A Moonrise in the Fire, page 24
part #1 of An Element of Fire Series
“Water and Void might knock down part of this tower we’re in; it’s stone, after all, and Julius could fashion some steps out of them. If we get near the shore, then we can run to the lantern,” Saphira says. “Might be more power than we have, though…”
The three of us fix our sights between the columns of the wall-less tower, down to the black sandy shore. Several sentries at the far end of the beach stand guard around the small stone lantern. Our way back to A Thousand Shadows in the Garden of Lanterns. Tonight, the tide is higher. The amber moon is almost full, and the scorching waves of flame crash over rocks before retreating back into the vast ocean of fire.
“Maybe the king and Rian have come to their senses and will let us go?” Saphira says.
“We have a better chance of knocking down this tower,” Julius says dryly.
When we turn to enter the black moonstone-carved entryway before the Great Hall of King Infiero’s stronghold, Rian catches me by the arm from behind. “Talvi, can we talk? You two go on ahead. Julius, I hope you’ve considered my offer.”
With two fingers, he signals for Julius and Saphira to enter the banquet. Jules doesn’t reply.
Saphira throws me a meaningful look, silently asking if I need help. Julius folds his arms across his chest, glowering protectively. I feel for him. It must be painful for him also to see Rian like this.
“I’ll meet you in there.” I squeeze Phira’s hand to reassure her and nod at Julius as they turn away.
I square my jaw to face Rian, fully intending to confront him, but he speaks first.
“I’m really sorry—” he blurts.
I cut him off. “Why are you so cold to Julius and Phira?”
It isn’t what I meant to talk about, but it’s been bothering me, and it’s what came out first. “We’re all here to get you home.”
“Julius? He can never understand. Same with Saphira. People like them will be successful no matter what they do. Money, smarts, privilege. They already have it all, and each other, and I can tell they judge me for getting those things my own way.”
“That’s not true. They care about you and want you to be happy.”
He studies me but apparently hasn’t heard a single thing I said. The blues in his eyes swirl like a maelstrom deep at sea. “You’re breathtaking, TJ.” Not once in our fourteen years of knowing each other has he ever seen me dressed up in such a grand, lavish gown that fits as if it were made just for me. I could never afford something as luxurious as this.
He can’t take his eyes off me.
“Will you walk with me?” He’s dressed plainly for dinner in a tailored navy button-up shirt and dark slacks that Caelan would wear—rosy-cheeked and tall and as handsome as he ever was.
I hesitantly take the elbow he offers. My heart pounds at the thought of what I need to say to him.
He steers me away from the Great Hall, and we tread silently down a long corridor before exiting a side door to a garden courtyard. Magenta clouds hang low in the twilight sky, and the fountains of liquid fire sparkle in the courtyard, illuminating the exotic garden’s giant flowers of crimson, violet, and black.
“Talvi, I’m so sorry,” he pleads, looking at me with apologetic eyes from under the soft brown hair flopping over his brow. “I made a lousy mistake; I should have listened to what you wanted. I thought you’d be impressed. Yesterday—”
“Yesterday is behind us. Yes, you should’ve listened.” I want to move past it, and I don’t have the personality to keep fighting over something I’ve already decided to forgive. Phira would say I am too forgiving. Maybe I am.
Rian made a terrible mistake, but good people make mistakes. Good people make mistakes, I remind myself. It occurs to me that I include myself in this verdict.
Grams always says forgiving someone won’t change the past, but it sets free two souls from bitterness and regret in the future. I miss my gran, and I’m hurt by Rian, but I am also strong in this moment.
“I want to go home. And for you to come home,” I say as patiently as possible, focusing on what I need him to do first and foremost.
He starts again, softer. “All I wanted is to be better for you. I’m trying to show you I’m much more here. The king promises power and wealth—it’s exciting not to be helpless, and to possess so many possibilities. Possibilities and choices you can have, too.”
