50. Unravel a single life

Ada's mouth tasted like ash. Ash and smoke and screaming. She could hear the lyceum's roof falling inward, and could see the fires burning lower as they were smothered by dust and rock. The pillars crumbled down, one by one, giving under the weight of the ceiling until eight piles of blackened brick lay atop the lost bodies of eight fae.

Florentin was gone. His last words had been his daughter's name, who was now cradled in Armestrong's arms, several metres from Ada and Raeph's shaking bodies. Neither were cold, though Ada also didn't feel especially warm. The flames had licked her skin close enough to burn, but there was a sharper ache within her, which hissed and spat and left her quaking from the strength of it.

It was strange to think that she had feared jumping into a stream earlier that same day, and as she looked down at her scorched shirt sleeves, the irony wasn't lost on her. But it wasn't welcome either. What she wouldn't have given for water in those moments. Water to wash the rubble away, douse the flames, soothe her throat.

Ada had scrambled from Raeph's arms as soon as they had cleared the lyceum, crawling on hands and knees into comparatively clean air. She had wanted to go to Min, to clutch at her small hands and beg for forgiveness. But then she had seen her, swaddled like a baby in Armestrong's tattered apron as the woman rocked her back and forth.

Soot was streaked across her face, as though Min had clawed at every exit in the caravan looking for an escape. Her wild curls were weighed down with ash, and grey coils of it clung to her jaw and neck, where once they had bounced around her ears. Her eyes were closed, and coughs came in bursts, though they were faint and rattled around her ribs. Ada doubted Min had any idea where she was, or what they had just done. The life that they had condemned her to. She felt sick, but her throat was too tight to bear the retching.

"A Hound probably threw a torch into the caravan with her before blocking the door," Raeph said. He sat behind Ada, legs crossed and panting. "The smoke would have suffocated her before the fire got too violent."

Ada didn't want to hear about the Hounds' cruelty, but couldn't find the strength to drag herself away. She bowed her body down instead, feeling soot smear across her forehead as she pressed it to the cobblestones. Everything ached, her feet too sore to move, but her mind was in a frenzy. She wanted to remember Florentin, and to wish his spirit to safety. But she could only picture her own family, far away and living peacefully, without the threat of fire and hatred.

If she unpicked all the threads woven into her universe, her family would be there; father by mother by siblings. Their stitching remained intact, strong and tight as Ada had always known it to be. But in an instant, the thread that had held Min to Florentin had been cut and cast away, ripping father from daughter and unravelling Min's world that much more. Ada had been severed from her life, but never like that.

Raeph's chest was heaving when Ada finally straightened up. With each breath, his tunic fluttered out to skim her cloak. Where she had felt distant, sight glazed and wavering, Raeph's eyes were bright. He had come alive with adrenaline, fingers flexing and searching for the next enemy, no longer focused on the wreckage behind him. Ada watched the smoke swirl over them and felt an anger storm across her sorrow.

"Saved him..." Ada tried to gasp out, and Raeph dipped his head to make out her words. Ada's hands formed fists against his chest, and suddenly she was beating against him with what force she could muster. "You could have saved him, saved Florentin."

Raeph's eyes shadowed, and his fingers forged manacles around her wrists.

"What?" he hissed. "Save him and leave you to burn in there, you mean? Is that what you truly would have preferred?"

Ada took a shuddering breath, but it choked into a sob halfway up her throat. Over Raeph's shoulder, she could see Armestrong cradling Min like a broken doll. Her vision was teetering. Raeph's hair smelled like smoke.

"She's only a child." Ada shook her head and realised that her face was wet. She couldn't tell whether it was from tears, sweat, or some sticky concoction of both. Or perhaps rain had finally burst from the sky, sweet and soft, to wash away the city's rot. "Children shouldn't live like this."

Her fingers fell limply from Raeph's shirt, and all that kept her from falling into the ash were Raeph's hands, still tight around her wrists. But then, abruptly, they weren't. Ada gasped, chest tightening; she didn't want to tumble back down into the cinders, to be buried beneath them, lost and forgotten.

