirely, a future in which I bleed to death because my brother has chosen to kill me. And so I lie. “Yes.”

  Max sighs. “I don’t believe things like that can be averted forever, Esmae. I think the what is already in place, and we just control the how.”

  I swallow. Am I really so crazy to believe I can prevent my own terrible future?

  It’s gone quiet outside. Max stands. I do, too, then take a step back in the direction of the door. “I should go.”

  “Will you come back?” He isn’t looking at me. I get the impression that it wasn’t an easy question to ask.

  I give the model of Titania another wistful look, then turn away before I find the urge to touch it irresistible. “I’d like that.”

  “Why don’t you just pick up the model? I don’t mind.”

  “I don’t dare.”

  “Why not?”

  My cheeks redden. “Do you remember when the archaeologists on Sting found the fossil of one of the great beasts? Rama’s tutor took us to see it.” I can still picture the old bones, white and stained with dirt. “There were dozens of people there and they all touched the bones. I could see the smudges of their hands and their fingerprints. I wanted to touch the fossils, too, but I wouldn’t let myself. They were beautiful and raw, still partly buried in the dirt, and I was sure I’d ruin them if my fingertips so much as brushed them.”

  Max regards me silently for a moment, and then he crosses the room and puts the model of Titania in my hand. “Take it,” he says.

  “But—”

  He closes my fingers over the metal. “Get your fingerprints all over it.” His eyes meet mine. “Otherwise, it’s just another fossil in the dark, waiting for someone to find it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  My hands are clenched together. Titania grumbles about the trauma of being forced to fly in the rain. We’re about to land in Blackforest, the capital city of Winter.