Soul of Cinder by Bree Barton

Author:Bree Barton [Barton, Bree]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062447760
Google: _ZrcDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0062447742
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Disappeared

IN THE END, IT was shockingly easy.

“Tell everyone what you’ve seen here,” Quin told Tobin, as they left the library. The acrid reek of scorched piano filled the castle corridors: burnt wood, burnt ivory, burnt books. “I want all the Embers in the Grand Gallery within the half hour.”

Tobin nodded stiffly. He’d said nothing since Quin ordered half a dozen Embers to douse the raging flames. The piano was ruined, of course, reduced to a pile of smoldering ash, as was a considerable portion of the Kaer’s library. It gave Quin a perverse satisfaction to know that the plays he’d devoured, not to mention the histories he’d once found comfort in, were gone. Vestiges of a life he’d rather not remember. A self he’d rather not remember.

“Do not defy me,” Quin said to Tobin, his voice low. “Or you will pay the price.”

“Liar.”

Maev accosted Quin as he strode into the Gallery. Tobin had gathered the Embers; he now sat among them at the low slab tables. They were silent, watchful, so different from the raucous horde Quin had met when he first returned to the Kaer, carousing around their makeshift bar.

Maev, however, was not seated. She stood in the center of the Gallery, fuming. Strands of thin white hair had come loose around her face.

“Tell them,” she said, pointing at the Embers. “Tell them how you lied.”

“I am not the one on trial.”

“I should never have let you come here. We fed you, treated you like one of ours.” She shook her head in disgust. “I swore on my mother’s grave that if I ever met a Killian face to face—”

“You will be silent.” He looked coldly out at the room. “The Kaer is my home. The crown is my birthright. I am Quin, son of Clan Killian, the uncontested king of Glas Ddir.”

“We don’t want your bloody crown,” Maev spat. “It’s crowns we’re fighting against!”

“You will be silent.”

With a flick of his fingers, a red flame appeared in Quin’s palm.

A chorus of gasps rippled through the room. It sent a bolt of lightning straight into his veins. How often he had wished for a captive audience, a crowd to gape and shiver at his performance.

He pooled all his attention into his fingers—and sent a sphere of crimson fire into the makeshift bar. Instantly it ignited. Flames licked the wood plank, spewing sparks onto the barrels below. The bottles heated up, spirits seething inside, a dozen paroxysms waiting to explode.

From the farthest table, he heard a whimper. He turned his head.

Brialli Mar.

He hadn’t seen her in days. She was watching him intently, unsmiling, a small black dog tucked under her arm. It was not Brialli who had whimpered, he realized, but the pup.

For a moment, Quin’s love for Wulf and Beo knocked into him so fiercely his breath caught. They had been a comfort to him during his darkest days. His dogs had reminded him of his humanity, even when humanity at large seemed brutally bleak.

He swiftly cauterized the wound.

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