Bound by Firelight
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.”