freezing, near-horizontal rain, her teeth chattering violently, Morrigan felt rebellious and invincible.
All the way to Wunsoc, up the long drive beneath the crackling fireblossoms, into Proudfoot House and down all nine subterranean floors, through thirteen cold, dim chambers named for dead Wundersmiths long forgotten, Morrigan felt her new imprint tingling. As if perhaps it felt as excited and nervous as she did.
When at last she made it to the door of the Liminal Hall – lungs aching, breathless with anticipation – she saw just what she’d hoped for. The circular lock on the door glowed a bright, fiery orange-gold, casting its own pool of light in the dark.
‘I knew it,’ she whispered, grinning wildly.
She pressed her finger to the lock, and the door opened – for what must have been the first time in a hundred years – on to a room so peculiar, she was struck by the urge to turn around and leave right away.
The Liminal Hall was large and bright; Morrigan had to hold up a hand to shield her eyes. It felt like a cathedral whose every window let in glaring sunshine, if the sun had been directly above them and on all other sides and close, much too close.
She’d thought the Deucalion was quiet after the shutters went down, but it was a rock concert compared to this place. If Morrigan hadn’t known she was breathing, if she hadn’t felt the gentle rhythm of her lungs filling and emptying, filling and emptying, she wouldn’t have believed there was any oxygen in the room. There were no dust motes floating in the air, glittering in the streaming sunlight. There was no sound. Even her footsteps were silent.
The hall was empty but for a large pile of branches, twigs and dried bracken in the far corner, stacked and twisted around itself like a bonfire waiting to be lit.
Was this a test, she wondered? Was she supposed to breathe fire and light it up?
Or was that the opposite of what she ought to do? Perhaps she was supposed to show restraint.
‘Written instructions might be nice.’ Her words felt small in the enormous space.
Maybe she ought to wait for Rook or Sofia or Conall. She’d been so eager to get here and confirm her suspicions, she hadn’t even stopped to think about the basement nerds. They’d love to see this – they’d waited years to see it. And perhaps they might have an idea of how it worked.
But before Morrigan could turn to go, something caught her eye.
Deep amid the knotted woodpile, at the tip of a spindly branch, a tiny circular lock pulsed with orange-gold light. Without thinking, she reached in to press her new imprint to it … and felt a spark.
The bonfire roared into life. Morrigan snatched her hand away, stumbling back and shielding her face from its heat. The Liminal Hall began to narrow and darken. Then it was gone – the bright, cathedral-like space replaced with tall stone walls closing around her on all sides, leading up to a ceiling that was either so dark, or so far away, she couldn’t see it. The door, she noticed (with no small amount of alarm), had disappeared altogether.
Her nostrils filled with smoke. Tiny snowflakes of grey ash danced in the air and settled on her cloak. Sparks from the fire drifted up, up, up, but illuminated nothing. They flew so high they simply disappeared into darkness.
The fire was bigger than any she’d seen before, with flames taller than a house. She pressed her back against the warm stone wall, her heartbeat drumming in her neck, and then—
Morrigan gasped.
The firewood had moved.
Not in the normal way that logs suddenly shift and collapse as they burn down, but in a precise, deliberate way.
Perhaps it had been a trick of the light.
But the fire moved again; no mistake. The pile of black burning branches gathered themselves up, rearranging, reforming into a vast, towering shape that made the skin on Morrigan’s neck turn to gooseflesh, even in this heat. There were two arms, two legs, and a large, curious face sitting in the fire, turning themselves towards her. Slowly, reluctantly.
Not a tumble of kindling, but an unfurling of limbs.
A person (or a thing, for Morrigan didn’t think its face was very human) waking from slumber and looking at her. Its huge eyes peered out from the flames, glowing a deep rich red like burning coal. They reminded her of the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow.
The ember eyes blinked – once,