Curse of Stolen Flame (Firebird, #1)

CHAPTER 47

Trepidation pooled in Kindra’s veins when she walked into the library a couple of hours later. Though the sweat from the morning’s training session had been thoroughly scrubbed away, her skin still felt sticky and itchy, like it had been pulled taut over her bones. Her nerves were trying to get the better of her.

She did her best to swallow them down as she approached the large desk at the front of the restricted section. One of the many librarians, a silver-haired older woman, looked up from her reading at her approach and dipped her head in acknowledgement. Kindra fixed a pleasant smile on her face.

“Hello, Lady Kindra,” she said, voice withered and soft.

Kindra scrambled to recall her name. “Good afternoon, Iris,” she replied, and prayed she had gotten it right. She’d been trying to learn the names of as many castle staff as possible, but there were hundreds of them. She’d hardly made a dent, and already their names were mixing up in her head.

But the librarian smiled, pleased, and Kindra bit back her sigh of relief. “What can I do for you?”

Now came the hard part.

She held her head high and hoped her nervousness wasn’t obvious as she said, “I need to access some documents from the restricted section.” Iris nodded. Good. At least she could enter the restricted section at all. That made what came next marginally easier .

She leaned forward, indicating a need for secrecy. Iris leaned in, too, watery blue eyes alight with curiosity. “The journals of Queen Scalya. I need to read them.”

To her credit, the librarian covered her shock quickly. “Oh, Lady Kindra, those are… those are quite restricted. I’m not sure if you’re permitted.”

Don’t be afraid to throw your weight around, Jasper had said. Kindra didn’t quite feel ready to start doing that yet.

But she could throw around the king’s.

“Ah,” she said, making a good show of looking disappointed. Then, “That’s understandable. It’s just—well, the king honored me with Queen Scalya’s diadem at the Solstice Ball, and when we were dancing, he mentioned her journals and said I might find them of interest.” A lie, but she was banking on Iris being too afraid of defying the king to say anything to him about it. She shrugged. “Does he need to come give permission himself for me to see them? I could ask, though he’s so busy these days—”

“No need, my Lady,” Iris interrupted, terrified by the suggestion. “If he said you should read them, then read them you shall.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Kindra gushed, reaching over and squeezing one of her wrinkled hands. Iris beamed.

“Come with me.” She walked out from behind the desk and began to lead Kindra down one of the aisles. Upon reaching a locked iron door, Iris took a key from the pocket of her robes. She unlocked the door and it swung open to reveal a whole other library.

Kindra gaped as she walked in. It was far smaller than the Great Library—only one story, and considerably less cozy with its lack of windows and sofas. Rather, every wall was lined with shelves laden with books and scrolls, save for one tiny hearth in the corner of the room. There were a few desks placed throughout the center of the room, adorned with oil lamps and ink pots and quills.

“The king and the Council are typically the only ones who use this room,” Iris told her. “Sometimes the crown prince. We keep the most valuable and secret documents here.” She strode over to a shelf and pulled off several books. No, not books, Kindra realized as she took a closer look—journals .

Iris set them on a table, gesturing for Kindra to come sit. “Here you are,” the librarian said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. The door will lock behind you when you leave—so if you need to come back, don’t hesitate to find me.”

And then she was gone, leaving Kindra with a stack of almost a dozen journals and no clue where to start.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Queen Scalya did not just document her encounters with Scaldor; she was the type who had wanted to document everything .

The first journal was dated prior to her marriage to Novon by several years. If the records of her birthdate were accurate, the future queen was fifteen at the time of the first entry.

Though Kindra had at first been tempted to skim through the pages, searching for words like Scaldor and gods , the young girl’s entries were not only interesting, but entertaining.

Scalya, like her, had grown up poor, in a small village. Her upbringing had been nothing but war and other hardships as the fight to establish the various kingdoms of the continent was underway. Alverin’s history had been bloody from the start; it took years to unify the various lords and their small lands under one banner, and that was not achieved without violence. And then, of course, came the wars with the other budding kingdoms as they each tried to conquer the best lands for themselves. It had been a decades-long struggle that had begun long before Scalya had been born.

But still, Scalya had maintained a rather raunchy sense of humor, often interjecting it into otherwise dark entries. Kindra actually found herself chuckling as she read certain passages.

Her magic had come to her when she was only six, which was extremely young. Though there were indicators of magic that appeared from birth—eye color being the primary one—the actual power to wield usually did not manifest until one was well into childhood, typically between ages nine and twelve. Kindra’s had appeared just a few months shy of her ninth birthday. It didn’t really mean anything about how powerful one would be, though people liked to pretend it did. There were plenty of great Wielders whose magic didn’t show up until they were eleven or twelve; some had been even older than that. And there were plenty of early bloomers who turned out to be entirely mediocre.

