Chapter Eighteen
Somehow, the candle is lit again.
It’s the first thing I notice as my eyes open. The room is still dim, but I can see the candle on my bedside table, and I can see moonlight streaming in the high windows on the far end of the healing ward.
I’m alive.
How am I alive?
I struggle to shift upright, shimmying against the pillows behind me.
Everything hurts. It feels as if my bones and muscles have been shattered and shredded and put back together again.
Even my skin feels tender, like a bad sunburn.
It looks grayish and dull, I can tell even without much light.
The room spins as I try to move into a sitting position.
Daemon was here. Flashes of images move through my head. Daemon pulling shadows out of me. Daemon’s eyes filled with pain. He’d saved me.
Unless the whole thing had been a fever dream. A hallucination from the magic.
I finally manage to get into an upright position, my back against the pillows. It takes a moment for the room to still, and my vision to focus. I turn and look to the left of me.
Daemon is lying in the bed next to mine, a few feet away.
He’s lying on his back, eyes closed. His skin looks even more gray than mine, and dark circles sit beneath his eyes. For a moment, it doesn’t seem he’s breathing, but then his lungs expand ever so slightly, drawing in a shallow breath.
He looks like he’s barely alive. He took the dark magic out of me, and now he’s suffering the consequences.
I think back to that night in the garden with Toryn, when he’d bruised my wrist. And then Daemon had chased him away, and he’d touched my wrist, and my bruises had been gone. He’s a healer. The man everyone claims is a traitor and a murderer. He’d healed me. Twice now.
I just don’t understand why.
Why had he brought me here?
Why does he act as if he’s my enemy one moment, and then saving me the next?
I don’t get it. Nothing about Daemon makes sense.
But it’s clear that whatever dark magic Daemon had taken out of me would have killed me, if he is having such a strong reaction to it.
He’s fae after all, and I’m merely human.
I draw in a shuddering breath. After all these years, all the times I’d escaped death, and now I have magical threats to contend with.
.. I wish I knew why everyone seems to want me dead.
Am I just the unluckiest person in Aureon?
Do the fae really hate me being here in Shadow’s Keep so much?
Or is it something else?
Daemon must have found me in my room somehow.
I remember hearing a banging, pounding sound right before I passed out.
How had he known something was wrong? There’s almost no one in the castle.
Which means my would-be killer is likely still here, waiting for another chance.
And with the school healer gone—deployed to the borders with the rest of the warriors, perhaps—that means I’m defenseless if the killer tries again before Daemon wakes up.
As much as I loath to admit it, I’m not much of a match against the fae.
If someone does come, I need to be ready. Which means I need to be able to get out of this bed.
Every time I try to stand, though, the room spins violently and I fall back against the pillows.
I spend the next hour trying over and over again.
I’m eventually able to get my feet on the floor, sitting up without the pillows propping me from behind.
The first five times I try to stand all the way up, I fall backward.
The sixth time I manage to stand, only to topple over and hit the stone floor hard.
Pain radiates through my limbs, and a muffled cry escapes my lips.
Daemon shifts and murmurs something from his bed, but his eyes remain closed.
We’re both defenseless right now, and as soon as my assailant figures out that I’m still alive, they’re going to come for me.
For both of us. Daemon isn’t exactly well-liked in this place, either, and I don’t think he’ll be spared because he’s fae.
And given he just saved my life, I’d rather not find out.
I don’t want anything bad happening to him because of me.
Or rather, worse than what already happened.
With a growl, I push myself up on my elbows.
My legs feel numb and nonresponsive. I have to get them to obey me.
They will obey. After a few tries, I manage to pivot one leg around so that I can get up on a knee, holding onto my bed for support.
It takes a few minutes, but I get the other knee under me, though it’s trembling and threatening to give out again.
I lean my chest against the bed, exhausted and shaky and nauseous.
That’s when I smell smoke.
I straighten, lifting my head to look down the long length of the healing ward.
In the moonlight, I can see that the main door is shut.
Daemon must have shut it when he brought me in here.
And I can only imagine he barricaded it somehow, perhaps with magic.
Smoke is coming in underneath the door, and around the sides, the acrid odor unmistakable.
There’s another scent, too, something not natural. Magic.
I’ve run out of time. Someone is trying to finish us off while we’re too weak to escape.
Sucking in a deep breath, I push myself upright again, keeping my fingertips on the bed for balance.
Slowly, I step sideways until I’m at the wall.