“But—” I protest.
“Did you want to stay at Starstone and be poor and lonely forever? No! I’m certain of it. You were scared, and you hated being stuck there. Left behind. Here, you don’t have to feel sad and trapped.”
Oh. I never grasped that he guessed my innermost fears about my life at Starstone. He’d understood me this whole time? Why didn’t he say anything before?
“Don’t you want to dream new dreams? You can be the happy, sweet Talvi I know and love.”
“Rian, if I’m sad or frustrated or angry—is that not okay?”
He has no response. He glances askew at a dark fountain spouting lotus-pink sparks instead of water. He swivels his broad palm to summon a wind that funnels the sparks high above us into a tight sphere before bursting like fireworks.
A monstrous crimson bird flutters out of the shrubbery to snatch at the sparks, trailed by two of its young, ruby-plumed babies.
I leap back.
“Whoa! What are those?” I’m wary of sharp-beaked creatures since the assault in the Museum Realm.
“Volcanic swan.” Rian fishes deep into one pocket and drops a handful of kernels into my hand. “Hang on. There should be three babies with her. Sometimes they get caught in the rock fern.”
He drops into charcoal-green-fingered leaves and parts the fronds until he finds the smallest cygnet, cherry-red like its siblings.
“Go on. Give them the seeds. Their beaks look sharp, but they only use them to pick out lava bugs from the volcanic rocks.”
“It’s very you to have treats in your pockets for animals,” I say.
He crouches down and they flock around him as if they recognize him.
“You can take the farm boy out of the farm…” He chuckles. “TJ, you wouldn’t believe the creatures they have here! I haven’t even shown you the stables. I have my own Coalmine Scorpion to ride. Lost a few scale feathers the first time I got on him. Captain Bonflade of the guards taught me…” He jabbers on happily as I grin at him.
He was always good with animals. He cares for them. It’s one of my favorite things about him.
I try harder to understand him. I need to understand, in order to help him.
“Ri, when I am upset, what does that mean to you?”
He tosses the remaining seeds on the cobbled path for the birds. “It means you don’t want me,” he admits, low and hushed.
His cheeks blot color as if slapped.
Is that really what he believes? His admission stings me to know he felt so unloved.
“That’s not what it means,” I say softly.
“You grew more and more frustrated when school started, and then you broke up with me. My mom was sad for a long time before she left. I was young, but I remember.”
“I didn’t want to see you held back in life by me. I couldn’t express all my feelings, and I didn’t want to burden you with them. I needed time to figure it out myself.”
He plucks off a black peony the size of my head and passes it to me. The petals are lush as velvet and dark as midnight. I’ve never seen a more beautiful blossom.
His voice is uneven. “I knew what you were feeling—you didn’t have to say it. I felt helpless. I’m not good at dealing with bad feelings, and your frustration scared me.”
I mull this over. He’s never spoken of his fears, his deepest emotions. He’s different, but maybe beneath it all, he’s grown in certain ways?
A Fire Guard rushes down the path toward us, out of breath. “Prince Rian, my lord. You need to get dressed for dinner. The king requests your presence immediately.” He bears Rian’s mother’s majestic sapphire crown on a silk pillow and offers it to Rian.
“Five minutes.” Rian takes the crown and wreaths it atop his own brow before he dismisses the guard with a sideways jerk of his head.
How quickly one becomes used to rank and command.
But he’s still my Rian when he appeals to me. “I know I’m vanilla ice cream. I’m basic. I know you can do better. Caelan—he’s like some wild, exciting flavor—like, gah, I dunno. Rocky-road-birthday-cake-pineapple-cotton-candy.”
“That flavor sounds insanely gross! You did that on purpose. I see what you did there.”
We laugh, and I hear his sweet gurgle of a laugh for the first time since he went missing. The laughter goes on for a while until it carves a hole in my heart. I’ve missed this sound. It’s always been in my life—the hundreds of times we ate spaghetti together, when we raced to class late, when we mocked Kennedy trying to flirt with him, when we swam naked in the waters of Violetwild Lake.
