Daughter of the Flames (31 page)

I turned to look at Sorin and saw the emotion in his face, shining from his summer-blue eyes. He reached for my hand and held on to it tightly, tightly, until my fingers ached, and it was the most welcome pain in the world.

There was a bright, singing note in the wind, like laughter. I looked up at the gale-scrubbed sky, where a trick of light gave the flickering cloud shreds the blue and gold hue of peacock feathers. Joy bubbled under my skin. She was with me – She had always been with me.

I was a daughter of the flames.

I knew it in the warmth of blood trickling down my arm and chest, in the ache of my bones, in the clasp of my hand with Sorin’s and in the sound of my own laughter, torn away by the wind and carried out over the cheering people.

My people.

Despite taking only six months to write in first draft form,
Daughter of the Flames
was a very tough book. It went through several transformations before it was finished, and there were times when I wasn’t sure I would finish it at all. Thanks are owed to:

Diana Wynne Jones for writing
The
Tough Guide to Fantasyland
because it made me want to find out what went on in fantasy nunneries – before they got ransacked – and how fantasy religions really worked, and got me angry about fantasy colour-coding.

Emil Fortune for looking at the synopsis and pointing his finger straight at the problem which was holding the story back and Yasmin Standen for acting as a one-woman cheering squad while I worked out how to fix it.

The Furtive Scribblers’ Club – Tina, Susan, Rachel, Barbara, Holly, Brian and all the rest – who were always there to haul me out of the Pit of Despond and tell me that no, I wasn’t completely mad, I was just a
writer
.

All the friends and co-workers who turned out to support me during the madness of 2007, especially Nicola Robinson, who practically set up a bookshop in her office, and Helen Mearns, who bought the last three copies of
The Swan Kingdom
so I could finally leave the bookshop and go home.

Steve Rawlings and Jim Bunker for astounding me with the most beautiful cover art and design yet again. The staff of Waterstone’s Grimsby, who got behind
The Swan Kingdom
and pushed until it was in the top fifty of the Children’s List.

And as always, Mum and Dad – the sun and moon of my internal landscape.

Zoë Marriott lives in North East Lincolnshire with her two cats, named Hero and Echo, and the Devil Hound, otherwise known as Finn. Zoë has written three books:
The Swan Kingdom
, which was longlisted for the Branford Boase and chosen as an USBBY Outstanding International Book,
Daughter of the Flames
and
Shadows on the Moon
, which won the prestigious Sasakawa Prize. She is currently working on a fourth novel,
FrostFire
.