The Hollow Flame King

Six. Seven. Eight. She counts them through the gap in the basalt while the light goes out of the gorge, and the number stops mattering at about four. Ash and hot metal. That is what the air tastes like. Copper and cinders kicked up off the gorge floor, mixed with the wet-earth smell of the river below. Anya Vasiliev presses her back against the ridge and counts the raiders spilling through the gap. They move like oil on water, shadows pooling around their boots, swallowing the last of the daylight. Her hand tightens on the hilt of her flame-sword. The fire inside her chest flickers, not with fear but with the strain of holding it in. Keep it small. Keep it tight. Mikhail is forty yards behind her wrapped in a cloak that smells of horse and old wool, and if they see him, if they so much as look at him— *Anya.* His voice cracks on her name, thin as winter ice. *I can fight.* *You can stay put. That's fighting.* The lead raider stops. She is escorting her brother to a summit neither of them believes in, across a border that has been quiet for eleven months in the way a held breath is quiet, with a fire in her chest she is not permitted to use in daylight. What follows: a cinder that will not die, a shadow that will not leave, a summit that smells wrong from the first hour, a cage of echoes, a pit that steals light, a bargain struck underneath everything, a dream that burns the dreamer, and a hearthstone that has been holding something for two generations. *Ah. The traitor. I was wondering when he'd show his face.* *Not the curse, not the pain, not the way her hand had felt in his, or the way she'd kissed him in the ruins.* The summit still has to be concluded. Somebody still has to answer for the estate that burned. And nobody in either court is promising forgiveness to whichever of them signs first.