“You’re not ice cream. You’re my Rian. I’m so sorry I didn’t try harder to explain how I felt—that you thought it meant I didn’t want or love you.”
I stretch up on my toes to straighten the weighty crown on Rian’s head.
His lashes sweep down to look at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to talk to you about what you were going through—that it wasn’t about me. I wasn’t good at telling you what I was really thinking and feeling.” He catches my hand as I drop it from his face.
My heart strains. Why couldn’t we have talked like this before?
On second thought, I know that before—before Caelan, who taught me to allow myself to feel my negative emotions—I always pushed my true feelings aside.
But then Caelan betrayed my trust.
It hurts. All of this hurts.
My blood thrums. I have a sudden urge to hug Rian. Mutual apologies have the effect of love potions—they are the strongest of aphrodisiacs.
I shift forward, but he must feel the same way as he captures me in a heated, yearning embrace. He presses his lips atop my head like he used to every morning when he picked me up before school.
I reciprocate with a kiss on the center of his chest and lean my cheek on it, listening to his strong, rapid heartbeat.
He draws a deep inhale. His fingers trace the floral edges of the black lace framing my bare back. My skin prickles. “I made a mistake. Please think about giving me another chance. We’re both different; it can work,” he pleads.
“How?” Persuade me, I think silently.
“I’m leaving the choice up to you. We could stay. Haven’t you always dreamt about living by the ocean? Getting away from Starstone? We made it; far away. We’ll have more here than we ever imagined.”
He keeps going. “If you want to go home, we restored your gran’s soul. She can run the Temple. You can leave Starstone—we can have a life. If you ever wanted to return to the Temple, I can help you. We have the Garden of Lanterns.”
His hands grip my shoulders as he lowers his head so our noses almost touch. “We can travel the realms, our own secret universe! You wouldn’t be holding me back from anything. We’ll figure it out together. I know so much more. I’m not a stupid farm boy who raises sheep anymore—”
“You never were,” I protest.
He leans in so his lips touch the curve of my ear, his voice husky. “I’m more capable, and we can still use our powers together to help your grandma and the Temple, if that’s what you want. I’m learning to talk through your feelings, to be there for you. TJ, let’s be tigers together.”
I soften, and my exhale is tattered.
When I don’t step back, he clutches his arms around me. “It’s all up to you. Please consider it?”
I waver. I’ll go home with you right now—if you tell me we can be together, he said to me earlier. Everything isn’t okay all of a sudden, and I’m not going to pretend it will be.
But he’s willing to go anywhere to be with me. He’s planning a future.
And he would never lie to me. He never has, in our fourteen years of friendship. Hell, he’d wait eighty years for me. He’s doing his best to be better for me, and he needs me. I huff out a tight breath.
How could that not leave a mark on my heart?
I swallow. “I will,” I breathe.
He pulls me tighter into him. “I’ll never give up on you, Talvi. I love you more than anything, and it’s a future with you I want.”
We enter the black moonstone-carved entryway before the Great Hall.
Rian escorts me across the massive banquet room to my table below High King Infiero and Caelan before taking his seat to the right of the High King. A male Fire Guard rushes over and slips a blue-jeweled chestplate over Rian’s head and binds on embossed leather braces to his forearms. The guard buckles on a ceremonial sword to his waist before pinning a royal blue cloak of scalloped iridescent scales over his shoulders. Rian sits taller, adjusting his crown, and his smile vanishes.
Suddenly, he’s someone else.
The High King does not look at me, but from the moment I stepped into the room with my arm looped into Rian’s, Caelan’s eyes bored into me and never left. He glares at me now, and I give in to my morbid urge to stare back.
