Burn Bright

Ruzalia waited by the under-cabin’s window, her face hidden by impenetrable eye-shades. Her thick, red hair – the same colour as Rollo’s – was knotted at the nape of her neck like rope.

‘Take that one to the healer,’ she ordered, placing a lit cigar between her lips.

A serious-looking girl dressed in light armour helped Markes through a partition, to the opposite end of the cabin.

Puffing smoke, Ruzalia sank into a large armchair and motioned for Naif and Charlonge to sit opposite her. ‘So which of you is the cause of all this trouble?’

‘I am,’ said Naif without preamble. ‘The Ripers are divided because Lenoir killed one of the Night Creatures to protect me.’

Ruzalia leaned forward. ‘You? How fascinating. Why would the leader of the Guardians do that?’

Naif met Ruzalia’s penetrating stare with a steady gaze. ‘That is not important right now. I have a message for you from Eve and Clash. We’ve seen inside Danskoi. The Ripers are using the Peaks to make new Night Creatures.’

Ruzalia slapped her thigh in anger. ‘Danskoi. Right beneath my nose all along. I knew some perverted doings were at hand, but had no proof of it.’

The three gazed from Ruzalia’s viewing window as the levia-flies engaged the globes in a clash of light beams. Globes ignited and dropped like fiery comets to the ground. In their dying light, Naif could see more Ripers swarming up from Los Fien towards Danskoi in metal carriages, racing towards Lenoir and the others.

Then the zeppelin lifted and swung away.

The wrench of leaving Ixion faded a fraction as the light trails blended with the glittering luminosity from the clubs and majestic churches, transfixing her. Beautiful.

‘Hold tight,’ said Ruzalia.

The zeppelin lifted again, so quickly this time that Naif’s stomach felt as if it had been pitched outside her body. She gripped her chair and pressed her forehead to the window-glass, swallowing against the unpleasant sensation. Nothing but darkness below and above, and the vanishing lights of Ixion.

Where are we going to in this endless night?

Ruzalia leaned forward and dropped a translucent mask on her and Charlonge’s laps. ‘Quickly. Put it on.’

Charlonge obeyed instantly but Naif stared at the mask with suspicion.

A moment later, as brilliant daylight and Ruzalia’s laughter exploded upon her senses, she clamped her eyes shut and fumbled for it. She waited for the eye pain to subside before she dared to open them again and peer out through the mask’s filter.

The radiance of the sky and water made it hard to distinguish one from the other and for a moment she wondered if they were upside down. Then she saw a stretch of little green shapes – islands spaced apart as though they’d been sprinkled upon the ocean carpet by a giant hand.

She closed her eyes against the assault of light and colour and rested back in her seat while, next to her, Charlonge wept with sadness and relief.

A notion came to Naif then, born of anguish and anger and sorrow at what she’d left behind her; a thought emerging from her confusion. ‘Ruzalia, is it possible that the Ripers may not be the creators of what is happening in Ixion, but are caught in a trap of their own?’

Ruzalia crushed her cigar into a metal ashtray on the arm of chair and crossed her legs. She leaned back and blew rings into the air between them. ‘You pose an interesting question, youngling.’

Naif sank her face into her hands, exhausted with pain and sick with possibilities. ‘I have a friend called Rollo. He saw a Riper in Grave talking to a Councillor.’

‘Indeed?’ The pirate woman leaned forward, lighting another cigar. ‘Did your friend hear their conversation?’

Naif shook her head. ‘No.’ Saying it aloud gave her a surge of purpose. ‘But I will find out.’ For Rollo. For Krista-belle. For all of them. I will find out and come back. ‘Ruzalia, please can you take me back to Grave?’


This book has taken me several years to write. It’s a book I felt so passionate about that I kept working on it despite contracts for other novels. Many people have been a part of Burn Bright and I’d like to send them all my heartfelt thanks. Firstly, to Tara Wynne, my agent, who loved it right away even when it was just a one paragraph idea. My writers group ROR, who encouraged me to continue with it after they saw a skeleton draft (Tansy Rayner Roberts for her excitement, Dirk Flinthart for suggestions about the gangs, and Margo Lanagan who said it was full of de Pierres ‘yummies’, Richard Harland, Rowena Cory Daniells, Trent Jamieson and Maxine McArthur for the thumbs up).

