Igniting Darkness (Courting Darkness Duology #2) - Robin LaFevers Page 0,195

sword and grabs his crossbow with both hands. I touch the ember to the culverin just as a shout of pain escapes him and he drops the crossbow.

“Down!” I bellow at Charlotte as the flames explode across the room. She throws herself to the ground, rolls out of Pierre’s reach, then springs back to her feet with her knife in her hand as the wall behind Pierre erupts into flame.

True panic flares through him then, softening his face somehow, and in that moment, I remember a younger Pierre and the first time he felt such pain. He was not more than six, and it was the second time he had fallen on his father’s bad side.

He panicked because he remembered the first time all too clearly, the scars only having just healed a fortnight before—the shame and the humiliation had not yet healed at all.

How could he have grown up to be other than who he was? Who was to have served as his guide?

The flames draw closer, and he screams, “Sybella!” It is the voice of the younger Pierre, the one terrified of our father, the one who used to hide with Julian and me before our father had taught them to hate one another. I am happy to let the current Pierre be destroyed in the flames of his own making, but I am not certain I can let that younger Pierre burn.

And that is when I realize that I have truly become one of the Dark Mother’s own. That I am as enthralled with others’ potential for rebirth as I was my own, and that I will always give them that choice.

“It is not too late!” I call to Pierre. “You have a choice.”

He glances from the flames to me, eyes wide with terror. “What choice?”

“You can die by flames, by leaping into the sea below, or you can walk through the flames and live, but only if you let them burn away the ugliness of who you’ve become.”

“I cannot walk through flames!”

“You can, though. They have not fully caught over here. But you must know this: I have the proof of your treason against the king. If you choose to live, you will start anew, without your father’s ghost to haunt or shape you. Without hate to warp you. It is your chance to shed that skin and be someone new. It is not a painless choice, but it is a choice.”

He looks desperately from the wall of flames that nearly engulfs the room, then over his shoulder at the window that leads to the long drop to the shore below, then back at the quickly narrowing opening, where flames only lick along the floor.

“Your window is closing. I would not tarry too long.”

Behind me, Charlotte waits in silence, and I do not know how much she can hear over the roar of the fire. I must get her out of here. Now.

A strangled sob stops me long enough to glance over my shoulder, my heart inexplicably lifting to see Pierre take a step toward the flames. “The faster you go, the less it will hurt,” I call out, then grab Charlotte’s hand.

“I thought I told you to stay in the chapel!” I tell her as I drag her out the door.

She looks up at me, vexed beyond belief.

I give her hand a squeeze. “I am very glad you did not,” I say, and her face clears as I pull her toward the stairs. Seconds later, the floor above us comes crashing down in a rain of crimson and gold fire.

 Chapter 113

Once we are free of the flames, I stop running and pause, turning to face her, my hands on her shoulders. “Are you all right?” I examine her, frantically looking for any signs of burns or singe marks, but her face is unblemished. “Pierre did not hurt you?”

Her eyes study me with equal intensity. “No. Not the way he hurt you.”

Her words are like a blow, setting me back on my heels. “Why did you do that?” she asks.

“Do what?”

“Give him a choice?”

I want to tell her because of the same reason I gave her one. Instead I ask, “Why did you give me a choice? Why did you come back?”

She gives me a ferocious scowl. “I didn’t give you a choice. I didn’t want him to come after us and needed to protect Louise.”

“But you did. When you came back and stabbed him. While it may have been due to your feelings for Louise,