Rhianon-5. Along the Way of Deception. Natalie Yacobson

inside. She had to duck to get under the girders and hold the train with her hand so it wouldn’t accidentally get caught in the spinning gears. It was dark and dangerous, but she pushed forward. What did she expect to find? Is it him? It must have really taken a terrifying dream to meet him, and all around her was a terrifying reality. And it was like a horrible dream, too. Rhianon spotted a dwarf ahead in the thick of the beams and counterweights bent over his work. Cautiously she approached him. He was not dressed like the others. His apricot-colored coat sat unfortunate on his short, pudgy body. A cap of the same color almost fell off his head. Clumsy hands fiddled with nails stained with something thick and scarlet.

      Rhianon came close and touched the dwarf by the shoulder. She didn’t even know why she wanted him to turn around so badly. Maybe she was just curious to know who he was. It was the first time she had seen him and she didn’t know his name. Horace didn’t introduce her to anyone like him.

      When the little man turned to her, Rhianon flinched. She didn’t recognize him immediately, and when she did, she almost shrieked. The swollen face was almost impossible to match Dominic’s gentle boyish features, but now she saw what she saw. Dominic’s eyes stared at her with an unaccustomed puffy mask. Perhaps because she’d known him differently, his face seemed shapeless to her.

      Rhianon darted quickly away, ducked hard to run under the gears, and felt herself burned again from within. Devil child, mistake, child of Dennitsa, hundreds of names swirled in her head, but they all didn’t quite fit. Pronouncing them was inaccurate; in fact, it was as if something like a fiery ball of sunlight had matured inside her and was burning her from the inside out.

      Rhianon gave up trying to run away from herself. She still wandered between the machinery and sometimes she imagined a willow or a bloody box on the lid of which a black winged creature was sitting and poring over scarlet colored nails.

      She stopped. What she should have wished for right now was somewhere else and to be far away from here. Could the spirits make it so Madael couldn’t find her in the big world? And why would she do that? Didn’t she want to be with him forever? Rhianon wondered. The dark romance had given way to an eerie truth. Something superhuman was maturing inside her. It might kill her, or maybe she was afraid for nothing. Everything is so mixed up. Why shouldn’t she be forever happy in the same bed with a demon? Who cares who he is and what he wants, as long as she feels so good with him. It was a shame that Loretta came between them, but after all, Madael claimed it was only temporary.

      Rhianon looked at the case of the supernatural clock with anguish. It moved incessantly, but what was measured by its movement. Clearly not a time commensurate with what mortals lived. There was something else. She didn’t want to stand near those machines anymore. There was a pervasive sense of darkness and evil. The golden, inked hands seemed more ominous than the darkness gathering around them. Rhianon turned and walked away. It seemed it was time to choose her path.

      Dark and Light

      «Did anyone even see her?» Conrad tensed and gripped the armrests of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Manfred wondered if he should be dismissed, but the boy had become unmanageable. He might make a scandal, he might resist. They couldn’t have the guards drag him out of here. Marcus and Drusill who stood behind him would hardly dare calm the prince. Certainly none of them would have dared to advise him. And it would have been nice if any of them had advised him to stop loving Rhianon. Manfred longed for his son to be free of this love that had become an addiction. Not even a spell could have done to Conrad what the fiery girl had done to him. How could the court ladies distract him? Conrad wouldn’t want to hear about marriage to an overseas princess. As if there were no one left in the world but the unchanging object of his desire. He would become like his friends. No matter how well they had learned to hide their nocturnal exploits, rumors of their adventures reached Manfred. Many of their deeds were vile. But if Manfred had previously considered how to find more decent company for his son, now he wouldn’t mind having Conrad go through the taverns and whores. He needed some way to reconcile his passion before it burned him, as Rianon had burned the small provincial town south of Loretta yesterday.

      «They were executing criminals there that day, weren’t they?» Hermione asked, in a businesslike tone, as he rattled through the verdicts. «It was a whole gang of captured outlaws.»

      «And an entire town burned in their place,» Angus added grimly. He was the first to hear the news and was more worried about his holdings in the southern provinces than about the dead people. Conrad snorted contemptuously. The lowly man would have been more frightened by a dragon raid on his lands than by the myth of the girl who summoned fire.

      «She couldn’t… no one could,» Roderick muttered, but his statement was weak. He himself wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying.

      Manfred, unlike him, was not inclined to reassure himself. He knew what Rhianon was capable of. She would enter the dark chamber and the candles would flicker in the candelabra as if someone unseen had lit them. One caustic word was enough to make the hair on the head of her offender burst into flames. As if there weren’t enough hot young men at court always ready to protect her, Rhianon continually turned someone’s dress, train, or a lock of someone’s hair into a lamp. And that wasn’t the worst thing she could do. It was far worse when she scorched someone’s heart. Manfred was glad that he himself was not in love, but Conrad’s malleability was his punishment. The prince easily succumbed to the charms of the golden-haired witch. Rhianon! He should kill her, but where to find her now, and how to deal with her. The whole city! She has burned the whole city. Manfred ran his fingers through his graying hair. Even yesterday there were more dark strands in his head than today. Today he had grown old. He used to have energy boiling inside him, but now Rianon was the victor. Who would have thought her talent would have developed to such an extent. The crushing gift she possessed only gained strength over time.

      «What about the dragons…» Manfred whispered softly. Rumors of dragons had long been circulating in Loretta’s countryside, bad tidings from burned villages, firebrands streaming into the capital to relay their harrowing tales, and circles of witchcraft and fierce evil in the scorched fields. The king did not believe it all, as he was supposed to, or pretended not to. Manfred did not want to feed the dragon rumors. They were troubling enough as it was. But just one girl was more dangerous than an entire dragon pack.

      What was he thinking before, fool, he should have destroyed her. He knew, after all, that the gift of fire like vice lurked within her, he had seen the strings of the lute flare under her fingers, the candles themselves lit, the unearthly voices sounding in the heights above her head. A girl with fire inside her, followed on her heels by invisible companions, is a frightening power. We should have sent assassins to her, accused her of witchcraft and executed her as a witch, and let Conrad slit his wrists for her. Even he didn’t matter now. It was worth sacrificing his own son to get rid of a danger like Rhianon.

      «What if she came to Loretta and burned the place down?» A naive question came over his ear, but Manfred couldn’t figure out who it was. The voice was unfamiliar to him, but how pleasant it seemed. Manfred would have turned to look at the speaker if he had not known he had an empty space behind him. His exquisite ivory throne stood close to the open window, but there was no one outside. Fortunately no one had ever seen a dragon in Loretta. The people were contented and undaunted, despite the fact that a war was raging somewhere on the borders of Menuel. The capital was unaffected by it. But Rhianon, with her gift of fire, could indeed destroy it. Manfred suddenly realized he was afraid of her. It was funny and bitter at the same time. He was afraid of some girl who had a destructive power slumbering in her frail body. She has the whole element of fire in her. Manfred himself gripped the armrests of the throne so tightly that his fingers ached. He scraped at the sharp serrations of the carving, but he did not care. He would have given all of blood to kill Rhianon.

      «She herself was unharmed, was she not?» Conrad shocked his father with his questions, but he didn’t even notice it. He was too worried about himself to be sensitive to the feelings of those around him. «Hildegard says