Flint Foxclaw's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Inside the mirrored pavilion, Flint's reflection scattered across a hundred panels. A small black stone sat waiting on a low pedestal, shaped like a sitting fox, its orange glow steady. He crossed to it and laid his palm flat against its head. His vision went black. Then he saw it — an iron forge roaring with fire, and a fox made of living flame leaping from the coals. The flame fox bounded toward him, fast, eyes bright as struck steel. He braced. It passed through his chest like a warm wind. He came back to himself on his knees. The little fox stone under his hand was no longer warm. Its surface had cracked across like dried mud, and a thin grey light bled out of the splits before fading. The fire had left the stone. Something had chosen him in its place. A pull tugged behind his ribs, soft but exact. It turned him toward the back of the pavilion, where a narrow door stood open onto green dusk. He went because refusing was not really an option anymore. Outside, ivy spilled over a marble statue of two lovers holding each other under a stone arch. Behind the statue stood a woman with hair like pale water and eyes too steady to be human. He knew her before she spoke. The thing he had hunted for a year wore a quiet face and bare feet on the moss. "You felt it take," she said. "That fire is yours now. So am I, in a way. Your road and mine are the same road from here." Flint's hand drifted to the vial in his satchel, then fell away. He had wanted to trap her. Instead something had been tied around his own wrist, and he could not see the other end. "I don't want a destiny," he said. She tilted her head, almost kind. "Neither did I." The hunt was over. Something harder had started.