Bound by Firelight Read online

  Also by Dana Swift

  Cast in Firelight

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2022 by Dana Swift

  Cover art copyright © 2022 by Charlie Bowater

  Map art copyright © 2022 by Virginia Norey

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593124253 (hc) — ebook ISBN 9780593124277

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Dana Swift

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Glossary

  Chapter One: I Meet Up with the Love of My Life and Almost Throw Him Off a Roof

  Chapter Two: Postponed Proposal

  Chapter Three: I Get Chased by Light

  Chapter Four: Trauma on Trial

  Chapter Five: My Words Get Twisted

  Chapter Six: Lies Legalized

  Chapter Seven: I Make a Decision

  Chapter Eight: Dealing with Death

  Chapter Nine: Into the Dome

  Chapter Ten: Smoked Out

  Chapter Eleven: Seeing the Impossible

  Chapter Twelve: A Touch of Hope

  Chapter Thirteen: An Old Acquaintance

  Chapter Fourteen: The Art of Breathing

  Chapter Fifteen: The Meeting

  Chapter Sixteen: Burying the Underground

  Chapter Seventeen: The Question of Voice

  Chapter Eighteen: Unmasking Fiza of Agsa

  Chapter Nineteen: Questions and Answers

  Chapter Twenty: Trials and Tribulation

  Chapter Twenty-one: Torment in Training

  Chapter Twenty-two: No More Pretending

  Chapter Twenty-three: Misfired Mission

  Chapter Twenty-four: I Sit in Solitary

  Chapter Twenty-five: I Begin My Escape

  Chapter Twenty-six: Breaking the Dome

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Experimentation of the Nine

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Sims Talks

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Return to the Red Room

  Chapter Thirty: I Figure It Out

  Chapter Thirty-one: Fly Forward

  Chapter Thirty-two: I’m Going to Find Some Answers

  Chapter Thirty-three: Second Time Is the Charm

  Chapter Thirty-four: Saved by the Red Woman

  Chapter Thirty-five: Break Out

  Chapter Thirty-six: I’m Asked a Question

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Awaiting an Answer

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Destroying What Tried to Destroy Me

  Chapter Thirty-nine: The Power of a Good Sisterly Talk

  Chapter Forty: I’ll Say It as Many Times as You’d Like

  Chapter Forty-one: Fiza Fight

  Chapter Forty-two: Piecing Together the Puzzle

  Chapter Forty-three: Signals Singeing the Sky

  Chapter Forty-four: The Real Battle Begins

  Chapter Forty-five: Breaking Down the Ice Door

  Chapter Forty-six: I Learn What It Means to Lose

  Chapter Forty-seven: Fighting My Uncle

  Chapter Forty-eight: A New Kind of Potion Room

  Chapter Forty-nine: I Fight

  Chapter Fifty: The Battle Inside My Mind

  Chapter Fifty-one: I Free Myself

  Chapter Fifty-two: Moolek’s Undoing

  Chapter Fifty-three: The Red Woman Revealed

  Chapter Fifty-four: Fiza’s Goodbye

  Chapter Fifty-five: What It Means to Be a Rani

  Chapter Fifty-six: The Weight of the Throne

  Chapter Fifty-seven: Dawn to Dusk

  Chapter Fifty-eight: My Beginning

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To anyone who has ever felt voiceless

  Deities and Their Powers

  The Nine Touches

  Erif, Goddess of Fire: Rules over volcanoes

  Red Fortes: Ability to create and manipulate fire

  Renni, Goddess of Inner Capability: Oversees personal growth

  Orange Fortes: Ability to manipulate and heighten senses and the body’s physical capabilities

  Ria, God of Air: Governs tornados and wind

  Yellow Fortes: Ability to create and manipulate air, especially for flying

  Htrae, Goddess of Earth: Reigns over fields and crops

  Green Fortes: Ability to create and manipulate wood and plant life

  Retaw, God of Water: Controls flooding and tsunamis

  Blue Fortes: Ability to create and manipulate water

  Raw, God of War: Stands on the battlefields of soldiers

  Purple Fortes: Ability to manifest weapons, shields, and boundaries

  Laeh, Goddess of Healing: Watches over the sick and injured

  Pink Fortes: Ability to heal and enchant potions to fight illness

  Dloc, God of the Cold: Dwells in blizzards and avalanches

  White Fortes: Ability to create and manipulate ice, snow, and other winter precipitation

  Wodahs, God of Shadow: Lives in darkness

  Black Fortes: Ability to camouflage and cast illusions

  The sky crackles with color. Magic jets into the air and explodes in mist and sizzling lights. The festival is in full swing. It’s loud. It’s blinding. And it’s the best thing I’ve seen in the past two months.

