Kingdoms on Fire by Carly Stevens

Author:Carly Stevens [Stevens, Carly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carly Stevens

36

FIRIAN

Brett convinced Firian to spend the night before confronting the Tanyu in charge of Raewhith. “You’re tired. You need to be in better shape.” She used her motherly wiles until he came around to her way of thinking. Gaius didn’t seem surprised.

Firian told Gaius to push their bed into a corner without windows, and to stand guard directly beside her, armed with multiple weapons. Brett insisted on holding the baby in her arms in case the danger was as real as Firian thought.

So he slept a few short hours in the front room, planning to wake early to meet the Tanyu who expected him to check in once he arrived.

Even that brief sleep was plagued by dreams. He and Kiria walked together through Charäkhnem. He’d never been there, but it was clear that Kiria wanted to show it to him. It was the kind of thing they might have done when they were together, before there was so much violence and hatred. He created the scenery and she directed him to place a turret there, a road going that way.

She wasn’t really there. Dream Kiria was different than real Kiria, like the difference between looking at a person and viewing a painting. She acted like herself in the dream, but all the while he knew he was imagining impossibilities.

Beside him, Kiria smiled at one of his creations, a fruit stall that was a modified version of one he had frequented growing up. Instead of plums and potatoes and carrots, it sold fanciful jeweled grapes and made-up versions of lemons and apples in all shades.

He kept adding detail the longer they stood together. It was never right. They were never right.

Battered coins exchanged hands. The seller had bitten his fingernails to the quick and tiny hairs stood out on his knuckles. Dream Kiria whispered to him, “Almost everyone has dark red hair, not black.”

He made the change in an instant. Delight lit up her face at his work. They moved on from the fruit seller, strolling down an empty street that curved out of sight through walled buildings. The air smelled like grilling meat and heavy flowers.

Kiria took his hand. There was something so easy about the gesture for her, as though this version of her had done it a thousand times. That she held his hand didn’t surprise him—it was his dream, after all—but his own reaction did. The sense of intimacy grew like a knot in his chest. This was something different, not the heated passion of a kiss, but the comfortable love of a loyal friend. He squeezed her hand gently, the knot hollowing inside him.

They turned a corner into a large courtyard crisscrossed with wooden beams. The pergola cast shadows across the ground and across their faces, obscuring Kiria’s expression in darkness. She went stiff as a statue beside him. When he looked up, the light and the warmth became like a bath with his head held underwater. His hand suddenly gripped nothing but air.

Above them hung dozens of bodies, dangling by their necks from the beams.

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