Wisteria Fire

  It was a spring that pretended to be summer, the kind of day when the air itself seemed to glitter with expectation. At the edge of the palace’s east gardens, the three children sprawled on the grass, half-shaded by the drooping branches of a wisteria tree. Twelve-year-old Iliyria Sylrendreis lounged on her elbows, a slingshot balanced across her knees, scanning the far edge of the pond for anything that moved. Beside her, Nalea Lumear picked at a daisy chain, careful hands threading stems with an engineer’s precision. Falanthriel Miriel, the only one of the trio who could not claim even a fraction of patience, paced the bank in search of skippers or beetles, any excuse to avoid stillness.

  For a while, it was enough just to be. Iliyria let herself forget the halls, the duties, the bracing chill of her father’s judgment. Here, under the riotous green, she was not a “problem” or a “disappointment,” but simply a part of something that would not exist without her. She reveled in the quiet, the sense of marginless time.

  That peace was always borrowed, and never for long.

  The first warning was the laughter: brittle, too-bright, and with an echoing edge sharpened for effect. Mirella Sylrendreis led her coterie across the lawn with the unhurried stride of someone arriving at a coronation. She wore her hair twisted in a crown, the latest court fashion, and her sash, blue, matched the retinue in step behind her. Mirella had a gift for curation: of outfits, insults, and audiences.

  The arrival cut the day into before and after. Falanthriel dropped a stick he’d been using to harass the pond and nudged Iliyria, wordless, a signal that they were about to be invaded.

  Mirella did not deign to greet them, instead stopping at the edge of the wisteria’s shadow to observe her prey as one might assess the ripeness of fruit.

  “Isn’t it tragic, how even the best scenery can be wasted on the wrong guests?” she said to no one, or everyone. Her retinue tittered, on cue.

  Iliyria refused to look up, but the set of her shoulders went rigid. Nalea shrank behind her, fingers twisting the daisy chain into a knot.

  Mirella’s gaze swept them, resting on Nalea with a lazy malice. “I suppose they let anyone in these days. Lady Nalearhine, how are things in the provinces? Still eating with your hands, or have you advanced to sticks?”

  One of Mirella’s shadows snorted.

  Nalea’s reply was faint, “We use forks.”

  Mirella adopted a look of exaggerated sympathy. “How modern! Perhaps, with practice, you’ll even catch up to the rest of us.”

  Iliyria bit down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood, the old urge to retaliate warring with the new discipline to endure. She focused on the slingshot, winding the band tighter and tighter around her finger.

  The eyes moved, sliding over to Falanthriel. “And Prince Falanthriel, my, how you’ve grown. Almost as tall as your brother now, though perhaps a bit less… coordinated?”

  Falanthriel met her stare and gave a very small, deliberate shrug.

  “But it’s the black sheep who interests me most,” Mirella said, her voice a purr, finally settling on Iliyria. “Second-place cousin. Still lacking any grace or Sylrendreis pride, I see?”

  This was the script. Iliyria had rehearsed a hundred replies, none of them useful now. Instead, she let her face go blank, an old trick she’d learned from Selphia: if you cannot outshine, out-endure.

  Mirella waited, then, when it was clear she would not get a rise, leaned in closer. “They say the real reason you dress like a stable hand is to save your father the embarrassment at court. Is it true?”

  Iliyria did not answer.

  A new voice, a member of the retinue: “I heard she punched her own tutor.”

  Another: “She can’t help it, really. Something about the bloodline.”

  Mirella circled, slow and predatory, hands clasped behind her back. “Did you know, Nalearhine, that in our family there are certain expectations? That we don’t just let anyone… breed? It’s why my cousin here is so upset. She’s realized she’ll never be more than an afterthought. Isn’t that right, Iliyrianwe?”

  For a moment, the world shrank to the sound of her own breath. Iliyria willed herself not to move, not to betray anything, but she could feel Nalea shaking behind her.

  “Leave us alone,” Iliyria said, each syllable a nail pounded through a board.

