Chapter 1

Karys

Hello, Wildfire.

Dravyn's voice echoed through my mind as I stared into his storm-grey eyes.

Wildfire.

I inhaled deeply, swallowing the word down, lodging it more completely into my being. It felt like more than a nickname after all that had happened. It felt like a calling. An answer to a question I'd been too afraid to ask until this moment.

I was burning, tingling inside and out, my mind restless, filled with both too many answers and too many questions. The Tower of Ascension we stood in, which had once seemed so large and imposing, suddenly felt far too small to contain all I had become—all I was on the cusp of becoming.

I led the way to the door, Dravyn following closely behind.

The two of us stepped side-by-side into the hazy, magic-filled air of the Middle-Heavens. This air had changed, too. I'd once found it oppressively heavy…but now it only made me feel stronger, more alive as I breathed it in, like a warm breeze lifting the sails of a ship.

In the polished marble surrounding the tower's base, I caught another glimpse of my reflection—a clearer glimpse—and I gasped. The burn scars on my face and neck remained, outlines branded in place by an accidental fire I'd set years ago. But now they were… different . No longer scars. Not signs of the trouble I'd caused, but signs of magic I'd earned—for, with every step I took, they were transforming into the same sort of brilliantly glowing marks I'd seen on Dravyn's skin when he accessed the deeper wells of his magic.

Not proof of my mistakes, but proof of my power.

I was power.

I was a flame, bright and blazing a new path forward.

And I was fast . In the blink of an eye, I climbed the sloping hill leading away from the tower, coming to a stop at the top ridge and glaring into the distance. Far away from where I stood, a group of elves was fleeing—what remained of the faction led by Andrel, who had launched an assault on this divine realm and attempted to destabilize it for reasons I was still trying to make sense of.

Fury screamed between my ears as I thought of what they'd done. A warm, needling sensation swept over my arm. I glanced down and saw more marks like the ones on my face spreading over more of my skin. Bits of glowing, molten magic snaked along my forearms and dripped like blood from my fingertips.

When I flexed my hands, attempting to contain and control the power, the liquefied fire blazed bolder for an instant before turning to smoke. Plumes of that smoke whipped around my body, weaving amongst the sparks and embers and turning me into a moving, breathing firestorm.

Within the walls of the spinning, building storm—or perhaps just in the vortex of my own raging mind—I saw everything that had happened in the past hours: The broken barriers. The bloody battles. The bomb planted at the base of the tower behind me, and my desperate attempts to carry it away from this realm. Attempts that had succeeded. But then Andrel…

The fire surrounding me billowed and roared as I pictured his face.

My once closest friend and ally was gone—back in the mortal realm—but the ones fleeing into the distance were his followers…

Would they have stabbed me in the heart without flinching, just as he had done? Were they all willing to destroy as much as Andrel was, no matter the cost?

If I kill them now, they won't have the chance to follow him any farther .

I took a step forward, heat flaring all around me, smoke and fire engulfing me so completely I could no longer see my targets.

I didn't care that I was blind. I was still moving. I didn't need to see to kill, I could—

A hand reached through the storm and closed around my arm, its grip gentle yet strong, holding me back.

Dravyn .

Even through the chaos surrounding my thoughts, I recognized his touch.

"They're dangerous to us," I said, not looking at him. "And what they did was wrong."

"Yes."

"They tried to ruin this realm, the order of the world—all of it. They won't simply give up after this defeat."

I tried to pull free, but he held more tightly.

"We can't let them just leave ," I growled. "I could stop them."

"You could."

"I could set fire to every one of them. Their ashes could fertilize the very ground they sought to destroy. They deserve it. They deserve worse. "

He didn't reply.

Somehow, his silence caught my attention more than any words he might have said. I stopped fighting his hold and turned my glare his direction.

His fingers dug into my skin. "I would let you go if I thought that was what you really wanted." His voice grew softer, thick as the smoke between us, as he added, "But I think you would regret it."

No, I wouldn't , I thought—and very nearly shouted it—as I ripped my arm from his hold and paced the hilltop.

