The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(112)

All at once, the wall fell away, and he stood alone in utter darkness.

There was silence, then a flare, like someone lighting an enormous torch. He smelled sulfur, felt heat against his skin.

An enormous flame rose before him, twisting and roaring. Only this fire was black as midnight, spitting silver sparks like dying stars.

He staggered back and fell. His body was illuminated in indigo light. The fire surged forward, and he threw up his hands to shield his face, useless—

Nokhai, the fire thundered.

As he lowered his hands, the fire cleaved down its center, becoming two: a towering column of black and one of deepest violet.

“What are you?” he whispered, voice shaking.

What are you? the flames repeated back.

Nok closed his eyes. He was dying. His wound had split, or it had gone toxic, flooding his blood with poison. This was a fever, this was death, this was his end.

No, the flames said as one. It is not.

They sounded very certain. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. “Are you real?”

The black flame leaped and flared. What is real, I wonder?

Nok sat up, still weak. The pain in his side had abated to make room for fear, but it bit back into him as he moved. He winced. “I’ve had enough riddles for today. If you’re going to kill me, do it quickly.”

The column of Violet trembled and flickered, almost like laughter. Our little wolf is brave.

And it has a smart mouth, the Black mused.

“Are you one or two?” he asked.

The twin tendrils of flame rippled in unison. Humans, the voice of the Violet scoffed, but there was a softness in its voice. A fondness.

One, two. There is no difference. We are.

In unison, the Black and the Violet shot toward the ceiling, straight and thin as ribbons, then began lacing and twisting about one another. It was beautiful, fearsome, their motions as violent and feral as they were graceful. They danced, wilder and harder, until Nok could see no difference between them, only a void as cold and absolute as a desert night. All at once, they split apart, became one Black and one Violet again.

He understood then. “You’re—you’re the gods Vrea speaks to. The Ana and the Aba.”

We are known as such, to some, the flames conceded.

“I thought you were meant to be like parents,” he said. “I thought you’d be . . . human.”

We are not of your realm. We are hard for people to understand. And people fear what they do not understand, said the Violet.

They understand a mother and a father, continued the Black. They can love a mother and a father. But they cannot love what they fear—not truly. They can obey it, they can even admire and revere it. But fear sucks away the air that the flame of love needs to flourish. In the end, fear becomes revulsion, rejection. Always.

As they spoke, their twin flames intensified. Inconceivably, the air grew hotter, and Nok flinched. He was going to burn, his hair would catch, the fibers of his clothes—the fire. Fire.

“The First Flame,” he blurted. “Did it come from you?”

Long ago, the Violet murmured, and their heat abated, as though they were distracted by the memory. A gift to the Hana. Though they have forgotten what it meant. Their bond to us. Their Pact. Long ago for them, for you. For people.

Though not so long for us, continued the Black. We have not forgotten. We, who have created so much . . .

“Fire doesn’t create,” Nok said, remembering the soldiers that rode down his parents’ tent, that of the elders’, razing the whole camp as their scarlet tiger banners snapped in the dry wind. The goats had panicked, stampeded in the fray, some of them lying crushed, unable to move as they burned, too. He remembered the screaming. The stench of seared flesh in the air.

“Fire doesn’t create,” he repeated, louder now. “It doesn’t give. It only destroys.”

The flames crackled at that, like laughter. Spoken like a true child of your gods, said the Violet.

“What about my—what about them?”

Your gods—the ones that gifted you—they were born of the earth.

“The Hu were Gifted—born of the beast gods, too,” Nok pointed out. “They had their tigers. Before they went south to conquer the Hana.”

They had their tigers, agreed the Violet. And then they adopted the fire of the Hana. The First, it is called, but it was not. Humans always want to be the beginning of all things, but they never are.

Distantly, there came a rumble. It was soft, like far-off thunder, but Nok recognized it all the same: another attack.

Yes. It is time for you to take what is yours, said the Violet. Your kind—your gods, they cannot stay here in the Inbetween. They are of the earth.

Nok winced, trying to think, trying to take all of it in. If beasts came from the earth, then what of fire? He thought of kindling, of coal, of burned hair, of seared flesh. But that was just fuel.

A story from his childhood came to him then—a wayward girl who found a cave so deep she wandered into the center of the world. A core of molten oceans, of bright ever-burning trees . . .

“What of you?” he demanded. “Are you from this place, this Inbetween?”

Again, the flames crackled. No one is from the Inbetween, said the Black. That is why it is in between. It is neither here nor there. It is a no-place. And when it falls, we will go . . .

“Go where?”