  Mirella’s smile spread, slow and sweet as a stain. “Or what? You’ll sulk at me? Maybe you’ll scuff my shoes?”

  Behind her, the retinue pressed forward, emboldened. Nalea’s fingers clutched Iliyria’s sleeve so tightly it hurt.

  Iliyria’s voice came out in a hiss. “Get. Out.”

  It was then she felt it: a tightening under her ribs, the sort of pressure that preceded the snap of a bowstring or the shattering of a glass under heat. It was anger, yes, but also something else. Something vast and eager, straining for release.

  She looked down at her hand. The slingshot had fallen away; she did not reach for it; her palm was clenched, knuckles gone white. In the center of her fist, a single drop of sweat beaded and then, impossibly, sizzled into steam.

  Mirella’s laughter stuck in her throat. “What’s that? Are you sweating? I suppose hard labor does—”

  Iliyria opened her hand. A flame, no larger than a candle’s, danced in her palm. It was blue at the base, orange at the tip, the colors shifting in response to her trembling. The heat licked her skin but did not burn.

  For a full heartbeat, everyone stared.

  Nalea gasped, and Falanthriel made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. Even Mirella, for the first time Iliyria could remember, was silent.

  The silence lasted long enough for the breeze to shift, for the sun to wink behind a passing cloud, for a bee to meander out of a rose blossom and into the open. Iliyria held the flame aloft, daring anyone to speak first.

  “That’s not… how did… you shouldn’t be able to do that,” Mirella managed. The nearest fronds of wisteria curled and browned; a faint, sweet scorch drifted between them. No one spoke.

  Iliyria looked at the flame and then at Mirella. “Maybe I can,” she said softly. “Maybe I always could.”

  Mirella took a step back, then another. She gathered her coterie with a flick of her fingers, voice trembling as she tried to recover her composure. “You’ll be in so much trouble. Wait until I tell your father.”

  The threat landed, but Iliyria did not care. She had already broken all the rules that mattered.

  Mirella and her girls retreated, their retreat less a march than a rout. Only when they had vanished behind a hedge did anyone exhale.

  Nalea reached out, her hand hovering just above the flame. “How did you do that?”

  Falanthriel, eyes as wide as coins, edged closer. “That’s—can you do it again?”

  Iliyria looked at the fire in her palm, watching the way it flickered and curled. The anger was gone, replaced by a wonder so sharp it hurt.

  “I… I don’t know,” she said. She closed her fist; the flame winked out, leaving a trace of heat on her palm. When she opened it, nothing remained.

  Nalea hugged her, and Falanthriel whooped, the sound echoing across the pond. Iliyria pressed her palm into the damp earth. “If anyone smells it,” Falanthriel said quickly, “we say someone burned a leaf.”

  For a long while, the three of them sat together, passing Iliyria’s hand back and forth, waiting to see if the magic would return. Each time it didn’t, they tried a different method: shouting, laughing, even pretending to be angry. But the moment once spent could not be recaptured.

  Eventually, Nalea leaned her head against Iliyria’s shoulder. “You’re not second-place anything,” she whispered.

  Iliyria felt herself flush, then smiled, real and wide. “Don’t tell Mirella,” she said, “but that was actually terrifying.”

  Falanthriel grinned. “Next time, aim it at her hair.”

  They all laughed, and the day, so close to being ruined, mended itself, thread by tiny, perfect thread.

  Later, when the garden was empty, and the sky had shifted to evening, Iliyria sat alone under the wisteria, hand outstretched, waiting for another miracle. She didn’t know if it would ever come again, but she knew, for the first time, that she wanted it to.

  Extinguish It

  The corridors of House Sylrendreis, lined with sconces and self-important history, funneled all sound to a single nerve center: the study. Iliyria’s feet, newly scrubbed and still raw at the heels from her last punishment, carried her to that door with a dread that bordered on hope. In her left palm, concealed by the sleeve, she cradled the spark that had changed everything. It was dormant now, a memory more than a flame, but she felt the pulse of it with every heartbeat.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  She paused at the door, breath held as if she might smother the future with oxygen debt. Her father’s voice, muffled by oak and arrogance, rumbled within. A servant, ancient, eyes like boiled peas, eyed her from the end of the corridor, but she squared her shoulders and knocked.

