The Princess of Ash novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Binding Flame

On his back over the mountains I almost stab him, and in his hall the Council wants me burned in the rite. I hold the flame and walk out unburnt.

I rode to the Emberhold on the back of the man I meant to kill.

He had changed in the courtyard of my father's castle, in the cold dark, with the guards backing away.

I sat between two ridges of black scale as wide as armchairs, and the wind took my braid out of its pins.

Below us Harrowgate shrank to a handful of orange lamps.

The dragon's back was hot enough to sting through my riding skirt.

I waited until the last lamp went out behind us.

Then I slid the knife from my thigh and crawled up the ridge toward his neck.

The scales were slick, and I used my left hand to hold on.

The right one lifted the blade.

I knew where the soft place was, just behind the jaw, where the plates overlapped.

Lord Hask had drawn it for me in the margin of a book.

The dragon turned his head and looked at me with one huge amber eye.

"Not yet," he said, in a voice like a landslide.

"The wind is wrong, and you will go over the side."

I did not stop.

I drove the blade down at the gap.

He rolled in the air.

The whole sky tipped, and the stars went under me.

I screamed once, and then I had both arms wrapped around a scale the size of a shield.

The knife was gone, spinning down into the dark.

The dragon levelled out, and I swear that he was laughing.

"That was a good thrust," he said.

"You have been taught well by someone who does not like you."

"Put me down."

"We are two hours from the ground, Princess."

"Then you'd better fly faster."

His chest shook under me, and the heat did something to my stomach that I decided was fear.

I had another knife, strapped to my other leg.

He did not know that.

I held it all the way to the mountains.

The Emberhold stood on the lip of a volcano, a fortress of black stone with a red glow at its heart.

We landed in a courtyard crowded with people in black and crimson, who all went quiet.

I slid off his back and found my knees would not hold me.

A hand caught my elbow, hot and steady.

Auren Vask stood beside me in the torchlight, a man again, wrapped in a cloak somebody had thrown him.

He did not let go of my arm.

"My Council," he said, without raising his voice.

An old man came forward with a staff of dark iron and a face.

His robe was grey ash and crimson, and the others bowed to him.

"The Ember Speaker," Auren murmured, near my ear.

"He has been waiting a long time to dislike you."

The Speaker looked me over, from my braid to my ruined boots.

"A human," he said.

"The king of Carrow sends a human to the Cinder Throne, and calls it a gift."

"A wife," said Auren.

"A bride of the Binding Flame, then." The Speaker's lip curled.

"Let her prove it before the court."

A breath went through the courtyard.

"What is the Binding Flame?" I said.

Nobody answered me.

Auren's hand tightened on my arm.

"A rite," he said.

"The bride holds the sovereign's fire in her bare palm and counts to ten."

"And if she can't?"

"Then she is ash, and her house owes my throne tribute for her."

"How many have held it?"

"In two hundred years?" said the Speaker with pleasure.

"None."

He tapped the iron staff on the stones, and a ring of torches around us flared.

A path cleared to the center of the courtyard.

I could have refused.

I had a second knife, a hundred strangers watching, and one chance to kill him before I burned.

Instead I looked at the Speaker's smile, and I thought of my father's, the same smile in a different robe.

"Fine," I said.

I stepped into the ring and held out my right hand, palm up.

Auren came to stand in front of me.

He did not look pleased.

His eyes had gone orange at the edges.

"Thessaly," he said quietly, the first time he had used my name.

"You do not have to do this."

"Is that what they said to the others?"

His jaw moved.

He lifted his hand over mine, and fire poured from his fingers.

It was red-gold and silent, and it pooled in my palm like water.

It did not feel like water.

It felt like pressing my hand to the white heart of a forge, and I heard myself make a sound.

"One," I said.

The courtyard was so quiet that I could hear it hiss.

"Two."

Sweat ran down my back, and my eyes streamed.

"Three. Four."

I could smell my sleeve burning.

I did not look away from the Speaker, because I wanted him to see my face.

"Seven."

My knees locked.

"Eight."

Auren's hand shook above mine, a thing I would think about later.

"Nine."

"Ten," I said, and closed my fist.

The fire went out.

I opened my hand and looked at it.

There was no blister, no mark at all, only clean pink skin.

The Ember Speaker made a sound.

Around me a hundred dragon-kin started to whisper, and then one voice at the back cried out.

"She isn't burned."

Nobody in two hundred years had walked out of that fire.

And I had not felt a single thing after the count of three.

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