An Ember in the Ashes

The drums beat in a frenetic tattoo, and I don’t have to understand their strange language to know that it’s a breach alarm. Blackcliff is pure havoc, worse than I could have imagined. More than I could have hoped for. It’s perfect.

I do not doubt. I do not hesitate. I am the Lioness’s daughter, and I have the Lioness’s strength.
“I’m coming for you, Darin,” I say to the wind, hoping it will carry my message. “You stay alive. I’m coming, and nothing’s going to stop me.”
Then I swing out from my hiding place and hop onto the execution stage.
It’s time to free Elias Veturius.
L: Elias
Is this what happens to everyone when they die? One second, you’re alive, the next, you’re dead, and then BOOM, an explosion that tears apart the very air. A violent welcome to the afterlife, but at least there is one.
Screams fill my ears. I open my eyes and find that I’m not, in fact, lying on a fair netherworld plain. Instead, I’m flat on my back beneath the very same platform where I was supposed to have died. Smoke and dust choke the air. I touch my neck, which stings something fierce. My hands come away dark with blood. Does this mean I’ll have a severed head in the afterlife, I wonder stupidly? Seems a bit unfair...
A pair of familiar, gold eyes appears above my face.
“You’re here too?” I ask. “I thought Scholars had a different afterlife.”
“You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway. And neither am I. I’m setting you free. Here, sit up.”
She puts her arms under me and helps me up. We’re beneath the execution dais; she must have dragged me here. The entire back of the stage is gone, and through the dust, I can barely make out the prone forms of four Masks. As I take in what I see, I understand, slowly, that I’m still alive.
There’s been an explosion. Multiple explosions. The courtyard is in chaos.
“Did the Resistance attack?”
“I attacked,” Laia says. “The Augurs tricked everyone into thinking I died yesterday. I’ll explain later. What’s important is that I’m setting you free—for a price.”
“What price?” I feel steel against my neck and glance down. She is holding the knife I gave her to my throat. She pulls two pins from her hair, keeping them just out of reach.
“These pins are yours. You can pick your locks. Use the confusion to get out of here. Leave Blackcliff forever, like you wanted. On one condition.”
“Which is...”
“You get me out of Blackcliff. You guide me to Kauf Prison. And you help me break my brother out of there.”
That’s three conditions. “I thought your brother was in—”
“He’s not. He’s in Kauf, and you’re the only person I know who’s ever been there. You have the skill to help me survive the trip north. That tunnel of yours—no one knows of it. We can use it to escape.”
Ten burning hells. Of course she won’t just set me free for the hell of it.
From the mayhem around us, it’s clear that she’s gone through considerable trouble to pull this off.
“Decide, Elias.” The clouds of dust shielding us from view are slowly starting to clear. “There’s no time.”
It takes me a moment. She offers me freedom, not realizing that even chained, even facing execution, my soul is already free. It was free when I rejected my mother’s twisted way of thinking. It was free when I decided that dying for what I believed in was worth it.
True freedom—of body and of soul.
What happened in my prison cell was freedom of my soul. But this—this is freedom of my body. This is Cain keeping his promise.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll help you.” I don’t know how, but that’s a minor detail right now. “Hand them over.” I reach for the pins, but she holds them back.
“Swear it!”
“I swear on my blood, bones, honor, and name, I will help you escape Blackcliff, I will help you get to Kauf, and I will help you save your brother.Pins. Now.”
Seconds later, my manacles are off. The hobblers around my ankles are next. Behind the stage, the Masks stir. Helene still lies facedown, but she mutters as she shudders awake.
In the courtyard, my mother climbs to her feet, peering through the dust and smoke at the dais. Hag. Even when the world explodes around her, her main concern is that I’m dead. Soon enough she’ll have the entire damn school after me.
“Come on.” I grab Laia’s hand and pull her out from under the stage.
She stops, staring at the unmoving form of a Mask, one who escorted me to the courtyard. She brings up the dagger I gave her, and her hand shakes.
“He killed my grandparents,” she says. “He burned my home.”
“I completely sympathize with your desire to stab your family’s killer,” I say, glancing back toward my mother. “But trust me, nothing you could do would begin to compare to the torment he’ll face once the Commandant gets her hands on him. He was guarding me. He failed. My mother hates failure.”
Laia glares at the Mask for a second more before giving me a quick nod.
As we duck through the arches at the base of the belltower, I look over my shoulder. My stomach sinks. Helene is staring straight at me. Our eyes lock for a moment.
Then I turn and push open the doors to a classroom building. Students rush through the corridors, but they’re mostly Yearlings, and none of them look twice at us. The structure rumbles ominously.
“What the hell did you do to this place?”
“Set charges in sandbags all over the courtyard. And—and there might be some explosives in other places. Like the mess hall. And the amphitheater. And the Commandant’s house,” she says, quickly adding, “All empty.