Caelan’s cloak is trimmed in sharp black plumes of an unfamiliar bird flaring up from behind his shoulders like a peacock. His headpiece today is a band of jagged ebony diamonds that crowns him from ear to ear like a headband, pulling his hair back from the smooth skin of his face.
It somehow makes him look younger.
The look on his face, however, is unreadable. His eyes are luminous and aglow. Pale gold. Unblinking. It could be cold fury—but what reason has he to be angry with me? On purpose or not… He betrayed me. It was his choice not to tell me the whole truth.
Perhaps it is bitterness at his own decisions. I hope it’s a little of that.
His gaze stalks me across the Hall, fierce and wild and aflame with something I’ve never seen in him before. It is as if he wants to look away but cannot.
I catch myself frowning, so I pry my eyes off him and whip my face away.
Without another glance, I take my seat next to Saphira and Julius.
Delegations from the ruling realms of Wind, Water, and Earth are announced as they arrive, followed by representatives from smaller populations. Nature. Dream. There’s even a familiar red-uniformed guard of the Museum Realm, but Void is noticeably absent from the declared list of guests. All of us are seated at the long tables of the Great Hall.
I’ve never seen such a massive dining room. Beside me, Phira quickly estimates there’s seating for five hundred as guests file under tremendous black crystal chandeliers lit with fat gold candles. The flames sparkle as brilliant and prismatic as finely cut diamonds.
Phira, Julius, and I sit stiffly in carved black chairs. We’re in a long second row of delegates below the king, overlooking the rest of the hall of polished black agate tables.
After a series of long-winded introductions and a generic welcome by the Fire King, the feast commences with endless service of food and drink. Familiar roasts and vegetables mingle with a slew of dishes I’ve never seen before. Stringy blue meat. Square shellfish. Pungent mushrooms.
Goblets are refilled, heavy gold cutlery clinks, and ornate black plates are piled with a variety of cuisine to satisfy every realm.
My intuition tells me something dreadful will happen tonight. I’m so nervous my stomach hurts, and I can’t stop my knees from trembling under my heavy gown.
My intuition also tells me the only one who is truly enjoying the feast is the king. Because whatever he has planned, he will be celebrating afterward. Perhaps the only one celebrating whatever shocking announcement or declaration is to come. Why else would he insist on hosting such a lavish party with so many realms?
It amazes me that Saphira can eat so much under such worrying circumstances.
“Why are we even here?” Phira asks, chomping into a large leg of meat. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s pretty good,” she says with her mouth full, lips greased.
“Knowing the king, we’re probably next on the menu,” Julius says darkly. He casually slides a set of silverware toward Saphira as discreetly as possible.
She pushes it away.
To avoid the king, Caelan, and Rian at the high table behind me, I force myself not to turn around. After two rounds of flaming desserts doused in sweet liquor, the room settles into relaxed, muffled conversation.
From behind me, a messenger clears his throat for an announcement.
“The High King of the Fire Realm, the Crown Prince of Fire and Flame, and the Crown Prince of Wind and Sky—”
Shifting glances and a disapproving murmur erupts from the Wind Realm’s table. They protest Rian’s title.
“—hope you have enjoyed our delectable meal together. High King Infiero Flamekeeper Fusillade would like to address the reason we are gathered here today: his bid for Celestial Emperor.”
I swing around in my chair, almost toppling off.
There it is. What does it mean for everyone in the room?
I am uncertain if it is received well or not, because the room is dead silent.
Caelan’s expression is wooden, but Rian smiles at me, tipping his chin.
The facets of their crowns glint with the light from wall sconces in flames of kaleidoscopic colors.
The High King stands and swirls his black crystal goblet filled with dark liquid, thick as blood. “The Fire Realm is the largest and mightiest of realms. We have the strongest warriors and the greatest resources.”
A seahorse-headed Water Element interrupts. “There hasn’t been a Celestial Emperor in over four hundred years, Infiero Flamekeeper.”
