Ashes never really went away. A fire doused was a fire in slumber, waiting for its next feast, its next unsuspecting mark. Jin had thought nothing could compare to how helpless and hopeless he’d felt a decade ago.
Spindrift was the culmination of half his existence.
Blood, sweat, tears. Laughter and anger. Home in every way the estate on Admiral Grove was not. That was the home that had been given to him. This was the one he had made himself, with the family he had chosen for himself.
“One day, you’re going to need to face that fear of yours,” Arthie had said years ago.
Jin had been annoyed. “Why?”
“Because you can’t afford the weakness.”
He hadn’t spoken to her for days after that. Not everything needed conquering. But now he saw that she was right, that this weakness could cost him her life. Bystanders were beginning to gather, toffs pointing fingers from afar, gangs snickering from the shadows. No one offered to help.
Jin kicked open the doors.
Smoke charged at him, a horror without fangs, worse than one awoken from a grave. It gripped him in invisible shackles, held him hostage beneath an invisible pistol. Yellow. Orange. Red. RED. His breath was coming out in tiny rasps. He gripped the doorframe.
“Arthie!” Jin yelled. The banister he had leaned against day after day to watch the dance and flurry of Spindrift groaned and collapsed, taking with it some piece of his heart. The walls were scorched black. Those beautiful dangling orbs had all shattered, swaying like abandoned souls.
He was suddenly overcome with wrath. He had never known such rage as he did now. It lit him up inside. It swallowed his panic and his fear, if only for a moment, and gave him strength. He sidestepped a line of Plodder corpses and fallen teapots and searched behind the counter, but saw no sign of Arthie. Most of the tables had toppled, but no one alive lay beneath any of them. He tucked his nose under his collar and powered onward.
It was easier not to think of what the fire was doing to him—no, it was not easy, it was impossible.
“Arthie!” Jin called again. He couldn’t summon anything more. The Siwang Residence was astronomical. How could he find her in time? No. This was Spindrift, this was home.
Embers floated down onto his clothes, and Jin slapped them off in a fit of panic. Panic. Panic had wound through his muscles and, like a string pulled taut, he could no longer move.
“Arthie,” he said uselessly. He could barely hear himself. Smoke clogged his throat, and he broke into a series of coughs. His eyes were watering, his lungs burned. “Where are you?”
Stop thinking, he told himself. A thud echoed from the direction of the stairs, a shuffle that couldn’t be an act of the fire. The panic eased, allowing him to move. He skirted past more fallen bodies and broken chairs, Arthie’s voice a chant in his head that changed to Flick’s when she’d twitched that lighter.
And there in the gloom, he saw mauve. Jin ran.
Arthie was trapped under the remnants of a bookcase, slowly prying herself free. She looked up at his approach, soot on her skin, determination sharp on her jaw. By the time he reached her, she had shoved the bookcase off and risen to her feet. She said something, her voice bubbling as if underwater.
Spindrift darkened impossibly, and Arthie stumbled, reaching blindly and swaying from the heat. Jin rushed closer and lifted her into his arms. He couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? His head throbbed. Sound. Fire. A nightmare of memory.
Something swayed above Jin—wicked knives, that was the second story. He leaped out of the way of the collapsing stair rail but not before it struck his back. Arthie went limp, impossibly heavier in his arms.
He squeezed his eyes closed for a beat and saw Flick, vividly alive and unafraid, a queen in her gown sculpted from a piece of the unblemished sky.
She was sunshine in a bottle, and he was a storm in a boy, drawn to clear skies, reaching for her hand. Just a little farther, she told him. Just a little farther.
And then Jin collapsed.