My fires wrapped around me like a protective cloak, the flames rising and falling, burning brighter every time a rush of fresh fury made me clench my fists…only to recede a little with each deep breath I managed. It gave an illusion of control—which lasted until I looked once more to the last place I'd seen the retreating elves.

Their shapes were fading from sight.

They're getting away.

The fires surrounding me swelled in protest, making me feel as though I could have lit the entire world ablaze with a mere snap of my fingers.

Dravyn seemed undeterred by the threat of me, however; he closed the distance separating us, reached through the rippling fire and took hold of me once more.

He spoke my name as his fingers brushed over my arm, and I bristled at the sound as though it was an insult, a raggedy garment he'd flung at me and insisted I wear. It was tattered. Torn. I was embarrassed to slip it on, because Karys was the one who had given those retreating elves weapons to use against this realm.

Karys who had trusted the wrong people for far too long.

She had been a fool, weak and useless compared to the being I was on the verge of becoming—the powerful being who had raced out of the tower with fire smoldering in her veins.

I wanted nothing to do with Karys at the moment.

But Dravyn insisted on continuing to call out to her. He repeated the name like a mantra, a part of some ancient, revered hymn that no amount of fire or destruction or regret could erase.

Every ounce of my new, waking power continued to rebel at the sound of it. I pulled away again and started toward the retreating group in earnest, now as eager to get away from Dravyn and my old name as I was to catch and incinerate my targets.

Dravyn's voice followed me, circling around me, trying to drag me out of the dark waves and back to shore.

Miran-achth , he said, quietly, My breath. My Wildfire. Look at me.

I would have sworn he was speaking directly into my mind; the words were far too clear and loud given the distance between us.

I slowed, tilting my face toward him even as I continued to inch away.

"You don't want to kill them," he said, out loud now. "Not like this."

I dug my nails into my palms, focusing on the pain of it. Smoke swirled around me once more. In the thick waves of grey I no longer saw any visions of the recent blood and destruction. Instead, there came another, slightly older memory of this realm: One of glass rectangles all lined up in neat rows—too many to easily count—all shining in the scattered torchlight.

Gravestones , I recalled.

One for every person Dravyn had killed right after he'd ascended.

It was so clear it seemed as if the God of Fire had—once again—planted it directly into my mind. Whether he'd done so on purpose or not, I couldn't say, but I wondered…

Was such a thing possible, now that he'd transferred so much of his power into me?

How connected were we?

I shook my head, trying to clear it of the melancholy memories of glass and gravestones. I stumbled a few more feet away from him but went no farther than that.

He didn't try to close the distance between us this time. He watched me as I fought to steady myself, concern knitting his brows together.

Slowly, I felt my control resurfacing, the rage within me subsiding, the fires around me cooling. It took far more effort to put out the fires than it had to call them.

As the last wisps of fire shifted to smoke and drifted away, I looked, one final time, to the last place I'd seen the retreating elves.

There was nothing there but dusty ground and hills rolling toward a dark and foreboding horizon.

I exhaled a shuddering breath. A flood of emotions warred within me. Before I could untangle any of them, a sudden rush of power and the sound of wings—both leathery, booming flaps and softer, more delicately precise whispers of movement—stole my attention.

I turned and saw the Goddess of Control and the God of Winter landing side-by-side on the slope behind us.

Valas rolled his shoulders and folded his feathered, ice-glazed wings against his back.

Mairu did the same with her dragonesque appendages before turning and immediately finding me. Her eyes were as reptilian as the wings she'd tucked away—a bright, unsettling shade of yellow with black diamonds in their centers—but they became increasingly more human-like as she moved closer to inspect me.

One of her slender hands pressed uncertainly against my scarred face while the other gripped my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

My mouth felt unbearably dry, as if filled with the ashes of my extinguished fury, but somehow, I still managed a response. "Yes. For the moment."

She looked as though she wanted to press me further, but more middle-gods and goddesses were suddenly arriving, sparing me from that conversation.

One by one they appeared—the same divine beings who had walked into battle with us just hours ago.

The God of Storms came first, his dark eyes still shining with anger over the whole ordeal, his body tense as a coiled spring, prepared to launch back into battle at the slightest provocation.

