Chapter 115: A DAY OF FIRE

By dusk, Aiden reached a shallow hollow in the cooled glass below the second shelf and stopped.

Aiden sat with the warm vial in his hand and let himself grin at it for exactly one breath.

Robbed that huge, ancient, terrifying beast’s pantry. Cinder’s Tier Three sitting in glass. The Frost Wolf’s limping down the far slope with holes burned through its hide.

The last one made that good breath sweeter.

You can still fall off the cliff, you know? I won, Frost Wolf. Hole yourself up in Harken’s manor. The next time you chase us, Cinder will end you.

Then he started turning the vial over, and the good breath ended.

Cinder had to evolve first, and even with the catalyst in his hands, she still needed the right environment.

The Sink wasn’t just hot. It collected all the heat drifting down from the Hearthstone Chamber. With nowhere to escape, the heat built up around her and kept feeding the evolution.

It was the same for Miasma. That’s what let her reach Tier Two. Not just the catalyst. The room.

He looked at the orange sap waiting in the glass.

So this is the fuel.

The forge... Oh. Of course. Of course I know where it is. I just fled from it.

Aiden looked up the slope anyway, at the haze of golden motes covering the third shelf and drifting across the mountain.

No other place in the world produced heat like that.

The best place to do it is the place I just robbed.

A dry laugh escaped him.

"Of course," he told the vial. "Steal the thing she needs from the worst place on the mountain, and now she has to evolve in the same place."

Cinder pressed her head against his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the warm vial against his chest.

She didn’t understand why he wasn’t pleased. The vial was there. It could make her evolve. She kept nudging him as she waited.

"Remember the Embercore fruit? Yes, you do, or you’d be trying to snatch the sap," Aiden said. "You couldn’t eat the fruit under the tree. You can’t eat the sap in the wrong place either."

Cinder stepped back from his shoulder. She bit his sleeve and pulled him gently so they could return to the Sink.

Aiden ruffled her head but stayed seated. "It happens here. Where we stole the sap."

Cinder looked at him for a moment. She understood. She didn’t back away.

Two months ago, she had made herself small in front of the Hound. Not now. Not in front of something far more terrifying than the Hound.

I’d make myself small. The sweat on my back is still cold.

She pressed harder into his shoulder instead. She leaned into him gently, agreeing with the plan. She had learned to be careful with him, who wasn’t as strong as she was.

You’d do it anywhere anyway, wouldn’t you? Don’t worry. We’ll do it here.

You’ve never had to work out how. That’s always been my job, and you’ve never once doubted I’d manage it.

He kept the worst question to himself, where the bond couldn’t carry it. He couldn’t let Cinder feel that one.

Tier Two cost me nothing. Forty-five years came back through the bond because she chose me.

Nobody ever told me what Tier Three costs.

He had emptied fifteen years into her on a frozen slope three weeks ago. He still had thirty.

If it wants more of me, it can have more of me. That was never a question.

The question is whether I’ll have enough left to survive it and to walk down the mountain with her, Miasma, and Nyx.

He had no answer for that yet. So he worked on the part he could solve.

The Tier Two evolution had taken hours for both Miasma and Cinder. Tier Three would take half a day. Maybe a full day.

And for all that time she would be exactly one thing. A beacon.

A blaze so intense that all the time he’d spent teaching her to bank her fire would mean nothing.

She would light up the side of the mountain like a second sun. Helpless. Defenseless. In front of a curious beast that felt more ancient than the mountain, surrounded by a ring of guardians they had stolen from.

I need somewhere I can defend while she evolves.

He searched the lower slopes with his Perception, leaving the golden motes alone. Heat was everywhere. He was hunting for stone.

Thick rock. A deep fold. One way in.

Give me the worst shelter on this mountain. As long as it has one entrance.

He found it on a rocky slope below them.

An old harvest-shelter, half-collapsed, dug back into a basalt fold where the rock ran thick, and the heat ran thin.

One entrance. Stone on three sides. A narrow path between the rocks.

Nyx blinds the path. Miasma poisons the entrance. Cinder guards the entrance until she can’t anymore. After that, I hold it.

Beside the entrance stood a small pile of carefully stacked stones. Somebody had built the shelter. They had not lived to use it twice.

He wanted the same thing I want. One safe night on a mountain that doesn’t do safe nights.

He got the shelter built. That’s more than most ever achieve.

Aiden looked at the pile of stones a moment longer than he needed to.

"There," he said. "You evolve behind the wall. We protect you."

Cinder looked down at the rocky slope.

"A day. We hold for a day. Then no cold will beat you again, and we walk past the ancient beast and down the mountain. Even it will think twice about fighting you."

It was a plan. Thin, desperate, depending on that beast leaving them alone for a full day. But it was a plan. That was enough for Aiden to start working.

He almost let himself have the second good breath.

Before he did, Miasma came up his arm to his shoulder.

She turned uphill. The green light beneath her skin went out.

Not dimmed. Out.

Aiden looked where she was looking.

High on the slope, one of the dense points of fire had broken away from the core.

It did not walk its circuit. It did not chase the Frost Wolf either.

It went past the grove. Onto the second shelf. Slow and certain, the same pace as everything on this mountain.

No...

It was coming straight down toward the fold of cooled glass where Aiden sat with a stolen vial in his hand.

One of the sentinels. The big one. The one that left the line days ago to carry the news up.

And now it’s carrying something back down.

Inside his coat, Nyx went small.

Aiden tightened his grip on the vial and got up.

"Move," he said, already running toward the rocky slope. "Something has come to have a closer look. I’d rather it found us behind a wall."

Cinder hauled him onto her back before he finished the sentence and bolted down.

Behind them and above, the sentinel came down the slope on four ancient legs, in no hurry at all.