The Fire Children by Lauren Roy Page A

see it, and let his flames consume it. When the last of the ashes drifted away, he nodded at the table again. “There. I’m full, and my brothers and sisters aren’t here. It would be a shame if that all went to waste.”
    The idea of it! Of eating the food meant for the Fire Children! Yulla shook her head. “I can’t.”
    “So you’ll starve instead?” He snorted. “If they come for us, you need to be able to run. You need to eat. Listen.” Ember came closer to her, hunkering down so his eyes were level with hers. Yulla felt the heat of him, resisted holding out her hands to warm them like you did at a campfire. “This food was left for us to do with as we wish. I wish to share it with you. Please, will you eat?”
    Any protest she had left was drowned out by the racket coming from her middle.
    Her head swam as she stood, another reminder of how badly she needed food. Ember rose with her, keeping his distance even when she swayed. With each step she took, he edged an equal one backwards until she pulled out a chair and sat.
    The spread Sera’s family had left for the Fire Children would have been a feast any regular day of the year: half a dozen fat blocks of cheese; a basket overflowing with bread; plums, figs, apricots, dates, both fresh and dried; enough pastries to sate a hundred sweet tooths. Yulla wanted to unhinge her jaw like a snake, tilt the whole table’s contents into her mouth, and swallow everything on it at once, manners be damned.
    Instead, she selected a plum, struggling against her hunger to keep at least a sliver of her dignity intact. With an effort that could have rivaled that of Inkspot in the stories, resisting the urge to open the Cache of Secrets, Yulla took a careful, casual bite.
    Had she been standing, her knees would have gone weak. Sweetness flooded her tongue, and she had to take her next bite quickly to keep the overripe fruit’s juices from escaping down her chin. For a moment, she almost forgot she had a companion, so focused was she on the plum, then a chewy roll, then a piece of cheese gone slightly melty from being near Ember. Eventually, her frantic pace slowed, and she grinned at him. “It’s good.”
    “I’m glad.”
    It was odd, being at someone else’s kitchen table when they weren’t home to host. Even though all of this was meant to be destroyed by the Fire Children—the food, the furniture, the cheese platter with its cool green glaze—Yulla couldn’t help but feel like there were eyes on her, disapproving. Everyone she knew was down below, yet she still expected Amma or Abba or Sera’s mother to walk into the room and holler Thief! Which, in fact, Yulla was—eating food meant for the Fire Children, contemplating whether to carry some of it away with them when they left this house, or whether they should break into another home when she grew hungry again.
    I’m like the Brigand Queen, she thought, and on the heels of that, Does that make Ember Red Fennec? She shook her head at her own silliness. Once, Yulla had thought the stories about how the Brigand Queen had wooed and won Red Fennec were boring; she’d preferred to hear about the heists and schemes of the whole troupe. In the last few years, though, she’d changed her mind about that, realized there were adventures wrapped around the romance, feeding into it, making it more real.
    But those were stories; this was real. She wasn’t the Brigand Queen, she was a fifteen-year-old girl. She was up above during the Scorching Days, and one of the Fire Children was in the same room with her. It was at the same time better than any tale in Abba’s book, and more terrifying, and...
    And Ember was pulling up a chair.
    The paint peeled, blackened, flaked away beneath his fingers, revealing the wood. Scorch marks ran along that as well, then came wisps of smoke, curling up toward the ceiling. The chair’s top rail caught all at once; the sudden flare of heat and light made Yulla shield her eyes