Chapter Thirty-Seven
At first, there is nothing but darkness.
But then, stars begin to pop up all around me, until I am floating in a massive sea of them. Beautiful, glowing lights that fill me with peace.
I realize, also with a great sense of peace, that I am dead.
Julian had killed me. I should feel shock, or anger, or sorrow, but I feel none of those things. Just wave after wave of peace as I swim among the stars.
In the distance, I see a glowing golden door. As I move toward it, the stars come together, forging a pathway toward the door. The path is solid, even though it seems made of mere light. I step onto it, and I walk toward the door. I reach it quickly, even though it seemed at first a long ways away.
As I reach for the handle, something makes me pause.
The feeling passes, and my hand brushes the cool metal of the door…
Flames rush up around me. The door is gone, the stars are gone, the sky is gone. I am burning, but it’s not the feeling of my usual magic. Flames are not coming off of me. I am made entirely of fire. I am nothing but fire.
And that familiar feeling of home washes over me. I am fire.
The heat reaches a peak, as if I am all the stars in the night sky burning at once, and then my eyes open.
“I will kill you!” Daemon is screaming. “I will end you in the most excruciating way that you can imagine…I will curse your soul so that even your afterlife is a misery…”
Memory floods back to me. Julian killed me. He slit my throat and I bled out. I died. I saw a golden door…
But the memories don’t stop there. They come rushing back to me. All of them. Everything.
I remember my parents. My sister. I remember playing with Cillian when we were children, arguing over toys. I remember learning to ride a horse and learning to use a sword and a dagger and learning to read.
I remember all of it.
Including that night, eight years ago.
I remember standing there, outside the house we were staying in after my parents fled House Harkyn. The flames consuming everything. Fire licking the night sky, heat blazing. Knowing that my family was inside, and there was nothing I could do about it.
That moment that’s been stuck on repeat in my head for the last eight years, over and over and over… a wall I could never see past in my mind. The moment my life had started, in a sense.
But now I see everything that led up to that moment.
We are sitting around the dinner table, me, my parents, and my sister, Ari, who is two years younger.
There’s a pounding on the door, and my parents look at each other, fear in their eyes.
We’d been on the run from my grandparents after fleeing Harkyn Castle.
My parents hadn’t told us why we were fleeing, just that it was important.
My father tries to lead us out the back alley but there are men there.
They tell my sister and I to go upstairs and hide.
And we do… I remember the creak of the stairs, the small closet which smells of wool and mold.
We hide. There are screams below, and my parents yelling, and then there is nothing.
Until the fire starts.
I smell the smoke first. Then there’s the heat, coming up from the floorboards.
I drag my sister out of the closet and we go to the closest window.
This one goes to a side alley, and I don’t see any men there.
I help her climb out of the window first. There’s so much smoke…
she’s already coughing. She makes it down into the alley, and then I see a rider on a horse pass by, and he sees her, and catches her…
It’s Cillian. Only a few years older than me, but it’s my cousin carrying out our grandparents’ orders. He grabs Ari and he rides away with her.
It’s at that moment that the floor gives way beneath me and I fall through into the inferno of the first floor.
For several moments I’m terrified, but then I realize that other than the pain of the fall, I’m not burning. The flames surround me, raging all around, but they do not harm me.
No sooner has this realization washed over me than a figure busts in the front door.
With lightning speed, he rushes toward me, scoops me in his arms, and carries me back out into the night.
He sets me down on my feet a couple blocks away from the blaze, and then, eyes wide, looking down at me as if he’s afraid of me, he turns and disappears into the night.
And I walk back slowly to the burning building, and I sink to my knees, and I mourn.
With a jolt, the memory fades and I come back to the present moment. A hundred different emotions rage through me. Least of all that I have somehow come back to life after having my throat slit.
Daemon is attempting to attack Julian. I run my hands tentatively down my chest. My clothes are gone. There’s no blood. And I’m covered in head to foot in golden…ash. As if I’d walked through a fire.
Shaking slightly, I sit up, and then push up onto my feet.
Daemon and Julian both spin in my direction. Daemon’s mouth pops open and his eyes widen, and his expression goes from fury to one of wonder in an instant. He steps toward me, arms wide to embrace me.
“Stay back!” I growl, holding up a hand. “Both of you!”
Daemon’s brow crinkles, but Julian is looking at me placidly. Too placidly.
“I—I don’t know what just happened,” I stammer. “But you—” I jab a finger toward Julian. “You stay the hell away from me. You murdered me… except…”
“Except you came back to life,” Julian says, making a gesture with his hands as if lecturing a class. “As I knew you would.”
“You couldn’t be completely sure,” Daemon growls. “You took a horrible, horrible risk…”
“I don’t know what either of you are talking about!” I snap. “But you…” This time my eyes fall on Daemon. My voice cracks. “I remember everything now. All of it. And you were there. That night.”
Daemon takes a step toward me. “I…I told you that I could sense you,” he says quietly.
“I thought you meant since the night you brought me to Shadow’s Keep!” I shriek. “Not since the night… the night my…”
“I felt your distress, and I pulled you out of the fire,” Daemon says. “To my great surprise, since you seemed completely unharmed.” His face twists in torment. “Nothing like that had ever happened to me before… sensing someone like that. And I panicked, and I left you there.”
“You knew,” I groan. “You knew this whole time, and you never said anything.”
He tries to take another step forward, but I back away from him.
“There were other times… over the years. I would sense you, and I’d intervene when you were being pursued.
But I… I tried to stay away from you when you first came to Shadow’s Keep.
I was an outcast, and I didn’t want you to be treated any worse than I knew you would be as a human.
And then, later…” He closes his eyes and shakes his head.
“I should have told you, but it never seemed the right time.”
“Because it never was, and it never should be,” Julian says, his voice carrying a rare sternness. “I told both of you to stay away from each other… and now that I know what I know…”
He looks back and forth between me and Daemon, looking almost stricken. “You cannot ever be together. Ever. Do you understand me?”
“No, I don’t understand.” A bubble of hysterical laughter threatens to burst out of me. My psyche feels as frayed as a burlap sack. “Neither of you are making any good sense at all.”
Julian’s eyes burn into me. “You cannot be together, because if you are, you will bring about, quite literally, the end of Aureon as we know it.”