The Firebrand Legacy by T.K. Kiser

wasn’t enough. Not for her.
    In the kitchen, Carine scrubbed the dishes
until her hands were shriveled and raw. She stacked and sorted, and
then retreated under the stairs, but Alviar’s strange explanation
and her parents’ terrified faces formed a dark cloud in her
mind.
    Alviar and the princes claimed that she could
never escape magic. That it was hopeless to try. If that were true,
there was no hope for her parents back home. Carine ached for them
to be with her. She even wished—to her horror—that Kavariel had
come during Festival and delivered the flame.
    Carine turned the short blade of her
shoemaking awl in her hand. She had to believe there was hope for
her family. She had to believe that one day the three of them would
be together again and safe. If there was any way to escape
magic—any way at all—Carine would find it.
    Dusting off her hands, she leaned over so her
hair spread over her knees like cloth. With jagged motions, she
sawed her hair at neck-length. Long reddish-brown pieces lay limply
on her lap like feathers plucked from a goose.
    Carine had lost her sister, her home, her
parents, and now her hair.
    Taking a breath, she stowed her knife and
stood. Sometimes losing everything is the only way to begin.

13 Cleaning Up
    The next morning at breakfast, Carine carried
in a tray of grits and hot tea, per Alviar’s request. His highness
Prince Marcel was sleeping, but the twins sat eagerly at the table,
reaching for their bowls before she’d even set down the tray.
    “Whoa! What’d you do to your hair?” David
asked.
    Heat rose in her cheeks. Now David was acting
just like her neighbors, commenting on any change, eager to make
fun.
    “I was right.” Prince Giles smirked. “You are
a Ponedonian.” Not a compliment, since yesterday he’d called them
ridiculous.
    “Shut up, Giles,” Prince David said, watching
Carine. “Don’t listen to him.” His voice had round, warm tones.
    Carine should have known better than to enter
this room after cutting her hair. She tucked a piece behind her
ear, then slightly bowed to the princes.
    “Wait, you’re not upset, are you?” David said
as she neared the door.
    “No, Your Majesty,” she lied and shut the
door behind her.
    Carine slopped the mop over the upper deck
near the stocky captain at the wheel. He ignored her, as he seemed
to ignore everything but the horizon and the shifting winds.
    She had carefully done the lower decks
yesterday evening, and today the upper deck was her task. Having a
job to do was supposed to ease her mind, but instead, the rhythmic
work made her meditate on the things bothering her most: that her
parents were missing and that she had left them, maybe to die.
    At every moment, she imagined hearing the
shriek of an incoming dragon. What she heard instead were
hoof-steps.
    There were two ways up to the deck she
mopped: a ladder and the long stairs for centaurs. Alviar climbed
the long stairs, and instead of turning to speak with the captain,
he turned to Carine.
    “As a tutor, I cannot resist the urge to
teach a needed lesson. Do you have a moment?”
    Carine nodded, but the subject of yesterday’s
discussion left her uneasy.
    Alviar turned to the banister and looked out
over the sea. “The truth is, I was not always a hopeful centaur,
Carine.” His face shimmered with honesty. His brown eyes glazed
with nostalgia. But the scar on his face distorted his every
expression in folds and asymmetry. “I was at a bad place in my
life, so one year during Festival, long before you were born, I
sought out Kavariel, intending to be consumed in his flame.”
    Carine winced. She couldn’t imagine wanting
to burn.
    “Kavariel touched down at the water’s edge,
destroying half the ships. I cantered all the way from Bastion Park
to the port as he blasted the marketplace and boiled the river
water. But the strange thing was, when I got up close, I saw that
the beast is truly beautiful. His scales glitter like silver
shields and his