Wanda Embermoor's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

Inside the hillside room, Wanda broke the sugar-glass shell. The crown's flame woke and burned gold in the dark. She lifted the crown and set it on her own head. Nothing changed. The fire kept burning, but it burned for no one. It was only hot metal on her hair. She pulled it off and stared at it. "It doesn't know me," she said. "I made it, and it answers no one." Elizabeth crouched by the wall, hands raised, ready to freeze the door if hunters came. "Then it's a fire, not a crown," she said. "You need a way to bind it." Leslie ran a finger along the low ceiling. Then she stopped. Her lollipop patch caught the crown's light. "There," she said, pointing. Set into the back wall stood a crystal spire, clear as ice, marked with old runes. Beside it drifted a faceless orb, silver-blue, turning slow in the air. "This isn't just a safe house. It's a binding place. The spire holds the runes. The orb takes payment." She looked at Wanda's charred hands. "It doesn't take silver." Wanda understood. The orb drained fire. She had almost none left. To bind the crown, she had to feed the spire the last of her own flame. "If I give it everything," she said slowly, "I have nothing to defend us with. And nothing to relight my family's hearth." "You have the crown," Leslie said. "An everlasting fire. If it's yours, you never run dry again." Elizabeth turned from the door. "And if it fails, you die cold in here." Her voice dropped low. "I'll hold the room. Whatever comes. Just decide." Wanda pressed the crown against the spire. She laid her scarred palms on the crystal. She thought of the pale hearth dying at home, of everything she had already spent. Then she opened her hands and let the last heat go. The orb pulled it out of her in a long thread of gold. Her fingers went cold to the bone. The runes on the spire flared, one by one, top to bottom. The crown's flame flared with them, drinking the light, growing hungry. Wanda gasped and dropped to her knees. The room went dark except for the fire above her head. Then the crown settled. Its gold flame turned steady and calm. When Wanda reached up, the fire leaned toward her hand like a dog to its master. She set the crown on her head. This time it knew her. Warmth ran down through her, into her frozen fingers, into her chest. "It's mine," she whispered. She stood. The flame moved when she moved. But the orb still glowed, brighter now, fed on her fire. Its silver light spilled out under the hillside door, into the open night. Leslie's face went white. "That light," she said. "The eye will see that."