Raeph thrust his arms around her back, crouching down as he bundled her to his chest. Ada's face was shoved against coarse leather and ripped cotton, rough and tattered, warmed by the fire. She could hear his heartbeat as she sobbed and, with each tear, she felt her terror seep away. But it left a hollowness in her bones, and guilt quickly filled it, making her ashamed that she should be crying when her own family still lived.

She pulled away from Raeph, more abruptly than she had meant to. His fingers still held her cloak, his head bent into the space where her shoulder had been, and his sleeve was creased up. There was something tied around his wrist, not a strap of leather or a strip of black cotton, but something silken and dark green. For a handful of seconds, Raeph's face was as unguarded as it had been in the valley, but then he turned from Ada as quickly as she had drawn away from him. She rubbed her palms into her eyes, trying to wipe away the evidence of tears, as well as the lingering ghost of Raeph's expression.

"Ahem." Lark stood a short distance away, behind a sign stained by drifting storms of ash. It marked an alley leading back into the unburnt city. "We shouldn't stay here too long. The Hound that scarpered will have found somebody by now."

He shared a look with Raeph. The Hounds had all seen his face, and though only one had escaped, he had all the information the Hounds needed. Ada didn't know what it would mean if the Hounds were told of Raeph's attempt to stop the burning of the lyceum, but she doubted it would be treated lightly.

"And where, exactly, do you propose we all go?" asked Armestrong. Min lay listless against her chest, and were it not for the occasional groan and spluttering cough, Ada would have feared she had fallen unconscious.

"The Bonneville's in no better state than here," Armestrong continued, "and any connection Solen might have had won't take us in without her with us."

At the mention of Solen, the bandits fell silent, Raeph's fingers clenching into fists as Lark blinked rapidly. Armestrong smoothed back a tangled mess of curls from Min's eyes, but beads of sweat formed in their place. Ada watched the child's lungs flutter up against her smock in fast breaths, and a thought drifted into her mind.

It seemed ridiculous at first, and too incoherent to put into words. She knew hardly anything about Wysthaven past her own experience, and all that the city had given her so far had rarely ended happily. But the silence continued, and the smoke that billowed up from the lyceum choked the idea from Ada's throat.

"We need to get Min somewhere she can be protected," she said, watching as specks of ash freckled the young fae's cheeks. "Florentin did everything he could to keep her magic a secret from the Hounds, and we should do the same. But from what I've seen Min do, I don't think we should force her to suppress her magic and bottle it up."

Raeph listened with a grim expression, but Armestrong stared at her with wide-eyes, almost nodding along. Ada cleared her throat and stood as tall as she could manage. "What if we took her to the Stone Circle? You said they were casters of magic themselves, and that they celebrated magic and the fae who can do it. If we brought Min to them, wouldn't they want to keep her safe?"

"They don't celebrate magic," Raeph said, his tongue sharp and piercing. "They abuse it and use their power to cause chaos and destruction."

Ada could see mounds of charred stone smoking across the street, and couldn't imagine the Stone Circle could do any worse than the horrors she had witnessed from the Hounds. The only evidence of their existence she had seen was the wondrous night that they had once cast to fog out the sky, dappling the city in soft starlight shaped from their own creation. It had been a thing of beauty and gentle wishes, not a product of fear and hate.

She turned to Raeph, prepared to argue, but Armestrong answered first. "Our city has chaos enough as it is to destroy the life of a little girl. And if chaos is all we have, I'd prefer Min to be in the hands of those who value the life she has left." She held the child closer. "But no one knows how to find the Stone Circle. If they did, don't you think the Hounds would've hunted them down years ago?"

Ada nodded, knowing that her idea was tailing off towards another dead end. But a voice still chimed in her head, ringing out to her from some distant part of the city. The words were forming before Ada had time to think them through, as though the thought had been lodged in some small recess of her mind all along.

"Maybe it's not a place the Hounds should be looking for, but a thing," she replied, and the bandits' brows all furrowed. "They want a world of magic, right? Then I imagine they're still pining for Wysthaven to be as it once was, with the old fae and their free magic. If I were the Stone Circle, I'd want to remain in the heart of that dream. In the heart of that forgotten city."