Page 5 of Scorched
Superior craftsmanship.
We will see.
3
SOPHIA
I'm still in the gateway when the heat of the Ember Court finds me.
Not the sight of it—not yet. The heat comes first, like walking into a wall of living air. It's not forge heat or summer-crowd heat. It's alive. It pushes through the gaps in my clothing and finds my collarbones, my wrists, the backs of my knees. It presses against my bare skin and doesn't stop pressing.
My pulse kicks up.
My face flushes.
Between my hips, a low clench that has nothing to do with nerves. I know what it has to do with. I'm not going to name it while I'm standing in a gateway with a poisoned blade strapped to my thigh.
I breathe. I push it down. I'm good at this. Twenty-six years of practice.
The sight of the court hits me after the heat.
The great hall is enormous. I take it in piece by piece. Vaulted ceilings of dark stone, veins of something glowing like banked coals. Crystal chandeliers—but they don't hold candles. They hold fire. Actual fire, suspended in glass without burning,casting light that moves and breathes and makes the shadows dance in ways that human light doesn't.
The floor is polished obsidian, dark as a blade. The firelight ripples across it.
Hundreds of guests fill the space—Fae and human. The Fae are obvious: the height, the stillness, the way the humans orbit them the way moths orbit flame.
I walk in as Lady Sophie Moreau. Minor landowner. Eastern territories. Seeking the Ember Court's protection from a border dispute that doesn't exist and never has.
My dress is the colour of dark wine. It cost more than my grandmother wanted to spend and it fits the way a cover fits—close enough to pass, loose enough to hide what's underneath. The blade sits against my inner thigh. The two vials of poison are tucked into the whalebone at my ribs, disguised as scent bottles.
I smile the smile I built for this cover. Mild. Grateful. Forgettable.
I count the exits. Four. The main entrance behind me, a servants' passage to the left partially hidden by a tapestry, a corridor to the right that leads deeper into the court, and a set of glass doors at the far end that open onto a terrace. The guards are Fae—two at each entrance, blades glowing faintly at the hilts. Fighters, not decoration. Weight forward, hands loose. I match their stance without thinking about it, the way you mirror someone who speaks your language.
The blade against my thigh hums.
I stop walking.
That's not possible. I forged this blade myself. It's steel and leather and the poison I wiped along its edge.
It doesn't hum.
And yet the metal is warm against my skin in a way it wasn't an hour ago, and there's a faint vibration running through it that I can feel against the inside of my leg like a pulse.
The fire magic in the air. That's all it is. The court runs on fire and the metal's responding to it the way iron responds to a lodestone.
That's all.
I'm not going to think about my grandmother's anvil. The pull in my chest. The metal singing under my hands.
I'm on a job.
I keep walking.
A Fae female in red silk reaches me within three minutes. Tall, sharp-featured, a smile that says she's been told to be welcoming and resents it. Castellan Lyra, guest services. She takes my cover documents and her eyes move over them with the careful attention of someone confirming what she's already been told.
"Lady Moreau. Welcome to the Ember Court. Your rooms are in the west wing. The festival proper begins tomorrow evening, but tonight's reception is open to all guests. Do you require an escort?"