Then the Healing God, Armaros , appeared in a burst of white and shimmering gold magic. He waited with one arm stretched out behind him toward Edea, the Goddess of Sky, who arrived an instant later. The Healing God's expression was grim with concern as he watched the goddess move with slow, shaky steps.

Despite Edea's unsteady appearance, my anxious heart unclenched somewhat at the sight of her. The last time I'd seen this goddess, she'd been sprawled out on the ground in the shadows of the tower. Surely dying, I'd thought. So it was a relief to see her standing on her own two feet again—to know that whatever wicked weapons Andrel and the others had devised were apparently not strong enough to kill a goddess.

Not yet, anyway.

But as the goddess's gaze swept over me, catching on my scars—which I could only assume were still glowing, however more faintly now—the tight feeling in my chest quickly returned.

She looked at me as though I was the one who had returned from the dead. As though I was a ghost who didn't belong in this realm, regardless of the divine magic now burning within me.

A stranger in this strange land all over again.

Stepping away from the crowd, I did my best to settle my new, burning magic further. It hurt to press it down; a tight and tingling pain along all my edges, like trying to shove a foot into a boot two sizes too small.

No one followed me as I moved away—though I could sense the curious, secretive glances they kept shooting my way, along with the building tension as the aftermath of our battle settled, leaving space for questions to rise.

What happened?

Why did it happen?

How do we keep it from getting worse?

The entire world is unsettled, our magic and power threatening to shift …

The larger problems looming over us were plentiful, but at the moment, I couldn't think of much beyond my own pain and discomfort.

The harder I tried to push my magic down, the more excruciating keeping it in became. It felt like there were heated blisters popping up all over my skin, another one bubbling up with every repressed flare—though a quick inspection revealed that, at least on the outside, I looked perfectly intact.

Dravyn continued to watch me out of the corner of his eye, a worried frown on his face. With every wince I made, or too-sharp inhale I took, he addressed the crowd around him with increased urgency.

That crowd grumbled louder and louder as the minutes passed, until Dravyn lost his patience, or his concern with me reached new heights—or some combination of the two—and he silenced the gods around him with a fiery display of furious magic.

"The battle is over, at present," he said, sharply, into the freshly stunned silence. "Obviously, we have much to discuss and deal with in the coming days, but for now I think we need to return to our respective territories and regroup; none of us are thinking clearly as we stand now."

A few grumblings followed—the Marr never missed an opportunity to argue, I'd learned—but a few minutes later, the last of the divine beings finally transported themselves away from the tower, leaving Dravyn and me alone once more.

I stopped fighting the wildness of my new magic and let it rush more freely through me. It sucked the breath from my lungs and made my legs feel like they were melting, dropping me to my knees despite my best efforts to steady myself.

"We should go back to the palace," Dravyn said, reaching out his hand as he approached, "so you can rest in a place away from the tumultuous energies surrounding this tower."

I couldn't make myself reach back. My fists pressed hard against the cold ground on either side of me as I hung my head, fighting the urge to vomit—or worse, to give in to the intense urge to search the horizon once more for our retreating enemies. I was a strange combination of sick and angry. Exhausted, yet humming with power and a dark desire for vengeance.

Dravyn stood at my side while I attempted to collect myself once again. With little more than the snap of a finger or the occasional twist of a hand, he wordlessly extinguished every furious flame that escaped my body, his gaze calmly scanning our surroundings for threats as he did so.

"I wanted to make them all pay," I said after a long silence. A confession. The quiet bloodlust in my tone frightened me; my voice didn't seem like my own.

Dravyn didn't so much as flinch at the sound of it. He only said, "I know."

"And not just them," I muttered, pressing a hand to my chest, fingertips mapping their way over the newest thick, gnarled scar stretching over my skin. The upper-gods had stopped my bleeding, healed my broken bones, and my stained tunic remained mostly in one piece…but through the bloodied fabric, I could still feel the damage that had been done.

I closed my eyes against the memory dropping into my head—the sight of Andrel's knife glinting wickedly in the sun just before it slashed toward me.

Swallowing hard, I said, "He stabbed me. Andrel, I mean. We were beside some mortal river I didn't recognize, after the chaos of traveling through Eligas, and I…" I winced as I pressed my fingers against my heart. Not because the wound there still hurt, but because the weight of what had happened settled fully against me with a violent suddenness, like a heavy iron ball I hadn't been fully prepared to catch.

