Rosalind Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Rosalind Emberheart had led the love fairy tribe for four hundred years, and in all that time no one had seen her hands catch fire. She meant to keep it that way. This morning she stood at the edge of her camp with her satchel buckled across her chest, watching six of her fairies pack ribbons and honey cakes for a goodwill visit to the fire fairy tribe. She had chosen the delegation herself. She had chosen to go with them because she did not trust anyone else to keep her secret if something went wrong on the road. Her mother had been a love fairy. Her father had been a fire fairy. The tribe knew the first half. Some suspected the second and had learned not to ask. Rosalind kept the truth close because a love fairy queen with fire in her hands was not a queen for long. The trouble was that her fire answered to fear, not to her. When a giant dragonfly shot out of the reeds behind her, she flinched, and a spark jumped from her thumb to the strap of her satchel. The leather blackened in a coin-sized ring. She closed her fist around it before anyone turned. "Rose?" One of her younger fairies looked up from a basket of cakes. "Did something burn?" "A lantern wick," Rosalind said. "Finish packing." The fairy went back to her basket. Rosalind looked at the mark on her strap and understood that she had run out of time. Her scouts had already told her the fire fairy leader was counting their numbers before they crossed his border. Blazen Emberwing did not trust an uninvited delegation. If she flinched in his camp, in front of her own tribe, the reveal would happen on his ground, in front of his fairies, with her people learning the truth from a stranger's face. She had spent four hundred years making sure no one else got to decide when this happened. She would not lose that at his gate. She called her second to her tent. She told her the delegation would leave at dawn as planned, but that she would speak to the tribe first, in the round under the heart-stitched canopies, before they marched. Her second asked what she meant to say. Rosalind touched the burn on her strap. "Something I should have said a long time ago. Wake them early. All of them." A spotted sky fawn drifted down through the camp banners and landed near her boots, drawn to the warmth she was no longer hiding. Rosalind let it stay. She had chosen her ground. Tomorrow, before she rode out to meet Blazen Emberwing, her tribe would hear from her own mouth that their love fairy queen carried fire, and she would find out, on her terms, whether they still followed her after.