Special thanks go to my publisher, Zoe Walton, who saw potential in the manuscript and gave a lot of extra time to help me re-work it into something much better. Zoe, I will never be able to thank you enough! Then there’s the Random House team. WOW! What can I say? You have been truly amazing. Peri Wilson, Sarana Behan, Justin Ractliffe, Linsay Knight – a gift to this veteran adult fiction writer venturing nervously into new territory.

I’d also like to mention my early readers, Ruth Cohen and Amy Parker, who gave invaluable feedback. And the Burn Bright Staffies who’ve been working so hard to make the website a vibrant place to visit long before the book entered the world.

Finally, a huge thank you to Yunyu for wanting to play in my world and inviting me to play in hers.

I hope Burn Bright does you all proud.


Sleeping bats hung from tangled roots along the roof of the cave, quivering as they dreamed. Naif didn’t once glance up at them as she passed through on her way to the jetty. Even on Ixion they had not gathered in one place in such numbers, and their twitching sleep unnerved her.

Ruzalia’s island, Sanctus, was a maze of water-tunnel caves and ready mists. Markes and Charlonge had taken to using the hill paths to traverse it, soaking in whatever watery sunshine they could, but Naif still felt safer underground, in the darkness. Something about the wild, windswept island deepened the ache in her heart.

Their escape from Ixion in Ruzalia’s airship brought her both terrible relief and sadness. She’d left behind her brother and her friends. She didn’t even know if Suki was still alive. What if the Night Creatures had overrun them? What if the cruel Ripers, Brand and Modai, had overthrown Lenoir?

The thought of Lenoir brought a flush of warmth to her skin. Even from across the other side of the Golden Spiral, Naif could sense him; a heavy presence in her mind that was both a weight and a strange comfort.

Other times, usually when she was alone, she’d feel a tug, low down in her stomach, and a tingling at the tips of her breasts. In those moments she cursed the fact that the Riper had saved her life. She had no wish to be bonded to someone so dangerous.

Since coming to Ruzalia’s island, her sense of him had become accentuated. When she’d reached a decision just moments ago, she’d felt his presence so sharply she’d found herself turning, peering into the dark, half-expecting him to appear.

He did not approve of her choice, she knew, but that would not stop her.

Picking her way down a worn rock ledge, she saw a small jetty protruding into the water tunnel. At that moment, though the ocean was calm and the tide low, she was able to step down without slipping. When the sea was ruffled, she imagined that it would be hazardous getting to the jetty.

According to whispers among the island’s Ixion refugees, Ruzalia had lost crew by choosing to moor her boat in a dangerous tunnel instead of the bay outside – events she was rumoured to accept without a flicker of emotion.

Naif could see Ruzalia now, at the bow of her ship, rubbing a cloth across the side; her wild red hair tied back and an expression of fierce concentration on her face.

She stopped at the beginning of the jetty and watched.

‘What brings you down here?’ the pirate called out without lifting her head from her task.

‘I want you to take me back to Grave.’

Ruzalia paused from her task. ‘Have I not told you that’s a foolish notion?’

‘Yours is but one opinion, Ruzalia.’

The tall woman stiffened, and then straightened. She dropped her cloth onto the deck and vaulted lightly onto the jetty, covering the distance to Naif in quick angry strides.

Naif stepped backed to the rock wall and found herself pinned there.

‘I did not risk my life bringing you and yours here to listen to such impudence,’ said the pirate.

Naif drew a shallow breath and steeled herself against the woman’s ferociousness. She had come to provoke an answer, and she wouldn’t waver. ‘You’ve been taking that risk all along. You didn’t do it for me alone.’

‘What would you know of my reasons?’

‘I’ve talked to … others.’

‘Others? The Liberated?’ She snorted. ‘None of them would ruin a story for a pinch of the truth.’

‘Please, Ruzalia, take me back to Grave. I have to find out why the Ripers have been going there.’

The pirate leaned in so close to her that she could feel the heat of her breath.

‘No.’ The word was said quietly but with intensity. ‘Now leave me to my work.’

She turned her back on Naif with utter finality.

There was nothing for Naif to do but retrace her steps through the cave labyrinth. When she reached the high spot where bats rested, she glanced back. Ruzalia had returned to tinkering with her sleek ocean racer. There would be no changing the woman’s mind and as she stood there, her disappointment was almost drowned by Lenoir’s relief.