All Night Awake by Sarah A. Hoyt

it flew past the dog and the dog, somehow, reached out a hand that looked like Sylvanus’s and caught the fire and spun it off again—toward the thatched roofs of Stratford.
    Fairy lights burned in the mortal night, a trail of power splitting the mundane peace of mortal repose.
    Fire hit the roofs of the nearby houses.
    The thatch blazed.
    Dogs howled, men screamed, babies cried.
    “Milord,” Malachite whispered.
    “Stop,” the Hunter yelled. “Stop.”
    Quicksilver took a deep breath, tainted with the smoke from the burning houses. One breath to realize he was alive.
    Another breath as the smoke grew worse.
    Another breath and Quicksilver saw Sylvanus writhe to human shape and grow and smile, a smile of satisfaction such as babes show after milk and men after love.
    “He’s feeding on the deaths,” the Hunter yelled. “He’s feeding on the life force of dead mortals. From me he learned that, but I refrain unless the life comes from evildoers.”
    Sylvanus’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed in satisfaction, his small, pulpy lips widened in a broader smile, and he waved a hand that looked more solid than before, in the direction of the fire that spread, from roof to roof and from thatch to thatch, like vermin that jump from one body to the other and consume all.
    “Thank you, brother. Thank you. I would have lived my whole life as the Hunter’s dog, but for you. By setting this fire have you given me lives that, in the manner of the Hunter, I can collect to grow my own, and increase my force.”
    As Sylvanus twisted and writhed in his obscene pleasure, he grew. The dark mist around him overspread, darker and darker, like a killing frost, its tendrils reaching out to the burning houses and by them growing in strength and force, like a dark octopus that grows and spreads over the floor of a blighted sea.
    There was plague in that wicked mist, Quicksilver thought, the pestilent touch and evil humor of illness.
    And other things, other dark things that would bring death to most and feed Sylvanus’s swollen appetite.
    What was this creature Sylvanus was becoming? What powers would it have?
    Never in the collective memory of Fairyland had something like this happened.
    Never had an elf been king and slave to the Hunter and then . . . what?
    Quicksilver broke into a sweat of shame and fear.
    Never had a king been so weak as to help free his mortal enemy.
    Quicksilver wished he could hide, wished he could crawl away in shame.
    Screams echoed from everywhere in Stratford. Women and children and men woke to find themselves engulfed in flame.
    Some ran out of the houses, flaming like living torches, to burn and die on the street. Others ran here and there, with buckets of water, throwing these at the flames, which mockingly grew despite all.
    Quicksilver, unable to breathe, unable to think, looking at his brother grow in power, looking at Stratford being consumed, sank to his knees and screamed, “What have I done?”
    “No time for that, no time,” Malachite said. “No time for that, milord. These your vassals await orders. Should we not fight the fire?” He gestured to the elven youths who stood behind Quicksilver and waited.
    “Listen to him, listen, brother,” Sylvanus said before Malachite was even fully done. His words echoed of amusement and mockery. “Listen to him, for he’s a man, his wit greater than your womanly wiles.”
    Quicksilver wanted to scream, he wanted to rage. He wished he could throw fire again, this time the fire that consumed his heart and burned his soul. But instead he nodded to Malachite and said, “Aye. Go. Help them.”
    Aware of what he must look like to the young people he commanded, he stood up and, trembling, tried to brush the knees of his breeches.
    Sylvanus’s power still grew and Quicksilver must do something.
    Steeling himself, knowing he gazed on his own death, knowing nothing would come of this but his own destruction, he stepped forward.
    The Hunter stepped forward