“That would be wonderful. Please, please be careful.”
“I will. Now go. The torch will be of no use to you as the ceiling is so low. There is only one narrow way forward and you will still have some light to guide you once you’re out.”
She was right that the torch would have been a hindrance. I was soon on my knees, crawling through the narrow black space.
It seemed like hours of silent, dusty stumbling. Rocks tortured my knees and shredded my leggings. The long trek had taken a toll on my ankle. I tried to forget my pain and concentrate on putting distance between myself and the soldiers, inch by inch.
The tunnel started to rise and widen. My heart quickened.
After some twists and turns, a shaft of grainy, dim light streaked the wall. Another turn, and a spill of rocks half blocked a gap in the tunnel.
My way out.
I clambered over the rocks, anticipating the first lungful of clean forest air, when my tunic caught on one of the jagged stones. I grunted and reached back to tug it free. It made a slight ripping sound as it came loose.
Triumphant, I reached up to launch myself from the musty tunnel.
Something stopped me. A tickle in my brain. A flutter of warning.
I froze. I had caught a hint of some scent. Sweat and horse.
I scrambled backward to lose myself in the cool darkness of the tunnel, but a hand flew out and wrapped itself around my wrist, dragging me forward over rocks.
As soon as I gained my feet, I threw my head back. My skull thudded against something, a nose or a chin, drawing a surprised grunt. I lashed out with my foot and heard another satisfying grunt as I connected with a shin. A heavy fist came down on the space between my shoulder and my neck. My hands and knees smacked into the packed earth.
“Filthy Fireblood,” a man’s voice said.
I was in a cave, a space the size of the library at the abbey. Light filtered in from an opening just ahead. Four soldiers surrounded me, all wearing the blue tunic with a white arrow.
Focus. Find your heat.
My teeth must have cut my cheek. The metallic taste of blood on my tongue helped me focus. I swallowed and closed my eyes, letting pressure build in my chest to send out a blast of heat.
“Oh no, you don’t!” A boot landed on my back, sending me sprawling onto the earth. “Empty your casks!”
Cold water sloshed on me from all sides, enough to shock my senses and make me lose focus. It dripped over my neck and pooled under my cheek in the dirt. I squeezed my eyes shut, furious that my heat had been counteracted so easily.
“Is that her, Captain?” one of the soldiers asked.
“It is,” said another voice. “That monk was as good as his word. A wisp of a Fireblood girl with black hair, just like the one who escaped.”
I pushed upward onto my elbows. A solidly built figure blocked the sunlight from the cave opening.
“I’ve been searching for you for a long time, Firefilth,” he said softly.
I blinked and his features came sharply into focus. The blunt nose, sharp cheekbones, and beard-roughened chin. The face that I had made myself remember over and over every day since I had landed in the king’s prison. The one I had imagined scarred and burned and begging for mercy I would never show.
It was the captain who had killed my mother.
“Last time I saw you, you were soaking wet and half dead on the floor of Blackcreek Prison. How did you escape, I wonder?”
I started to shiver, that terrible night coming back to me in waves. I tried to focus on my heat, but fear and cold weakened me.
The soldiers closing in, the villagers retreating. Mother and I ringed by blazing torches…
Panic seized me. I put my hand out and sent a blast of heat at the soldier’s face. He brought his leather-covered arm up, and it darkened with the blast. He snarled a command, and another splash of water covered my head.
“I’m not who you remember,” I warned, wiping rivulets of water from my lips. “You captured a scared girl that night. I’m not scared anymore.”
It was a lie. My stomach churned and my chest ached with the pounding of my heart.
I pressed my hands to the ground, heat spreading to cover the packed-earth floor of the cave. Some of the men cried out and lifted their feet in a comical dance, the thin, worn soles of their boots little protection from stinging heat. The captain, though, wore thick leather soles.
His mouth thinned. He grabbed my hair and pulled my head back, making me suck a pained breath through my nose. More water sloshed over me and I started to shiver.
“You Firebloods think you’re so powerful, but all we need to defeat you is a little cold water.”
I leveled him with my eyes. “I will kill you all with my dying breath.”
His smile dimmed, but he recovered quickly.