Bound by Firelight by Dana Swift

Author:Dana Swift [Swift, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

It’s windy the morning Sims is set to enter the Dome and our mission begins—ravenously so, like Goddess Ria is trying to knock our illusions off and leave the kited tails of our skygliders devoid of their magical streams. The sky is the color of slate, a dreary dimness that makes you wish someone would cast some light into the clouds.

It doesn’t bode well, and I think we all feel it. The tension whips and snaps like our kurtas in the wind. At least the most important pieces of this puzzle, Hiren and Riya, who will be escorting Sims in, won’t be affected. Kalyan and Prisha are air support; they’re going to see whether we can get in or out through one of the skylights, but they might have a hard time with this wind.

Then there is Fiza and me. A team only because we’re the best at using and recognizing black magic, which is what we suspect has been used to hide the hole in the Dome. And because I’m not sure that anyone else can get along with Fiza for more than a minute. Although I have some doubts about myself. Our mission is challengingly simple: find the hole caused by Mount Gandhak and open it even wider.

So far, we’ve been civil and let the argument from yesterday dissipate. Or maybe sweeping it under the rug is the more accurate description. As we pass over Mount Gandhak, I catch Fiza surveying the volcano and the barren, blackened decay of its eruption. I’ve done my fair share of staring. I pass this thing every time I fly to Belwar, but sometimes looking at it like this I can see why no one believes one witch could have stopped this thing.

We don’t have time to loiter, so I angle a few degrees north and stretch my sight to the large, spherical building nestled at the foot of Mount Gandhak and the corner of Belwar’s West Village. Mount Gandhak is ominous, but the Dome stirs fear like the dark recesses of an alleyway might. A walled mystery. Uncertainty of what lies beyond its exterior.

“Like cracking open an egg!” Fiza hollers above the wind.

“Right.” Even the metaphors she uses are terrifying. Does the Dome not chill her? For someone so against this plan she seems delighted about the prospect of…breaking eggs.

We fly in low, sweeping against the mudslide from Mount Gandhak. We find a boulder askew on the mountainside and land there. Hiren “borrowed” some Dome Guard uniforms for us, so we don’t exactly need to hide, but I don’t want to risk being seen just yet. Also, it shouldn’t bother me that much, but each time I glimpse the orange rising sun on the shoulder or cuff of my uniform, a twinge of guilt winds up my spine. Adraa never got to wear her own crest, and maybe she never will.

Blood, I need to stop thinking like that. I’m going to fix this.

It helps when Fiza and I buckle our skygliders and drape ourselves in black magic, disappearing from view.

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