Blue Fire Read online

  “What?” Tressa stopped, and the water inside the teapot sloshed. “Blue?”

  Across the room, calculations. A blue? Orrik had warned me to keep my Gift’s color a secret for good reason. Through the room, a revision of my value, already increased by my previous tidbit of gossip.

  “Isn’t she?” Anastasi said, sitting straighter. She took in Tressa’s shocked expression and my wide-eyed panic. “You must be her—brown hair, sapphire eyes. You must be the blue.”

  “I… I don’t…” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to run. My chair clattered backward as I shot to my feet. Like a ghost, the servant spirited the chair out of the way. At the same time, Jerroth appeared at my side, a hand on my elbow. To steady me? To keep me from running?

  “How did you manifest?” Anastasi asked. Her words were almost frantic as she leaned across the table. “What’s your Talent? Fire, right?”

  “Enough.” Tressa set the teapot on the table so hard a thin crack appeared. She grabbed Anastasi’s shoulder and pulled her away. “You vulgar upstart! How dare you attack my friend. If I ever catch you antagonizing one in my circle again, I will see you ruined. Do you understand?”

  Tressa’s words stabbed with icy fury, and Anastasi’s eyes widened in fear.

  “I am afraid it has grown rather late,” Tressa said. She dropped Anastasi’s shoulder and smiled at the scandal-thrilled onlookers. “Please, take some cake and my apologies for such a spectacle.”

  Jerroth offered to escort me to my rooms. I shrugged him from my arm, afraid to speak a single word. I needed to get away, and as I slipped past bodies and chairs, Tressa grabbed me at the door.

  “Next time you have Game-changing news, tell me beforehand so I can help you with your presentation,” she said in a low whisper. Her tone lightened, but it stayed strained. “I forgive you this time, but my! So much turmoil in your wake.”

  “I am sorry,” I whispered back. “I didn’t mean to ruin your party—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me—” She caught sight of an older woman striding toward us. “That old bat. Flee before you blunder beyond all repair.”

  Tressa released me to turn a smile at the woman. One step, and I was in the hallway; another and I was a safe blur. I went straight to my rooms, braced the door with my desk chair, and ripped off the clothing I hated. Then I crawled into bed, determined never to leave.

  Until I dreamed.

  In my sleep, I attended Tressa’s party once more. This time, Tressa sided with Anastasi and demanded to see my Gift. As I failed, they called me a peasant as an insult, and then understanding dawned on their faces…

  I jolted awake, clutching my sheets. I lit a candle to ward off other bad dreams.

  It didn’t work. Instead of blissful darkness, I slipped not into dreams but visions. One by one, I relived them all: the sapphire, the black mage attacking me, the blood-red dragon and its rider. None of them were as bad as the last.

  I kneel in a pool of red. My hands press against a man’s chest, his blood slicks over my fingers. I cry in agony and bend so that my forehead almost touches him. I want to die with him. It isn’t fair, I cry over and over. “Please don’t die. Please, First One, help me!”

  When I woke, tears and sweat soaked the sheets.

  In Stoneyfield, I often visited the village’s altar to ask the First One for help. It didn’t matter that I babbled to Him all the time in my head. Something about kneeling before stone and offering a sacrifice made prayer more real. More serious.

  I’d gone to ask for adoption right before my manifestation. Before everything changed.

  I needed everything to change again.

  As soon as it opened, I ate breakfast in the dining hall and asked a commoner where I could pray. She directed me to a place called the Devotarium, located in Mountain One. I’d actually memorized the waypoint, but I hadn’t known what the word meant.

  The Devotarium was nothing like Stoneyfield’s lonely, weatherworn altar.

  The door to the Devotarium revealed a room large enough to fit two dragons. Row after row of tables filled the room, all empty. The walls—the walls.

  They’re Illusioned, I marveled. I drifted to the center of the room to take it all in. One moving scene after another blended together. Dragons so real I saw their scales. Battles with weapons glinting. Maps changing, boys growing into men, crowns forming on women’s brows. People bathing in colored fire and calling lightning down on dark shapes.

  “Can I help you?”