I pivot so my back is against it, and then I move carefully toward Daemon, one step at a time.
I can’t afford to fall again. It had taken me too long to get up the last time.
The stone is cool against my skin as I move along it.
I watch Daemon’s face as I move toward him.
He looks so still, like a statue. How in the name of the goddess am I going to move him?
By the time I make it to Daemon’s bed, smoke has traveled along the length of the ceiling and is now swirling down toward me.
The temperature has risen about twenty degrees as well, and my skin, which had been clammy and cool, now begins to bead with sweat.
While I’m not moving fast, it had taken me less than three minutes to shimmy along the wall to Daemon’s bed.
This fire is moving at a speed that defies logic.
Is someone really willing to burn down the whole castle just to kill me?
“Daemon,” I call, grabbing the headboard of his bed for balance and resting a hand on his shoulder. “Daemon, wake up.”
Smoke is pouring into my lungs now, and the door of the healing ward collapses inward in a swirl of crimson sparks.
Flames surge into the room, crawling across the ceiling and rushing across the floor, even though it’s stone.
My chest spasms as I begin to cough, the fire sucking all the oxygen from the air.
I shake his shoulder harder now. “Daemon! Get up!”
His eyes blink slowly open, and when he sees me standing there, surprise moves across his features, and then fear as he sees my expression.
“Fire!” I gasp as another fit of coughing claims me.
He sits up, faster than I would have thought him capable of from his corpse-like posture moments before. A moment later, he sways and winces in pain.
“Daemon?”
“Go on,” he says, pointing toward the door at the back of the healing ward. “I’ll be right behind you.” He swings his legs over the side of the bed, another shudder moving through him.
I shake my head. “We’ll go together.”
“There’s not enough time,” he says. “You can’t survive this.”
My brows lift. “And fae are immune to fire?”
His jaw rolls, but he says nothing.
“I didn’t think so.” I’m still standing with the wall next to me, but as flames eat along the side of it, I take a shaky step closer to Daemon. “Get up, Daemon.”
He slowly forces himself upright. The air is so thick with smoke, each inhale burns.
I grab one of Daemon’s hands and we shuffle toward the back door of the healing ward.
But we haven’t made it three steps before the flames circle around the walls and cut off our exit.
They’re crawling along the ceiling overhead now, too.
We’re standing in the middle of a literal inferno.
Maybe fire was my fate all along. I had awoken to fire, all those years ago, and now, I find myself full circle.
Except this time, I’m not standing outside the fire.
This time, I can’t escape. Maybe all my years of running were for nothing.
I had merely delayed the ending that was meant for me, the same ending that had claimed my family.
I stop walking and look up at Daemon. He turns toward me at the same time, as if sensing the same thing. Sensing the inevitable.
Maybe, if I hadn’t paused to wake him, I could have made it out.
All these years I’d been on my own. Running, fleeing, surviving.
I’d never considered anyone else. Never made connections, because they were too risky.
Too dangerous. And now, at the very end, I realize that somehow, when I least expected it, that had changed.
Daemon’s eyes hold sorrow as they lock onto mine.
He reaches out with his free hand, and he brushes his thumb softly over my cheek, wiping away the ash that coats my face.
I close my eyes a moment and lean into his touch.
I don’t know why any of this is happening, but here, in these final moments, I let go of the need for answers.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, however, I have a sudden jolt of memory.
It had always been there, lurking in my subconscious. This feeling that I’d had something to do with it. The fire the night I awoke, eight years before. A kinship with those flames.
Had I started the fire that killed my family?
My eyes fly open. All I see is Daemon’s green eyes and the golden-red-vermillion devouring everything around us. And in that moment, some inexplicable force rises within me. I realize that the fire cannot hurt me. It can’t hurt me because I am the fire.
I take a step back from Daemon, and I call.
A summons, a command. The fire roars brighter for a moment, and it swirls like a cyclone around me and Daemon.
Sparks fly around us like fireworks, and I see Daemon’s eyes widen.
My back arches, arms falling to my sides, and my feet lift off the ground.
The fire surges into my chest, every flame in the room moving into me in a matter of moments.
I absorb it, devour it, as moments before it had been devouring everything else.
The room is suddenly black and still, but I am glowing, golden, my limbs and my skin shining. It feels as if I’ve swallowed all the stars in the sky. There’s a heat, and a buzz like lightning. My veins feel as if storms are swimming inside them. Daemon is staring at me with a mix of horror and awe.
And then, all energy leaves me, and I collapse to the floor.