Dravyn knelt before me and took my hand, drawing it away from my body and lacing his fingers through mine. "You don't need to speak of it anymore right now. I already know enough."

I gave him a curious look.

"I'm the one who carried you away from that mortal shoreline," he explained, pulling me back to my feet. "I saw what he did."

I fought my way to my feet and stepped away from him, absently touching the wrist that had, until a short time ago, held a bracelet he'd given me. That bracelet's magic had allowed me to leave this realm and take Andrel's weapon with me. It was no longer there, but it had done its job—carrying me away from the battlefield, and apparently, leading Dravyn to my side…

"If there had been time, I would have gone after him, too," Dravyn said, his tone mirroring the violence that had been in mine moments ago. "But between the weakness traversing realms had caused you, and the amount of blood you were losing, I had no choice but to focus only on saving you."

A cold sweat washed over me. "I thought I was going to die."

A haunted softness overtook his voice as he said, "So did I." I felt his gaze lifting to me as he added, "Which is why I carried you directly back to the Tower of Ascension—to its magic—and why I desperately called out for the Moraki to meet me there."

"And they actually…did." The thought made me dizzy.

He took a deep, steadying breath. "It's not how I envisioned your ascension taking place—if you decided you wanted it to take place at all. But the alternative…"

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the guilt building in his expression and clouding his eyes, so I quickly tried to reassure him. "I don't regret anything I did. And what you did…I'm glad you did it. I'm grateful. If I'd been in my right mind, I would have made the choice myself."

He nodded, though his gaze didn't meet mine.

"I'm just a bit…dizzy. Confused." I held up my hands, trying and failing to make my skin glow at will with the magic I'd seen in my reflection earlier.

"What am I?" I wondered aloud. "I heard the upper-god of the Shade say the amount of magic you gave to me was unprecedented. How much, though?"

Dravyn continued to avoid my gaze. "I gave what I needed to."

Unsatisfied with this answer, I stepped directly in front of him and said, "You once told me that the Miratar spirits who ascend into the court of a particular Marr become like an extension of that Marr's very being. So what does that mean where you and I are concerned?"

"You aren't a mere spirit. You've been given the rank of a middle-goddess by the Moraki who reign above us."

Goddess .

My dizziness grew worse, but I steadied myself through it and asked, "We can't both be the Marr of Fire, though, can we?"

"It takes weeks—sometimes months—after ascension for the powers of any given Marr to fully establish themselves. Nothing is set in stone, as of yet. Fire will be the magic that comes most easily because of what I offered to you in order to aid in your ascension. But there's more to you than what I gave you. The Moraki granted you power in addition to mine, and it's impossible to say how much, or what you might shape that into."

I considered all this information for several minutes. "And what becomes of the magic you've poured into me?" I asked. "How does that affect you?"

He frowned. "We have a lot of things to figure out, I think."

I couldn't argue with that. And the list of things extended well beyond my powers.

One thing in particular struck me as we stood there. I said nothing of it at first, yet Dravyn still fixed me with a curious, expectant gaze; the anxiety suddenly rolling in my stomach must have been obvious on my face.

But I didn't look away.

No more secrets . We'd decided on that before marching into our last battle together—that whatever there was to figure out, we would face it together.

More than magic bound us together after all we'd gone through these past months, which was why I cleared my throat and said, "There's something else that happened beside the river. Something Andrel said to me before you caught up with us."

The mere mention of Andrel's name stirred up a scorching wind, sent it searing across my skin before Dravyn reined it in and calmly asked, "What did he say to you?"

"When I was lying there, he thought I was dying, too, I think. So he said something he probably wouldn't have, otherwise. Something I couldn't make sense of at the time, but now…"

Out of habit, I reached for the sparrow-shaped charm that had once hung so often from my neck. For so many years, it had been my greatest sense of comfort and strength.

But it was no longer there; the only thing my hand fell upon was my bloodied clothing and the bruised, scarred skin underneath it.

"Karys?"

I lowered my hand, once again looking the God of Fire in the eyes. "Dravyn…I think my sister is still alive."