“Ashes, your dress,” she says, and then her hands are all over my robe, trying to wipe off the dusty grains of rock embedded in the fabric.
I laugh. “They do look like ashes. Maybe I’ll get bonus points for authenticity.”
Elisha rolls her eyes. “Let’s hope you rise anew when Aban kills you.”
“Blasphemy,” I tease in Aban’s deep voice, and we both snicker as the wind gusts at our clothes and hair.
Then the bell tolls in Ulan, and the smirks drop from our faces.
“Come on,” Elisha says, grabbing my hand. We run toward the village and the citadel, standing proudly in the distance, its tower made entirely of blue crystal.
Elisha is the only one who knows the real me. We’ve been friends since I wandered into Ulan when I was three and deathly bored. Her family lives in the village, and I visit often. The population is smaller now after the Rending, so hierarchy doesn’t mean as much as it did in ancient times. But my father is still heralded as the Monarch, and he insists on some amount of pomp and display. He says it settles people to know someone’s in charge. They feel at ease knowing there’s someone noble and dignified watching over them, whose life is dedicated to serving them and their best interests. So I carry on all removed and dignified in front of the villagers, and it’s only Elisha who sees me for who I really am—another girl, like her, who wants to pull funny faces and drop buckets of water on the Elders and climb the outcrops of Ashra. A girl who wants to squelch handfuls of sand at the bottom of Lake Agur and come up just as her lungs are bursting. Someone who’s free, who flies through the wind like a sunbird or a butterfly. Someone like Elisha.
But that isn’t who I get to be. I’m Princess Kallima, daughter of the Monarch, heiress of the Red Plume and all of Ashra. The Eternal Flame of Hope for what’s left of mankind.
I’m the wick and the wax, my father always tells me. I must burn for others, even if it means I will burn and crumble for those whose path I light. “We cannot return to those dark days,” he says, and I know he’s right, but it doesn’t mean I always like it.
The dusty sand of the roadway feels hard and cool against my bare sole as we run toward the citadel. A hum grows louder in the distance, the vibration echoing through me as we hurry. It seems too far away as I gasp more air into my lungs.
A dark shadow casts over us, an oval of darkness on the ground that moves faster than we can keep up with. I glance around the blue sky and see it, the wooden belly of the airship as it creaks and hums its way past us. The gears on the sides spin and the plum-colored balloon wobbles back and forth in what little breeze there is, but it’s the humming engine that keeps it moving through the air toward the landing pitch.
“What were you thinking?” Elisha huffs beside me as we run. “The Elite Guard’s already arriving. You could’ve gone to the edge of Ashra after the ceremony.”
I open my mouth to answer, but no answer comes. She’s right, but I’d thought I could escape for just a moment, just freeze time and not have to face all of this.
A momentary thought. A dream snapped in two like the pika’s fireweed sprigs.
“At least you’ll get to see him again,” she teases, but the guilt comes over her face as I don’t smile back. “I’m sorry,” she says, regretting it right away.
I shake my head. “Jonash isn’t awful.” And he isn’t. But he’s not my choice, either.
We hurry on, the citadel feeling like it’s never closer. We stop a few times to catch our breath, and I look down at my foot, smudged black from the dusty roadway.
A chime sounds through the clearing, and Elisha and I exchange worried looks. The bells are already ringing. Is it that late? She reaches for my hand and pulls me along the path, toward the bells chiming in the gleaming crystal tower of the citadel.
Maybe Aban will burn me alive, after all.
We finally reach the side of the stone building, and two of the Elder Initiates are there, straightening their robes and tying red rope belts around their waists. They look up in alarm as we stumble toward them.
“Kallima,” one of them says, his brown hair slicked back and his sandals scraping against the dirt. “I thought you’d be inside already.”
I pant. “Did Aban start already?”
He nods. “The Elite Guard arrived ten minutes ago. Elder Aban’s already reading from the annals.” Soot and ashes. I’m doomed.
“Your Highness,” the other says, a dark woman whose golden earrings swing back and forth as she reaches out her hand. I take her hand and she pulls me up the stairs into the citadel.
“Good luck,” Elisha shouts, and then the world around me is dark and silent, closed in by the shadows of the palace hallways.
I HAVE A momentary wish that the Initiate would pull me toward the northern hallways, toward the arched ceilings of the library and the rows of annals themselves. I’d rather bury myself in there, surrounded by piles of books, than face the crowds of the Rending Ceremony. But my absence wouldn’t go unnoticed, so there’s nothing to do but follow her toward the south of the building instead, into a great room lit by candles and chandeliers of glass, where my father stands with his arms outstretched like a scarecrow. Three attendants are crouched around him, straightening his robe, fastening his ceremonial gilded sword and buttoning the endless gleaming buttons of his official Rending Ceremony costume.
He peeks over his shoulder at me, his gray wiry beard pressed against the fine gold-and-red embroidery of the crisp robe he wears. “Kallima,” he says, his voice filled with relief. “So Elisha found you.” An attendant murmurs an apology as he turns my father’s head forward so he can properly affix the plume of the Phoenix to his coat. “Where have you been?” my father asks the front of the room.
I don’t like to lie to my father, but like any loving parent, he worries too much when I go near the edge of the continent. There hasn’t been an accident on Ashra since I was two years old, and yet he still fears that I’ll lose my footing and fall off the edge of the world. I don’t think I could survive without my realm of one, so I bite my lip and gently betray him.
“At the lake,” I say. “So many flowers are in bloom now.” Two more attendants rush toward me, and I’m forced to raise my arms to the side like my father. They mumble to each other about the gray soot on my dress and the ragged ends of my golden rope belt. I wait in guilty anticipation of them noticing my missing shoe.
My father chuckles under his breath, and though I can’t see his face, I know his eyelids are crinkling at the sides as he smiles. His blue eyes are always filled with warmth, even when he scolds me. “My Kallima,” he says. “Always fluttering away.”
The attendants tug at his sleeves and yank my hair back, brushing the brown matted waves into a more presentable tangle. Two of my father’s attendants move to the side of the room and reach for the heavy golden headdress to bring it toward me. I groan quietly. It’s beautiful, but it weighs a ton, pressing me into the ground. Whenever these ceremonies end and I get to take it off, I’m always surprised I don’t float away.
The headdress is like a crown, but made of thousands and thousands of golden beads and cones and iridescent shells from the creatures that lurk in the mud of the lake. The strings of beads end in tiny plumes of red, usually the feathers of sunbirds but sometimes dyed gull or chicken quills if they need replacing. The headdress tinkles and chimes as they carry it toward me and lower it slowly onto my head. The beads drape across my forehead and dip along the sides of my head, where they fasten together in the back and drape through my hair.