  A pause, then: “Enter.”

  The room, always cold, was colder for its neatness. Every book and ledger was aligned; the decanter, filled with something honeyed, sat untouched; the desk, a vast landscape of leather and ink, dwarfed the man behind it.

  Lord Telemir did not look up from his page. “What is it?”

  She stepped forward, rehearsed speech evaporating. The scent of old pipe smoke lingered, though he had not smoked in years. Iliyria focused on it, desperate for grounding.

  “Father,” she began, surprised by how thin her own voice sounded. “I—I wanted to show you something.”

  He sighed, closed the ledger, and finally met her eyes. “If this is about Mirella, I’ve already received the complaints. Consider yourself confined to chambers for the next three days.”

  Iliyria flinched, but pressed on. “It isn’t that. It’s—”

  He tapped the desk, impatient. “Out with it.”

  She extended her palm, fingers trembling. She focused, the way she’d practiced, and tried to call forth the flame. For a moment, nothing. Sweat beaded at her hairline. She pushed harder, recalling the anger, the humiliation, the precise shape of Mirella’s smirk.

  A tongue of fire shivered to life, no more than a matchstick, but undeniably there. The heat was a tickle that wanted to be more, the color vivid against her pale skin.

  For a second, she saw it: a spark in Telemir’s eyes, not pride or affection but the purest, rarest astonishment. His jaw actually slackened. Awe flickered, then arithmetic, then jealousy, then fear. By the time he stood, only anger remained.

  “Enough. Extinguish it.”

  Iliyria, startled, lost her focus; the flame vanished, leaving only the stink of singed hair.

  Telemir’s voice, when it returned, was iron. “You will never do that again. Do you hear me?”

  She blinked. “But—”

  He slammed a fist onto the desk. The inkwell jumped, spattering black onto a tidy pile of accounts. “You will never, ever, attempt magic again. You are not a wizard. You are not a scholar. You are a Sylrendreis daughter, and it is not your place to dabble in parlor tricks.”

  Iliyria’s mouth filled with the taste of failure. “Uncle Tasaka—”

  He rounded the desk with a speed that belied his age. “Your uncle is a fool. A dangerous, arrogant fool who brings shame on this house with his posturing and his endless parade of ‘discoveries.’ Is that what you want to be? A sideshow? An embarrassment?”

  Her face felt hot, but she kept her chin lifted.

  He circled, voice dropping to a hiss. “No one marries a witch. No one trusts a woman who can burn a man’s house down with a thought.”

  Iliyria thought of Selphia’s careful hands, the way she’d watched her daughter with pride and with fear. She thought of her mother’s voice, always gentle, always yielding to the tide of Telemir’s demands.

  She let her own voice go soft, practiced. “Yes, Father.”

  He watched her, suspicious, as if expecting her to burst into flame on the spot.

  He said, “You will report to Mistress Vellana for double comportment lessons. If I hear a single whisper of magic, if I so much as smell smoke, you will be sent to the convent at Leasoll. They deal with wayward girls. Silence and slate,” he added. “No visitors. No letters.””

  Iliyria did not let herself wince. “Yes, Father.”

  Telemir stared, as if seeking the flaw in the mask, then retreated behind the desk, gathering his shattered dignity about him. “That is all,” he said, the dismissal final. He straightened his collar, aligned the quills; the room returned to how it liked to pretend it had always been.

  Iliyria bowed, a perfect, measured angle, and turned to go. At the threshold, she paused, letting her fingers rest against the carved molding. She imagined the flame again, not in her palm but in his, an inheritance of anger he could never control. The thought made her smile, brief and wild.