  With great reluctance I tore my gaze from the Illusions. The man approaching me wore white, like a healer, except golden threads decorated every inch of his robes. Sunbursts melded into dragons that breathed sunbursts again.

  “I…” I didn’t recognize the robe, but I’d seen the hairstyle before. A series of braids woven together, reaching to his hips. Both the female and male Speakers who’d visited Stoneyfield had worn their hair that way. “Is there an altar?”

  A smile ghosted his lips. “This way.”

  I sent one last look at the beautiful walls before following him through a golden door. Real gold. So much gold, I couldn’t begin to guess the cost, with sunbursts beaten into the metal. The door led to a hallway lined with small rooms. Each of those doors had a single small window with clear, flawless glass.

  The Speaker splayed his hand before his face. “May you leave with a mind full of peace and a heart full of flame.”

  “Thank you?” I guessed. The Speaker didn’t budge. I darted into the room he’d opened before it got too awkward, and he closed the door gently behind me.

  “Blessed rain,” I breathed. There was an altar, but it wasn’t the worn stone I’d grown up with. Black marble, with threads of gold like flame, stood at the room’s end. A white candle sat upon it, and veins of gold in the rock sparkled under the single Light floating at the ceiling. Around the Light, crystals dangled, casting rainbows on the white fabric draped over the stone walls. In front of the altar sat a bench padded with black velvet.

  I pulled my only gold dragon from my pocket, along with a cherished possession—the chocolate Shamino had given me. I started to place them on the altar when I paused.

  There were no other offerings.

  Not one.

  Do they take them? Food, bits of cloth, the odd copper commoner—all were strewn about Stoneyfield’s altar. The Speakers who visited the village always urged us to make a sacrifice for serious petitions. Surely the nobles gave something?

  My coin clinked on the marble. It sounded… lonely. The chocolate went beside it. I found some flint and tinder on a tiny shelf behind the altar and lit the unburned candle. Then I sat on the bench, but sitting seemed strange so I knelt on the stone floor instead.

  Why? Why, why, why?

  I licked my lips. “I am sorry I’ve avoided you. I’m… angry, a little, but grateful. And scared.” I laughed. “I’m everything, I guess.”

  Was it right to bother a deity with every little thing? Tressa and Anastasi, my false identity, the endless studying, Merram and Thorkel, the flutters from Shamino’s smile, the visions, dragons…

  My Gift.

  In the end, everything depended on my Gift.

  “You brought me here, so why doesn’t my Gift work? Why am I failing? Zoland says I’m the only one with a broken Gift. Why did You bother making me a blue and then ruining my life? I’m sorry. Not ruin. Giftless at the Kyer is ten times better than farming, but… I can’t even warm a pot of tea. What is wrong with me?”

  Aside from my blood.

  I leaned back on my heels, and my elbow hit something hard. Below the bench’s cushion, a shelf held a book. Curious, I slid it out.

  Record, it read in gold on the cover. The leather looked new, and crisp pages smelled of paper and berries. Inside, a full-color illustration filled every left page, some pictures similar to the Illusions I’d seen in the Great Room. Words covered every right page.

  Long ago, Darkness covered the world. The First One wept
, for evil had taken over creation.

  They were the same words the Speakers recited when they visited Stoneyfield. More or less. I’d never heard the Speakers say enough words to fill an entire book. I climbed onto the bench and began to read random passages. There, the creation of the dragons. I’d heard that. I didn’t know of the battle to the south against walking dead. Nor did I know how Drageria’s first king came to power.

  “What about the Gift?” I asked the candle upon the altar. “What about blue mages?”

  I began to flip to the beginning, but an illustration caught my eye. A blonde woman, bathed in blue flames. She held her arms open to the sky, and above her floated three smaller pictures: a battlefield, a river, and a rose.

  In the year 258, the First One chose the blue mage Cylia as His champion. He singled her as His own by sending her three visions: the—

  I dropped the book and shot to my feet. “I asked about magic, not about visions. I don’t want visions or a destiny or… Why can’t You just give me a home? You know? Home? Whenever I ask, You—You—You burn down the hut of the people who cared for me!”