  Booths and stalls have popped up overnight. Ornate silk banners in the nine colors of magic are draped and fastened to every frame, making the brocade ones dedicated to the recent fallen scarce for once. The streets flow like a river as currents of wizards and witches hunt for the best food stall or for a good spot to shoot some of their magic in the air and add to the glazed smoke screen of color. Children and the Untouched who can’t cast throw powders instead and splash their friends in the face. Although the real Festival of Color isn’t for months, this impromptu celebration radiates joy.

  It feels like forever since I’ve seen the populace let loose like this. But if I were to drop from my shadowed rooftop, their happiness would melt. And b
y all nine gods, that’s the last thing I want. For weeks Belwar has been repairing and rebuilding the city, and tonight we celebrate the new western flying station, the reconstructed homes, the life still thriving in this small coastal country. If there is anything my people deserve right now, it’s one night of peace, of safety. So I stay nestled in my hiding spot, my eyes on the streams of color bursting in the sky, but my attention drifts to the bloodred magic in my hands condensing into my mask and then disintegrating into smoke over and over again. I know I’m saying the words, pulling the magic from the intricate design of my Touch to create the spell that blurs my face and makes me the Red Woman, and yet I don’t quit my muttering.

  It settles the heartache.

  As do the squeals of kids’ laughter below me, sounding bright and full of life. I didn’t realize how much I was depending on the festival to showcase how my people might be able to keep going. After my magic was used to cause Mount Gandhak to erupt, killing one hundred twenty-nine people, my country has trudged through grief, repaired the city, and, most achingly, accepted the suspicion that I, Adraa Belwar, did this to them.

  I’ve been living behind my vigilante persona for weeks, and I have to stop myself from plastering the thing to my face once again, right now, and become…become anything but the villain the city thinks I am. But I’m trying. I’m trying to feel okay with being just Adraa Belwar for a solid minute and a half as my country celebrates its color and diversity and strength to live on after destruction.

  Luckily, no matter what they think of me, I’m still here. Every night I slip past my added security and watch for any sign the Red Woman is needed. That I am needed.

  A thud echoes behind me. Footsteps. I whip around, mask adhering to my face instinctively and the bloodred of my magic smoking in my palms as I ready a ramming spell to throw the intruder off the roof.

  “Hey. Don’t kill me. I brought you food,” a familiar voice says.

  The lights from the street below illuminate Jatin Naupure, my boyfriend. Boyfriend. It’s strange thinking of him that way, considering he was my fiancé first, then a weird mix of rival, partner, and crush, though we were hiding our identities from each other for months. And now, he’s just…my person.

  My defense vanishes and my magic evaporates. “Okay. I guess I’ll let you sit next to me.”

  “Don’t act like you didn’t save this spot for me, Smoke.”

  I smile at the truth of it. I even kept the shingles warm with some red magic. When Jatin sits a second later, I can tell he notices the heat, but he only smiles and hands over my bowl. Roasted silken fish sitting on a bed of rice and smothered in a spicy red curry wafts into my nose. I take the bowl greedily.

  “How’s our favorite sociopath?” Jatin asks, scooting closer to me.

  I glance down at Nightcaster, who’s buying a witch a lamb chop on a stick. It would be somewhat endearing, watching him try to impress her, if I didn’t know the true Nightcaster. A cage-casting wizard from the Underground who couldn’t open his mouth without saying something revolting. We’ve been following him for weeks hoping he will lead us back to some scrap of evidence that we can use to prove a group of criminals called the Vencrin and the ruler of the country north of us, Maharaja Moolek, are working together. Or at least that they worked together to try to utterly destroy our cities when Mount Gandhak erupted.

  “He hasn’t been punched in the face today.”

  “The night is still young.” Jatin pauses. “And he hasn’t seen us yet.”

  “True.”

  Down below, Nightcaster pulls his bicep into a curl. Even from here I can make out the tattoos that run up his upper arm, mimicking the swirled designs of the gods’ Touch.

  “Gods,” I sigh. “It’s sad just watching it.” A breeze draws the scent of roasted silken fish back to me and I dig in. “Have I told you this is my favorite?”

  Jatin takes a bite from his own bowl and smiles. “I think it was in one of your letters once.”