  She slipped into the corridor, footsteps silent on the runner. The ancient servant’s eyes skimmed her hands, then slid away. Some people kept their jobs by not seeing.

  Only when she reached her own chamber did she allow herself to exhale.

  She would obey. Of course she would.

  Until she didn’t.

  Introductory Elements

  The palace at night was a different beast. In darkness, the gilded corridors became arteries of rumor and threat, every step a potential echo chamber for betrayal. Iliyria moved in bare feet, careful to place her toes on the seams between stones. She held her breath at every threshold, listening for the telltale cough of a night guard or the creak of a servant’s shoes.

  The corridor leading to her uncle’s study was the worst, thick carpet deadened sound but magnified every misstep into a personal indictment. The guards here were family men, drawn from minor houses loyal to Sylrendreis. They knew her, and more importantly, they knew who would be blamed if she was caught.

  She reached the door, heart hammering, and fished a hairpin from the braid at the nape of her neck. She’d watched Nalea pick a lock once, had spent hours since then practicing on her own jewelry box. Even so, the pins inside the study’s lock bit back, resisting her with a stubbornness that felt almost personal.

  She forced herself to steady her hands. Focus, she told herself. It’s just a puzzle, and you are very, very good at puzzles.

  A minute later, the tumblers clicked. She eased the door open, then slipped inside and let it latch softly behind her.

  Moonlight spilled through the high windows, outlining the desk and the shelves in ghostly blue. Uncle Tasaka’s study was the only room in the palace that felt alive after dark; the air was tinged with ozone and old parchment, and the walls seemed to hum with barely leashed power. A prickle lifted the hairs on her forearms; the kind of hum Tasaka’s wards made when they noticed and decided, for now, to do nothing. Along one side, a bank of shelves sagged under the weight of tomes and codices, their spines in every imaginable color.

  Iliyria padded across the rug, running her fingers along the shelves. She skipped over the titles she recognized: histories, court intrigues, volumes on trade and etiquette. What she wanted, what she needed, was something elemental, something that would show her not just how to cast magic, but how it worked.

  She found it halfway up the second shelf: a slim, battered book whose leather was cracked at the corners. The title was rendered in modest block letters, Introductory Elements: A Young Mage’s Companion, and the cover was stained with what she sincerely hoped was only ink. She opened to the first page. The illustrations were primitive, but the diagrams, she traced one with her finger, felt the logic of it, the pattern; those were beautiful. In the margin, a cramped hand had written: Heat is an opinion of matter. Beneath it, in a different ink: Prove it with water, not wood.

  She pressed the book flat, inhaled the scent of old learning, and felt the thrill settle somewhere deep in her chest. She slid another slim volume into the gap, nudged the dust line with her sleeve until it looked undisturbed. Then, as she’d planned, she tucked it under the waistband of her nightgown, let the hem fall to disguise the shape, and tiptoed back toward the door.

  In the corridor, all was still. A guard coughed two halls away. Iliyria flattened to the paneling and let the palace complete the sentence without her. She slid the hairpin back into place and ghosted her way to her room, the book a warm and living thing against her skin.

  Inside, she closed the door, wedged a chair under the handle, and dropped to her knees at the base of the bed. The floorboard here was loose, she had learned that years ago, during a particularly punishing week of house arrest. She pried it up and set it aside.

  Below, her treasures: the slingshot, confiscated and reclaimed; a penknife, its tip blunted from too many attempts to carve initials in the old willow out back; a pouch of salt she and Nalea had filched from the kitchen, allegedly to keep the ghosts at bay; a sheaf of folded papers, letters from friends she was forbidden to see, and a river stone the Queen had once pressed into her palm “for skipping,” still faintly warm in her memory.

  She set the spellbook atop the pile, careful to align its corners. Then she replaced the board, brushed the dust from her knees, and climbed into bed, the illicit warmth of the theft still thrumming through her.

  She lay awake a long time, turning each page in her head, plotting her next move.

  And when she finally tranced, she dreamed up diagrams that breathed, circles filling with flame, arrows turning to sparks, a blue-rooted candle that would not go out.