  I left the candle burning and the book on the floor. My tears smeared the Illusioned walls of the Great Room; they made the hallway’s streaks even more ghostly. I wandered without destination, my every step exactly that—a step. Going nowhere. Going nowhere as people with purpose whizzed by. So many people, yet I walked alone.

  In my visions, my Gift always works. A confident Adara. Strong Adara. Incinerating chairs as they fly at her head Adara. Crying Adara bathing a dying man with blue flame…

  But the magic always worked. Now I had visited the altar, I’d left chocolate of all things. My last visit to the First One had changed my life. Surely this time…

  My hands stayed empty during my next magic lesson.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took all my courage to go to the next Kyer class. Tressa had been so upset, yet I had no idea how to apologize. I’d scribbled notes and tossed them in the trash; I’d practiced fumbling words in front of the mirror. None had seemed right, and so I had avoided her by going to eat at odd times at the dining hall. I couldn’t miss class, however.

  Sylvia arrived. Tressa’s seat by mine stayed empty. A new worry: What if Tressa didn’t come because she’s too angry?

  Sylvia began handing out sheets of paper, explaining our latest assignment. She paused as the door opened. Tressa. The two women locked gazes—young versus old, crimson skirts versus militaristic breeches.

  Sylvia broke the stare and set a sheet before Anastasi. “Yes, Tressa, we all see the envelopes you’re holding. There’d better be thirteen in that stack.”

  “There are not,” Tressa said, sweet as a stick of candy. “There are fourteen. One of these invitations is for you.”

  Sylvia continued to hand out papers. Because I knew her from my work in the Quarters, I noticed the smallest twitch of her eyebrow—Tressa had surprised her.

  “Perhaps you’ll pass my class yet,” Sylvia said as she gave the last sheet to Tressa. She’d already given me mine. “Anatomy of a dragon. Page forty-seven. Copy in entirety. I will check it during our next class, and the test is in a week’s time.”

  Tressa wrinkled her nose. “Don’t we have a dragon healer to worry about their bits and pieces?”

  “The Seneschal is too valuable to risk in war,” Sylvia said. “Should your dragon be injured, you’ll need to care for it until you can reach the Kyer. We assume all trainees have no issues with blood. Since we are, of course, a military organization.”

  “Of course,” Tressa replied. The two gave each other frighteningly similar smiles of pure serenity.

  The moment Sylvia turned, Tressa muttered, “Old bat. Won’t even let me touch her.”

  I drew a vague outline of a head. I rather liked Sylvia. She reminded me of some of the old farmwives: blunt and busy, with too much to do but enough experience to know how to get it all done, anyway.

  Most of all, I liked Sylvia because she didn’t give a weasel’s whisker about my past. I liked dragons; she liked me.

  I don’t think Tressa likes dragons. I peeked. Tressa was grimacing at the diagram of the dragon’s digestive system. I’m not sure she’s even met one yet.

  Quiet conversations began. Sylvia didn’t mind chatter as long as we stayed on task. I swallowed against the nervous lump in my throat.

  Get it over with. Apologize. With any words. I blurted more than said, “I am so sorry I ruined your party and embarrassed you and… if you never invite me to anything again, I understand. But I need you to know that I really am very sorry.”

  The jumbled, not-at-all-elegant apology halted.

  Tress blinked, then breathed a small laugh. She went back to drawing, so I continued sketching as well. My face burned.

  “You didn’t ruin my little gathering, not really,” Tressa murmured. Her voice stayed tight. “That upstart Riversbend did.”

  Anastasi. But it had been the brunette’s interest in me that had caused all the problems. Tressa no doubt had noted that.

  Tressa put down her pencil and stretched her shoulders. Her drawing so far looked identical to the book while mine… didn’t.

  “No art tutor, either,” Tressa said. “I’m beginning to think your parents ignored all aspects of your education. Which in line are you?”

  Hope flamed inside me. Tressa’s voice had changed from strained to light and airy. That had to be good. “Sixth.”

