We Set the Dark on Fire (We Set the Dark on Fire, #1)

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

she knew better than to mistake the luxury of her surroundings for safety.

She was only as safe as she was vigilant.

It didn’t matter that Dani had dreamed of a little house and a couple of chickens and the chance to learn her mama’s recipes. Of taking care of her parents as they got older. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted Polvo, and the life she had been born for. Because in Medio, safety required power, and to get power you had to move closer to the sun.

Overcoming obstacles was good. Showing off the salt-curse in your blood was not.

The tensions had moved far past mythology. Far past brother-gods and curses as old as the island itself. It was political now. Rights and riots and the prosperous versus the destitute. On one side, there was the might of a nation. On the other, desperation. Every clash was a violent one, every victory bloody and hollow with loss. There was no going back.

“I’d work on that temper of yours, Primera,” she said, her voice lower now. Almost dangerous. “Not that you’d know, but well-bred men like their women to have a little charm.” Dani took a deep breath, praying to the god of voice that she could hold hers steady. “That’s one of the perks of having actual value,” she said. “You don’t have to rely on frivolous things like charm.”

Her mask was all she had left.

Carmen met her eyes, and all the air seemed to hang still. A constellation of possibility.

Dani was no longer exhausted; she felt electric. He had been here. The fox-faced boy who had been both torment and savior.

His posture hadn’t shifted an inch. This was a boy who was willing to wait.

Behind her, she felt rather than saw Sota trailing her, like the darkness just outside a candle’s protective circle. But whose darkness was it? His or her own?

The key to being in control of yourself, her maestras had taught her, wasn’t in ridding oneself of emotion but in concealing emotion. To conceal a particularly strong emotion, you sometimes needed to layer another on top of it. Intentional expression was always preferable to unintentional.

It was here, in the safest place she could find on short notice, that she turned to face him at last, determined not to let him know she was anything but furious. Her anger was an intentional one, layered over her curiosity until nothing showed but fire.

she had expected more. Wanted more, even. But this was just intimidation. Manipulation. The same kind perpetrated by all boys who thought they were stronger than girls.

“You know what the difference was between the scary stories they told my husband, and the ones they told me?” Dani asked, jerking her head up the lawn toward the massive rose house, filled with people who would never know her fears. “Yours were true,” Sota said. “They were true,”

The way you slip into a lie like it’s a whole new person. You’re a hundred shades of a girl. You hold those shadows and bring them to life when you need them, and they’re flawless. Look how far you’ve risen, how many people you’ve fooled.”

Silence is a weapon; don’t let anyone disarm you before you’re ready.

By the third day, it had become a kind of torture. There had been no word. No sight of him.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, the door closing behind his eyes as quickly as it had opened. “Be useful.”

She closed her eyes, asking for strength, for forgiveness. There was enough divinity in the sunbeams alone for her to know her mother’s gods were here, watching. She sent a silent promise to them that this wasn’t the end. That she would make this right, one way or another.

there was a dark power to closeness, and it was here, between them.

Dani didn’t know much about Mateo beyond his tendency to be condescending and cold, unconcerned with the happiness of those around him. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t trust Sota, either. In a battle between two men trying to control her, she’d chosen herself.

On her way down to breakfast, Dani busied herself with the arduous task of forgetting her dreams.

When has there ever been true protest without injustice? Who really cast the first stone? Who is attacking, and who is bleeding?”

Some people said this conflict, the one they would not officially call a war, had started thousands of years ago during a falling-out between two brother-gods. But here, today, Dani could see that was just a fanciful story, perpetuated to give people an easy answer. The real answer was harder. Prejudice. Privilege. Hatred. Maybe the Sun and Salt Gods had walked with mortals all those years ago. Maybe one had betrayed the other. But there was nothing left of that story here today. This was politics. This was humanity, and the refusal to recognize it.

She’d been a hungry child. A criminal, moments from arrest or death. She’d been a daughter who couldn’t do enough to save her parents, and a victim of blackmail, and a girl who dreamed of kissing a Segunda in a sun-filled glade. But until this moment, she’d never been so completely helpless.

there was no safety in wartime. There was no protection.

if every part of her was a lie, what would be left

“They tell us about the curse of the Salt God because it’s a simple story, but I don’t think it’s the real story. I think the real story is greed, and money, and politics. Privilege and prejudice. A system that was created thousands of years ago by people who wanted to reward those like them and punish everyone else.”

“But I want to live in a world where love doesn’t mean fear. Where we can survive without forgetting who we are.”

the more threatened the privileged feel, the more drastic the measures they’ll be able to justify in the name of ‘safety.’”

She had claimed a power over him, and he was none the wiser. She only had to stay still. The god of steel was in her spine and her throat, and together, they waited.

The shame, hardwired to anything pleasurable by half a lifetime of training, sent alarm bells running through her at every pulse point. But she didn’t stop. Not even with a hundred maestras’ voices screaming that she was on the road to ruin. She couldn’t stop.

Dani’s father had always told her that secrets made her strong. Her maestras had told her restraint made her strong. But Dani knew now that to crack open what you thought you knew, to allow it to scar with truth, that was what made you truly strong.

I’m tired of secrets,” Dani said. “I’m tired of hiding and double talk and being a good little Primera while people die and the people who murder them get away with it. I’m telling you because . . .” Another deep breath. Confessing to treason had been less of a challenge than what was coming. “Because the feelings I have for you are real. And they’re not tied to this life, or this mask, or any of these lies.”

“The past may comfort us,” she said to the fire. “But it cannot feed us.”

“Yes.” Their lips met like swords sometimes do, clashing and impatient and bent on destruction,

Together, they walked back slowly despite the rain, taking pleasure in the closeness even though they didn’t dare reach for each other again. They weren’t as fragile as a fire. They were so much more.

Dangerous as it was, she found herself wanting the satisfaction of a more visible mark. How could she be sure it had been real otherwise? That she’d actually jumped in with both feet. That she’d confessed, then kissed an open flame of a girl in a rainstorm. That she’d been kissed back.