  I frown. “I don’t remember writing that to you.” Maybe it was when I was really young and the letters I sent to Jatin still felt like something my parents were forcing me to do. At the time I couldn’t fathom accepting an arranged marriage with the most arrogant boy I’d ever met. When love felt like an absurd question and marriage a horrifying inevitability.

  “No, I mean the parchment was stained with it.”

  I knock against his shoulder as he laughs. “Stop lying.”

  “I could show you. I kept them all.”

  I side-eye him, my gaze tracing his strong jaw and thick black hair. “You kept them all?”

  “What? You didn’t?”

  “Well, yeah, I did. But you know that post in the Belwar courtyard where we train? I pinned them there as motivation to beat you. Can’t say they were well taken care of.”

  “Even the love letters? I’m hurt, Smoke.”

  “No”—I soak the rice in the curry and take a big bite—“those I burned.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jatin says, so casually my lie loses its footing.

  I open my mouth to joke he’s not the only one, but it rings too close to reality. For the past few weeks we’ve been patrolling the streets, responding to the signal that Jatin created and saving people. We’ve even made a competition out of it. But that’s what I’ve been doing underneath starlight. In blazing daylight it’s councils upon councils with my father and the five rajas of Belwar as they accuse me and call for a truth-spelling trial to determine my crimes.

  “Adraa?” Jatin whispers, sensing like always when I’ve started to spiral and tangle in my own thoughts.

  I shake my head as if to clear it. “Hey, thanks for responding to the signal yesterday. I couldn’t manage to get out of the meeting.”

  Jatin pauses. “They still want the hearing?”

  I can hear my heart hammer. “My parents are still trying to convince the rajas it’s not necessary.”

  “They’ll get through to them. And soon it will be behind us.”

  His words hit home. That’s all I want—for this nightmare to be behind us. But even the roof we’re sitting on now has ash embedded between the shingles. The air is saturated with the smell of soot instead of sea salt.

  Jatin goes back to his food, scooping up the rice with his fingers. “I saved seven people, by the way.”

  I drop a piece of roasted silken fish. “What?”

  He ignores me, but a smile plays at the corner of his mouth. “And you know what that means.”

  I shake my head, reconfiguring the tally. It’s been hard to keep track after two hundred. “I still think I’m up by two.”

  “Nope, down two.” He smiles full-on.

  It melts me even though my inner competitor huffs in irritation. “Don’t say it.”

  He leans in, close enough for me to feel his breath. “Winnin—”

  I turn my head quickly to kiss him, interrupting his taunt. I taste the spice of festival food, and, as always, kissing Jatin fills me with happiness and a sense of wholeness. The food is forgotten. His hand roams over my jawline where the Goddess Erif extended and stained my Touch burgundy, like tendrils of lashing fire.

  “You know, I’ve figured out that you kiss me to stop my teasing. It’s not a good way to train me.”

  “Are you admitting that you are trainable?” I joke, kissing him again.

  He smiles, but something across the alley catches his attention. I follow his gaze. A woman is lighting a candle in her attic. The flame seems to totter against the night, as if one hard blow might light up the curtains.

  I sigh, the ache returning. “That’s a house fire waiting to happen.”

  “Adraa, you should know, that signal yesterday?” Jatin waits a beat. “It led me to a house fire.”

  A lump forms in my throat. Two months ago, house fires were a thing of the past because m
y invention, firelight, brought sustainable light to every household in Belwar.

  I know I was the one to do it, to take my people’s firelight back to stop Mount Gandhak when Maharaja Moolek infused the volcano with my magic, but the candles still punch me in the gut. I could make more firelight. Easily. But the spell I invented has been labeled evil, an abomination everyone believes I created not to help but to control my people.

  I think I could live with that—the vicious misconceptions, my ruined reputation. But house fires? People in danger? I will myself to not cast my mask onto my face, blur out my features, and let Adraa Belwar disappear. Because my other self, the Red Woman? Belwar accepts her, has cheered her on ever since Jatin and I started patrolling in disguise. Belwar loves me when I wear my mask.

  Jatin reaches over and clasps my right hand—the one not covered with my Touch—a gesture that I have come to define as not only comfort but also acceptance. Love. “Thank you, Jatin. For being there for my people.”

  He squeezes again. “I’m here for you too.” His expression grows earnest. “I wanted to talk to you about something….”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve the hearing, my reputation, or the fact that people still think I bewitched you into trusting me.”