Burning Kingdoms. Lauren DeStefano

      

      

      Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

      Copyright © Lauren DeStefano 2015

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (falling girl); Shutterstock.com (ferris wheel, landscape).

      Lauren DeStefano asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007541232

      Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007541249

      Version: 2014-12-29

      Dedication

      For

      Mina

      Baptista.

      Here’s to

      the next

      twenty-seven

      birthdays.

      Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

       Carl Sagan

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       About the Author

       Also by Lauren Destefano

       About the Publisher

      1

       When the world was formed, the people soon followed. It has been a balancing act of life and death from that day on. It is not the place of any man to question it.

      —The Text of All Things, Chapter 1

      Snow. That’s the word the people of the ground have for this wonder.

      “Goddamn snow,” our driver mumbles for the second time, as mechanical arms sweep the dusting from the window.

      It’s like a stab to the heart hearing a god referred to so unkindly. I wonder which god he means. I’d think the god of the ground would be less forgiving than the one in the sky. Vengeful. It would make sense, the god of the ground having interned us to the sky for being too selfish.

      But I don’t ask. I haven’t spoken a word since I told Pen that it would be all right.

      All the whiteness is blinding, and despite the blustery cold, the inside of this vehicle is so hot that beads of sweat are forming at the back of my neck. There’s a metallic taste to this air.

      I have a thought that my parents will be worried, before I remember that they’re gone. Not at home. They’re colors in the tributary now, a place that can’t be seen by the living.

      I