Chapter 1
Fire did not care who you were. It consumed wood, brick, and flesh all the same.
When Sadie Brooks pulled an old woman from a burning brownstone, she had no idea she was dragging the mother of the city’s most dangerous man out of the ashes. She only wanted to go home. But saving a king’s mother was not something a person simply walked away from.
Sadie did not believe in karma, divine timing, or being in the right place at the right time. She believed in rent, the physical exhaustion that settled into her bones after a 12-hour shift at the diner, and the fact that the El was always delayed.
It was 2:15 a.m.
A steady freezing rain washed the streets of the South Side, turning the pavement into a black mirror. Sadie walked with her head down and her hands jammed deep into the pockets of her cheap trench coat. Her feet ached. Her brain was a flatline of fatigue.
Then she smelled it.
Something acrid and chemical.
It was not the usual mixture of city grime and exhaust. It was melting plastic and char.
Sadie stopped.
Half a block away, a 3-story brownstone was bleeding heavy black smoke from its ground-floor windows. Orange light flickered behind the glass, hungry and erratic.
The street was deserted. There were no sirens and no neighbors pointing or screaming, only the low, hollow roar of oxygen feeding a blaze.
Sadie pulled out her phone, her thumb clumsy against the wet screen as she dialed 911.
“There’s a fire,” she told the dispatcher, giving the cross streets. “It’s spreading fast.”
“Fire and rescue are en route, ma’am. Stay clear of the building.”
Sadie lowered the phone.
She fully intended to follow that advice.
She was 26, barely making minimum wage, and entirely unqualified to be a hero.
She took a step backward.
Then a second-floor window shattered.
Glass exploded outward and rained across the sidewalk.
Through the jagged opening, Sadie heard a faint, raspy cough, followed by a frail cry that was immediately swallowed by the crackling flames.
Someone was inside.
Sadie did not consciously make a decision. She did not weigh the consequences.
Her legs simply moved.
She sprinted across the wet asphalt and took the brownstone’s concrete steps 2 at a time.
The heavy front door was locked.
She kicked it, but the wood refused to give.
Beside the entrance stood a heavy ceramic planter overflowing with dead winter vines. Sadie grabbed it, ignored the strain in her shoulders, and hurled it through the glass panel in the door.
She reached through the jagged opening. Broken glass sliced through the sleeve of her coat and grazed her forearm.
Her fingers found the deadbolt.
She twisted it.
The door opened.
A wall of heat struck her like a physical blow.
Smoke formed a thick, oily curtain, blinding and toxic. Sadie pulled the collar of her coat over her mouth, dropped close to the floor, and crawled into the hallway.
“Hello!”
Smoke coated the back of her throat with ash. She gagged, her eyes watering so badly she could barely see.
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
The voice was a weak rattle from the top of the stairs.
Sadie scrambled upward. Her palms burned against the heated carpet.
The second floor was worse.
Fire had chewed through the floorboards in an adjacent room, throwing a hellish, strobing light across the hallway.
An elderly woman was slumped against the wall near the landing. She wore a silk nightgown, and her white hair was plastered against her head with sweat and soot. She coughed uncontrollably while clutching her chest.
“Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.”
Sadie grabbed her beneath the arms.
The woman was small and frail, but she was dead weight.
“My son,” she wheezed, her eyes rolling backward. “He’ll be angry.”
“He can yell at me later. We have to move.”
Heat continued rising around them. The wallpaper blistered, curled, and blackened.
Sadie hauled the woman upright, wrapped one of her frail arms around her neck, and half carried, half dragged her toward the stairs.
The descent was a nightmare.
Wood groaned beneath their weight. The railing was too hot to touch.
Sadie missed a step and slammed her knee against the edge of a stair. Pain shot through her thigh.
She bit her lip until it bled and refused to release the woman.
“Stay with me.”
They reached the ground floor.
The fire had broken through the living-room wall. Flames rolled across the ceiling like waves.
The roar was deafening.
Sadie dragged the woman through the front door, stumbled down the concrete steps, and collapsed with her on the wet sidewalk.
The freezing rain felt miraculous.
Sadie lay on her back staring into the dark sky, dragging huge, ragged breaths of clean air into her lungs.
Her chest burned.
Her hands felt raw, the skin already reddening and blistering.
Beside her, the old woman was breathing shallowly but steadily.
In the distance, sirens finally cut through the night.
Red and white lights fractured across the surrounding buildings. A fire truck careened around the corner, followed by 2 ambulances.
Sadie pushed herself upright.
Paramedics rushed toward them with stretchers and oxygen tanks.
A man with a heavy mustache knelt beside the old woman.
“We’ve got her. We’ve got her.”
He glanced at Sadie.
“You pulled her out?”
Sadie nodded and coughed.
“She was on the second floor.”
“You need to get checked out, miss. Sit tight.”
He turned back to the woman and placed an oxygen mask over her face.
Sadie looked at her hands.
Her knuckles were raw, soot-stained, and beginning to blister. Her coat was destroyed.
She looked at the flashing lights, the growing crowd of neighbors in bathrobes, and the police cars arriving.
There would be questions.
Forms.
A hospital bill she could not afford.
Police officers asking for identification, running her name, asking why she had been outside so late.
Sadie did not want a medal.
She wanted a shower and her bed.
May you like
While the paramedics lifted the woman onto a stretcher and firefighters charged the house with hoses, Sadie stood.
She backed into the shadows of the alley beside the neighboring building, shoved her ruined hands into her pockets, and disappeared into the rain.