  Lantern Lessons

  The gardens at midnight were a map of hazards, every hedge a possible witness, every sculpture a sentinel in stone. But in the weeks that followed her first theft, Iliyria learned to navigate them by heart: two lefts from the kitchen porch, a right at the sunken pond, then down the gravel path to the overgrown amphitheater, where nothing but wild roses and the dead leaves of seasons past stood watch.

  They met here, the three of them, always after the last bell and before the first hint of sunrise. Nalea came first, the self-appointed lookout, pacing the edge of the clearing with her ears tuned to every shift in the wind. Three taps on the broken step meant scatter; two meant hide and don’t breathe. Falanthriel arrived next, bringing a blanket or a contraband sweet, settling into the role of emotional ballast. Iliyria, last by design, carried the stolen spellbook in a cloth wrap, as if it were a sacred text smuggled from some forbidden temple.

  At first, the lessons were a string of humiliations. The cantrips, so simple in the diagrams, refused to manifest. Her first attempt at a light spell resulted in nothing but the sharp scent of ozone and a faint tingling in her fingertips. The air went cold against her fingers; tiny hairs along her wrist stood up and stayed, embarrassed. The next night, she managed a flicker, but it guttered out before either friend could see.

  Nalea watched with wide, anxious eyes. “Are you sure it’s safe?” she whispered, more than once.

  Iliyria bit her tongue, forcing herself to be patient. “No. But that’s why you’re here.”

  Falanthriel, always the optimist, offered encouragement in the form of compliments for even the smallest progress: “Your hand motions are so precise!” or “No one else could have memorized those runes so fast.” It helped a little.

  After a week, Iliyria managed a sustained spark, enough to illuminate her palm for a full minute. Falanthriel clapped, nearly loud enough to draw the attention of the watchman on the north wall. Nalea, for the first time, allowed herself a smile.

  They practiced nightly. Iliyria’s confidence grew; the sparks became tiny flames, then flickering ropes of blue fire she could twist and knot between her fingers. One night, Falanthriel brought an old lantern with the wick removed. “For you,” he said, handing it over with a theatrical bow.

  Iliyria focused, conjured a ball of light, and fed it into the lantern. The old glass took the light like a lung takes breath; a faint breath-mark feathered the inside pane. It glowed steady and clear, a miniature sun in the dark garden.

  “That’s incredible,” Nalea whispered, awe eclipsing her anxiety.

  Falanthriel grinned. “You could light the whole city with that.”

  Iliyria cradled the lantern, pride warming her more than the flame. “Maybe someday.”

  Boots clicked on the far colonnade. Nalea flicked three pebbles into the fountain’s throat; the guard paused at the splash and kept walking. They did not breathe until the sound fell off the stones.

  From the upper balcony, a figure crossed, perhaps the Queen, perhaps a shadow. No summons came. The night kept their secret.

  The spells became more complex. They experimented with illusions: a swirl of colored motes that coalesced into the shape of a cat, a floating globe that circled the group like a tame firefly. The cat’s tail glitched at the tip, a little square where her concentration frayed. Nalea loved it more for the flaw. Each triumph drew the three of them closer, their conspiracy becoming a second family, one built on shared secrets and mutual rescue.

  But the best part, what Iliyria would remember long after, was the sound of their laughter, hushed but unstoppable, as it threaded through the shadows and up to the stars, a defiant anthem to anyone who might be listening.

  One night, Nalea dared to ask, “What will you do with all of this, when you’re grown?”

  Iliyria considered, then glanced at her friends. “Whatever I want,” she said. “But I’ll start by making them see me.”

  Falanthriel raised his invisible glass. “To being seen.”

  They toasted with sweetcakes, smuggled from the pantry, and for a moment, the world was small enough to fit inside the lantern’s glow, safe from every threat.

  In the amphitheater’s heart, Iliyria loosed a helix of fireflies. They rose like a private constellation and went out where only they could see them.