But to be only six years old… Kindra had never heard of that happening. At first she thought maybe it used to be more common, but based on Scalya’s writings, it was just as rare then as it would be now.

Scalya wrote of her training, of discovering new ways to manipulate her fire. The similarities to Kindra’s own development both warmed her heart and chilled her to the bone. She hated the way she felt a kind of kinship to the long-dead queen; hated anything that might connect the two of them. But she couldn’t look away, devouring every word.

Two hours later, she wasn’t done with even the first journal. As intriguing as Scalya’s entries were, Kindra’s patience was beginning to wear thin. Scalya was sixteen now—there’d been an ample entry about the celebration her family had thrown her. But at least she wasn’t making an entry every day; there were jumps in the dates spanning anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

Kindra had just finished reading through an entry detailing some drama with a boy in Scalya’s village. She huffed a laugh, wondering how the boy had felt when he later learned he’d fumbled the God-blessed Queen of Alverin. If he survived long enough to see it, she thought grimly.

She turned the page and sat up straight as she noted the date at the top. Nearly six weeks later—longer than any other jump between entries.

Scalya’s handwriting was different. It was still obviously hers, but it was more slanted. Frantic.

Kindra’s insides twisted as she read the passage:

I feel as though I am going insane, Scalya wrote. I thought it impossible. To be visited by a god. I did not believe they ever deigned to grace anyone with their presence. But there I was, in that clearing those weeks ago, surrounded by my enemies, and I felt him .

“No,” Kindra breathed.

Nobody will listen to me when I tell them how it happened, how I alone took on two dozen soldiers and left them in ashes. They have always thought me powerful; they believe that is all it was. But this was different. This was not my fire in my veins—not mine alone, at least. It was joined by another’s. When I needed it most, when I called for aid that would save me, my family, he answered.

I have no other explanation for it. The flames that came out of me acted of their own accord. They spread further and quicker than I have ever been able to control. They burned so hot they were blue at points. When have I ever done that? Never, not once. I did not feel as though I was in my own body; I felt cast out, used, watching it all happen but not having any ability to stop it.

A memory pushed at the corner of Kindra’s mind. Her breathing quickened; she tried desperately to block it out.

When it was over, and he mercifully left me, I was strangely empty. My magic had not been worn down, though my veins, my very bones, felt stretched and battered, as if they’d been overexerted. A conduit for his power, that’s what I had become.

But nobody here believes me. I am a hero. I saved my home. When I came to them screaming, they did not understand that my horror was not from the carnage I had enacted but from the possession I had just experienced. The gods do not come to us in that way, the priests and priestesses told me gently. Your power is great, and that is all that Scaldor has given you. That is his blessing.

But I know what—who—it was that came to me that day. He did not speak—though I fear if he comes to me again, he will. But the force that brushed against me, as though he were touching the very kernel of my soul, that was no adrenaline rush. That was a god. Scaldor. For whatever reason, he chose to answer my call.

I am grateful. I am terrified. And nobody will believe me, so I am writing it here, so the truth is in the world, somehow. Perhaps one day somebody will discover this and they’ll believe me.

Kindra pushed the journal away from her, feeling sick. The memory she had fought so hard to bury broke free and flooded through her mind.

She’d repressed much about the first time she’d defended Harthwin all those years ago. She couldn’t forget how she’d killed one of those men; she couldn’t forget how close she came to dying.

And she couldn’t forget how she’d survived it, though she’d certainly tried.

For years, she’d been able to convince herself it was nothing more than a power surge. Her survival instincts had kicked in; that was all it had been. She’d never been visited by a god. That was what she had told herself, over and over again. Scaldor had never appeared in front of her, not while she was dreaming, not while she was awake. And that was what they meant when they spoke of being God-blessed, right? When they talked of the Annalindis family. So it had simply been an adrenaline rush, that’s all.

Kindra whimpered, biting back a sob. Ten years later, and she could still remember how it felt. It was exactly as Scalya had described; like something touching the deepest core of her, some ancient force asking a silent question.

And she’d said yes, because it was that or face something worse than death at the hands of those men.

The fire that had surged through her had not been her own. It was the most rageful, burning power she’d ever experienced. That remained true. And the emptiness Scalya described… she’d felt that too, when it was over.

For several moments, she simply sat with her head in her hands, torn between wanting to cry or vomit. Slowly, she steadied her breathing. She bottled up her terror and placed it on a shelf to be dealt with later. There was more to learn, and she didn’t know for certain if she’d get access to these journals again.

With shaking hands, she pulled the journal back to her.

She kept reading.