  “That makes sense. No need to invest in you.” She drew a line to the dragon’s brain and elegantly labeled it. “Ugh. I would much rather be sketching a still of Jerroth.”

  Ahead of us, Tressa’s beau dutifully worked at his assignment. Paige worked silently beside him. Tressa gave a little grunt of disgust and turned back to me.

  “Anyway, Adara, I know you’re a modest, quiet thing, but I can not believe you never mentioned your Gift.”

  “I thought you already knew.” Anastasi had known.

  She gave a soft laugh. “I usually am better informed, I suppose. Still. Tell me these things so I’m not caught off guard. My shock makes it look as if we’re not friends, which is the opposite of true.”

  I perked at her mention of friendship. Yet, I couldn’t shake a lingering feeling of uneasiness. I’d messed up once. A second mistake…

  Tressa worries so much about appearance. It must be because of her life at court, but I wish I felt more like her friend and less like… what?

  A strategic piece of jewelry.

  I labeled the dragon’s stomach, hating my thoughts. Tressa had been nothing but kindness, and her interest protected me. People kept a respectful distance simply because I was Tressa’s friend. They ignored my mistakes because Tressa found them endearing; they took the time to explain the obvious because Tressa did.

  I do wish I could talk to her. I feel closer to the dragons, and they can’t even speak. And Shamino—

  The tiniest smile teased my lips. My besotted-cow days had passed, and thoughts of Shamino cheered me up in a different way. He and I were almost friends.

  Class ended. Sylvia began to leave, but Tressa caught her and slipped her an envelope. Once our teacher had left, Tressa flounced to Sylvia’s position in the front of the room.

  “I’m certain many of you have heard that another two Flights are needed to defend Drageria’s borders.” At her words, solemn nods around the room. “In honor of those brave women and men, I—in conjunction with Jerroth of Katier, Narissa of Smallwood, and Faren of Glendale—will be holding a ball ten days hence on the eve of their departure.”

  She began to move through the room, flourishing invitations. She paused at Paige, put on a wooden smile, and handed over an envelope. She used the same wooden smile for Anastasi.

  She saved me for last. Before handing over the envelope, Tressa picked up her pencil and scribbled on the paper. She flourished it: Adara of Threepines it stated in graceful script, and below in pencil, My Special Friend.

 
“Wear a dress,” she murmured as the class began to break up. “It doesn’t have to be elaborate—you are a baronette—but the Kyer’s blue mage should be a touch elegant, don’t you think? Let me know if you need assistance.”

  I nodded my thanks, blushing. For better or worse, our friendship continued.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Trade Routes of the Eliysi.” I flipped through the book with dread and looked up at Viviya, an elderly dragon. “This is what you want me to read?”

  The azure dragon settled herself beside me, resting her head on an old feather bed. She had crammed her cave with human furniture and trinkets, maybe to replace the human she’d been denied. Viviya’s right wing curled in such a way that she could never fly; a childhood injury from when the Kyer didn’t have a dragon healer.

  I waved the book I’d brought to the Quarters. “How about Removing the Mystique: The Inner Workings of Rare Talents?”

  Zoland had given me the book in an increasingly desperate attempt to unlock my Gift. Maybe, he mused, Fire wasn’t my Talent and instead just happened to be my first spell? Maybe, for this supposed Talent, Light was a poor choice for learning? I doubted it. Despite my doubt, I did want to read the book. There was a chapter on dragon healing. More than that… Who wanted to read about trade routes?

  Viviya snorted at my choice. I sighed and put it down. It’d have to wait. Again. The last few days, my free time had been extra etiquette lessons and trips to the seamstress. No reading tonight, either. It was the dreaded ball itself.

  “I don’t do foreign names well,” I warned. Viviya gave me a look that said read already. At least it was only for a Sphere.

  A page in, Viviya sighed in pleasure. She shifted so her tail touched the front of my legs. My dislike of Trade Routes faltered. Shamino made us visit the elderly dragons every day for a reason. A single hour of human, plus whatever Shamino could spare himself. I caressed her rough, cracking scales. Even if I didn’t enjoy the book, I enjoyed her; I tried to put that into my voice.