The Frost and the Flame
Steam rose from the fissures between the cobblestones, curling upward like the breath of some slumbering giant beneath Emberhollow's foundations. Elysia had grown up walking these streets, and still the geothermal vents never failed to catch her attention—threads of pale vapor twisting past the striped awnings of the market stalls, carrying with them the mineral tang of the deep earth. The city breathed. That was what her grandmother used to say, back before the fevers took her: Emberhollow breathes so that we might live upon ground that would otherwise freeze us solid.
The morning market sprawled across the terraced plaza like a living tapestry, humans and vampires haggling shoulder to shoulder beneath canvas dyed in ochre and indigo. A vampire merchant with silver rings threaded through his ears called out the price of volcanic glass beads, his voice carrying easily over the general clamor, while two human children darted between legs and market carts, chasing a scrap of fabric caught by the wind. Elysia sat cross-legged on her usual cushion near the fountain of black basalt, a scatter of old parchments and stone tablets spread before her like a merchant's wares, though what…