A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire 1)

My steps slowed, but Ezra walked faster. “Some kind of argument broke out between a few men in the bar, and it carried outside. Someone threw a tankard, and it frightened the little girl. She ran back toward the den, to this—this alley she’d been living in and—” Ezra sucked in a sharp breath as we neared the silent carriage. She reached for the door as white embers lit the sky beyond the wall.

All thoughts of escaping and the ship vanished. Dim light from an oil lamp spilled out from the carriage as Ezra opened the door. “The men started fighting outside, and Mari was caught in the middle of it when she ran after the girl. I think they believed she was another male. Her cloak was up, you see?” Ezra climbed in, holding the door open for me. “She got knocked down and hit her head on either one of the buildings or the road. I don’t know, but…”

The first thing I saw were slender legs encased in black breeches, bent at the knees, and hands limp in a lap. Then a beige blouse untucked and wrinkled beneath a sleeveless tunic, stained with blood at the shoulders and collar. I lifted my gaze to Mari’s face. Blood smeared the rich brown of her forehead. Eyes I remembered being a sharp black were halfway closed. Her lips were parted as if she were inhaling.

But no breath entered the lungs of the woman propped on the bench, slumped against the wall of the carriage.

I looked at Ezra as she crouched, picking up a bloodied rag. “She’s dead,” I told her.

“I know.” Ezra looked over at me. “I think she—” She drew in another too-short breath. “I was bringing her here for the Healer, but she…she passed right before I found you. She hasn’t been dead long.”

I stiffened. “Ezra—”

Her eyes met mine. “She doesn’t have to stay dead, Sera.”

Chapter 18

“I haven’t forgotten what you did when we were children,” Ezra said, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “When that ugly cat of yours—”

“His name was Butters,” I cut in. “And he wasn’t ugly.”

Her brows lifted. “He looked like he crawled out of the depths of the Shadowlands.”

“There is no need to disparage Butters’ memory like that. He was just…” The tabby cat formed in my mind, complete with a half missing ear and patchy fur. “He was just different.”

“Different or not, you brought Butters back to life when he got into that poison. You touched him, and that cat sprang to life.”

“Only to die less than an hour later.”

“But that wasn’t because of you,” Ezra reminded me. “His second death had nothing to do with that.”

But hadn’t it?

I tried not to think of that night, of what’d happened when Tavius had gone to my mother to tell her what he’d seen me do. The Queen had promptly lost her ever-loving mind. Granted, I was sure discovering that your child had brought life back to a dead barn cat would be quite unsettling, but enough that she had ordered the cat to be captured and…?

Squeezing my eyes shut, I reopened them as Ezra said, “You can help her.”

I slowly shook my head. Marisol had always been kind to me. She was a good person. “Butters was a cat—”

“Have you done it since?” Ezra challenged. “Have you given life back to some poor creature since then? I’m sure you have, so don’t lie. You’ve always had a soft spot for animals. There’s no way you haven’t.”

I thought of the kiyou wolf.

“Have you tried it on a person?” Ezra asked.

Immediately, Odetta replaced the wolf. That was what I’d been about to do when she opened her eyes, but I’d been panicked then. I hadn’t been thinking. I was thinking now.

“Ezra…” I loathed the mere idea of refusing her. She was family. The real kind that went beyond shared parents and even blood. On more than one occasion, she’d been there to shield me from Tavius’s barbed remarks when I’d been the Maiden and couldn’t talk back. It was always Ezra who stayed close to my side during the rare moments when we all gathered—like last night—so I didn’t look as awkward as I felt. She saw me as someone and not a thing. But bringing back a dead person?

“I haven’t tried it with a mortal,” I said.

“But you can at least try now, Sera. Please? There is no harm in trying,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, then I know…I’ll at least know we tried everything. And if it does? You will have used this gift you have to help someone deserving.” She carefully dabbed at the blood on Marisol’s neck. “And if it works, I’ll make sure she doesn’t realize how injured she was. No one but you and I have to know the truth.”