It took only my fire.
The trembling of Hri Sora’s limbs ceased in frozen horror. Then she turned to the pit, the black and gaping hole in the ground where Itonatiu Tower had once risen to the sun. She strode to the edge and, though the emptiness falling away below made her sick inside, she opened her mouth and spat fire into the darkness. The flame fell in a ball down and down, deeper and deeper. At last it was nothing put a pinprick of light. Then it was gone.
A moment of stillness. Then screams.
They were so far away that Hri Sora almost missed them. If Etalpalli itself was not so deathly silent, she never would have heard them. But they rose from the darkness and pierced her ears. She hissed and stepped back quickly.
The Dark Father spoke again in her head: Are you ready to come home to me?
“No!” she snarled. “I will have vengeance first.”
Vengeance upon whom?
“None of your business. Give me my wings.”
Give me the Flowing Gold of Rudiobus.
Hri Sora gnashed her teeth. She remembered now the iron cage up in Omeztli, where her Faerie captive waited. Curses upon this raging fire that kept consuming her mind! Curses upon this frail body that could not support such flame! But she must not let herself grow angry. She must not allow the fire to take her again. How much time had she wasted already? Not that there was any need for haste. Gleamdren was immortal. Etalpalli was unassailable.
And Amarok was going nowhere.
This thought made her smile. No, Amarok never dared leave his self-styled demesne. Not with his children on the loose.
What is that smile for, daughter? Why do you keep secrets from me?
Warmth filled Hri Sora now, a pleasant warmth of anticipation. “Don’t you wish you knew?” she crowed to the empty air. “Don’t you wish you could read my mind?”
I don’t have to read your mind. I can predict your every thought!
“But this you don’t know,” she laughed. “And you won’t. It’s my business, not yours.”
Well, child, my business is your wings. Which you will never have if you fail to give me what I ask.
“All in good time, Father, all in—”
Etalpalli shuddered.
Hri Sora broke off with a gasp and fell to her hands and knees, feeling the ground with her fingers, tearing the rocks with her talons. Her demesne had been linked to her spirit the moment she was crowned queen. Though she’d burned the city, this link was unbroken. She felt every shudder, every change.
She felt now the intruder nosing along the edge of her borders. Beyond her world, out in the Between, but so close.
“You want it, don’t you, my Etalpalli?” she whispered, stroking the trembling stones like a pet. “You are hungry for more deaths. Were not all my people enough to satisfy this newly awakened appetite?”
What a crude animal your demesne has become. I’ll leave you to your games, daughter. But don’t forget our bargain.
The Dark Father’s voice receded into the pit. Hri Sora hardly cared. Rising, she sped her gaze to the far reaches of her land and on into the Wood Between. There he was, one of the Merry Folk, testing the strength of her gate. He’d never get through on his own, selfish little beast that he was. Ttlanextu had been weak, but he was no fool when he set those boundaries in place!
Yet just as the king could make the rules, so the queen could break them. Hri Sora raised a hand and, with a twist of her wrist, opened the Cozamaloti Gate.
“Light of Lumé be doused forever, look what you’ve gone and done!”
It was unclear if Eanrin spoke to the serpent, the girl, or even the bullfrog as he scrambled up from the muddy water, rubbing his middle where he’d been viciously kicked a moment before. He was soaked through, his hair plastered to his head, his cloak clinging to his body. But he darted forward to lift the fainted girl from the murk and thump her back to be certain she hadn’t swallowed more water. She lay limp as the dead against him, and he muttered a stream of curses.
A shadow fell across them both, and Eanrin looked up into the face of the bullfrog. Only it was no bullfrog now. It was a prince.
“Dragon’s teeth,” Eanrin snarled.
The prince was tall, dark, and perhaps what mortals considered handsome. His clothing, though slimy as a frog’s hide, was of fine weave, all blue and silver. In that hasty first glance, Eanrin decided he was probably not from the same Time as the girl in her skins. Time being unpredictable, it was possible for princes and princesses of different eras to meet when once they entered the Wood Between. Eanrin (though he paid little attention to mortal history) estimated a good thousand mortal years between girl and prince.