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tortured body to begin to heal.
    The skin began to be restored to health first. His Fire worked to heal the shell and senses, and at the same time, spread to repair his core. Images spun in front of him in viridian, scarlet, silver, and blinding white; they made him nauseous and dizzy. When his vision finally cleared, his first thought was that there wasn't anything to see anyway. Apparently, light wasn't needed by the dead. He had been left in the inky dark. His fingers scrabbled at the earth he could reach then he laid his palms flat to the ground and willed himself into a meditative state, allowing the red of his Fire to work.
    Sparks skimmed over cells, encouraging connections. He could imagine them in his head. Painfully, finally, each bone snapped, slid, and clicked back into place, every muscle knitted with delicate accuracy until, with a shuddering breath, he came fully awake.
    Ceithin pressed himself up on his elbows, dizziness forcing his eyes closed as his Fire retreated. He catalogued as much as he could of what had happened. Whatever they had thrown at him had been enough to drive his Fire into hiding, however much he sensed it wanted to strike out and kill, particularly at the end when they had pronounced him dead.
    He questioned his sanity in this whole thing again. How he had ever thought it was a wise idea to attempt to break into the archives, he would never know. His father had warned him it was unlikely there would be any trace of Trystyn after so long. He'd said it was dangerous for Ceithin to expose himself to anyone who was non-Cariad, never mind the whole Council. Why hadn't he just listened? His brother was gone. Trystyn was dead or gone to the Otherworld. Ceithin couldn't feel his brother's Fire because he'd been murdered by the Council, and he should just begin to accept this. Familiar grief clawed inside him, an ache, a stabbing loneliness.
    Residual wards circled him, and a random lattice of energy pulsed and hummed and twisted sound in his head. It would be a good few hours before he was fully healed, and he threw up his own wards so as to stay hidden in the dark, presenting the image of a dead man to anyone who cared to look. He slept—the best way to heal—relaxing and drifting on crimson seas that enveloped him and carried him along the flow to healing.
    He was finally closer to having the wherewithal to make sense of all of this. Guardian had somehow betrayed him and sent him to a fate even he couldn't imagine in his worst nightmares. Guardian had been Ceithin's only hope of finding out where Trystyn was. Ceithin's dreams traveled beyond his anger at betrayal, and his Fire balanced him until he slept shallowly, half aware of his surroundings.
    When he woke, someone had entered the space with him. The presence was unsettling. A man. He was certainly not one of the three who had been there before, and his Fire was stronger than the empty things he had seen in the courtyard. This was another, a youngling, with Fire so juvenile it tumbled and spat inside him with little sense or direction. Recognition snapped inside him, this was the one he was told would try to find the Cariad. Kian had told him there would be another who would attempt to follow his steps and might find Ceithin, some name starting with a D. Derrin, Darrin, a spiky name, the letters hard and sharp, and eyes filled with blue Fire.
    Halting, hesitation in every word, the youngling was attempting magik. Ceithin raised his eyebrows in surprise. The words of enchantment to manipulate Fire slipped into Ceithin's incomplete sleeping dreams. They were snapped, stuttered words—not smooth with practiced magik but harsh and shocking in their simplicity. Suddenly his dreams turned to blue. The crimson inside him tried to hold tight, but slowly it transformed to orange, then through the entire spectrum until it finally transformed to a sapphire so bright it hurt. The iciness of the blue cooled his own Fire and he started to