“We bastard children have to look out for one another.” He smiles, and I cringe, trying to sink into myself and get away from him, get away from the new light this rewrites our history in. “I spent a year working for Downpike, watching him, studying his books and his magic when he was asleep. But I was the lowly colony rat servant, and he never thought for a moment I was anything more than that.”
“But how did you—you became him.”
“It was his idea, really. He was so paranoid about Hallin magic that he’d have done anything for it. He needed an alibi no one could question. So he called me into his study—powerless, faithful servant me—and cast a spell to make me look like him. I was to go and get myself jailed for the evening, which I did.”
“Finn’s parents. He killed them, then.” I wish I could tell Finn, could answer this question for him. Oh, Finn. I close my eyes against the rush of grief. Too dangerous to lose myself now. I force myself to look at Kelen.
He waves his hand, the gesture a knife in my heart. “Downpike came back, as pale as beach sand and shaking, covered in blood. He asked me to help him get the blood out of his clothes. I answered by choking the life out of him. It was no challenge at all to replace him. After I let the servants go, no one noticed a thing. These nobles do not take care of their own.”
“But why? Why any of this? Why would you want to extend Albion’s power, continue your father’s legacy?”
“Spirits below, you are obtuse. My only interest is securing so much power that I control everything. If you are not the most powerful person in the room, you are nothing. And when the Alben gentry is decimated in the coming conflict, well, that is no great loss. I’ll eliminate them all in the end, anyway. I will never be at another’s mercy again.”
I shake my head, unable, unwilling to process all of this. “You hurt me. We were friends, and you hurt me.”
“I am sorry about that, little rabbit.” This time he uses the Melenese word for rabbit, and I remember how he used to be the fox, every time we played Fox and Rabbit—how could I not have realized? “I never meant for you to get involved. I saw you the first day you met Ackerly and began watching you out of tender care. Then you gave me an opening with Ackerly, a chance to finally manipulate him. And I wanted to punish your Finn for thinking he could have you, for thinking he could claim one of my people for himself just as his country claimed my entire island. I was going to make you forget. You wouldn’t have remembered the pain, and you would have been so happy to be reunited with me. I would have protected you, Jessa. I would have kept you free from all this. He couldn’t do that for you, could he?”
“I wouldn’t let him.”
“Think of all the pain you could have avoided if you hadn’t chosen him. But I’m in a forgiving mood. I may yet take away your memories and let you fall in love with me.” His smile cuts through the night, blacker and colder. “And then I’ll give them back and let you lose Finn all over again. Over, and over, and over, for the rest of your life, as punishment for choosing him.”
He takes off his hat, pouring water out of the brim, and then puts it back on his head. “Now then. My book. Hand it over like a good rabbit, and I won’t destroy Melei.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t let soldiers kill the people who stepped aside and let our entire culture be stomped underfoot? I wouldn’t let them harm the people who let a visiting noble rape and abandon my mother? I wouldn’t let them destroy the people so infuriatingly weak they cannot even take care of their own? I would. I will. Give me the book.”
I look into his eyes, a dead black that reflect no light, not even a flash from the lantern. “You threatened everyone that I love. You killed my bird. And you took Finn from me.”
I drop the book on the ground, raise the lantern, and smash it down. The glass shatters, spilling kerosene, which immediately catches fire. The whole book is consumed.
“No!” Kelen screams, shoving me aside. He stomps on the flames but the oil won’t be smothered, the choking harsh scent of the smoke overpowering the wet earth around us.
Cursing desperately, Kelen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of sugar. He whispers a word and flings the sugar outward. It hits the book and the flames eat higher.
An inarticulate howl of rage tears from Kelen’s lips. He throws both hands in the air and screams a single word, releasing all his power, trying to turn flame into water using a stored-up spell.
One of the spells I changed in Sir Bird’s book.
The rain pouring down ignites in droplets of fire, and as they connect with more water, the magic spreads. The puddles around us shoot up in crackling, hungry flames, and Kelen’s sodden clothes turn into an inferno.
He screams, dropping to the ground an
d rolling, but the water around him lights on fire, fire and more fire, devouring him alive, a bright and burning beacon in the night.
My umbrella catches, and I throw it to the side, the wet hem of my skirt igniting. I turn in a desperate circle, but there is nowhere to run. I am surrounded by flames and will meet the same fate as Kelen.
A spurt flares up next to me, and I cringe back, bracing myself for the burn, when darkness rises in front of me like a shield, blocking the flames. I gasp as Finn’s shadow wraps itself around me, covering me with the cold pins-and-needles sensation.
If Finn is dead, how can his shadow still protect me?
I run from the flames, my skirts smoldering beneath Finn’s shadow, and do not stop until I am well out of the fire’s range. I kick off my outer skirt, and then look down at where an extra layer of shadow lies on my skin.
“Thank you,” I whisper, but the shadow dissolves as I watch. I grasp at it, desperate to keep it—him—here with me, but I cannot hold on to anything.
The flames eat higher, the sizzling and popping of water meeting heat a discordant night chorus. I sit on the ground and watch. Another Melenese custom we were forced to abandon was the funeral pyre. Kelen does not deserve the last rites of a warrior. But I think he deserves this death.
I won.