Chapter 16 #2
“The passive thing,” he says. “Pushing. Baiting me. You want me to turn my back on you, walk away so you can say everyone does. So you can have your martyr story, feel justified, be angry with somebody else instead of with yourself.”
A hot knot of grief twists in my chest as I force out a laugh. “That’s what you think? You’re reading way too much into this. I’m just…trying to make this spell look nice. Magick is real here, so I’m…you know…channeling it.”
My pulse hammers in my throat. It’s obscene how much I want him to answer by walking away.
He studies me for another long, unbearable second. Then he shakes his head. “I’m not the prop in whatever punishment you’ve decided you deserve.”
“Declan, I really don’t know—”
“Stop it, Amanda! Just…stop.” He exhales, tired. “Fine. You want me to go, I’ll go. I’ll give you space to sort this out.”
He meets my gaze, steady, and his lips part like he’s about to say something that will land with clean, devastating bluntness.
I swallow, bracing for the judgment or the lecture I want him to give me.
Because he’s right. I want to turn my anger away from myself and point it somewhere safe. Point it at him.
Instead, he only shakes his head again. “Try not to light the bed on fire.”
And when he finally turns, slipping through the flap of the tent, it feels less like victory and more like confirmation that I’ve broken something I don’t know how to fix.
The silence he leaves behind is unbearable. My chest aches with it, my skin tingling like it can’t hold me in. But that’s fine. Everything is fine. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone. I can realign myself, reconnect with my inner power, rebuild my armor.
I narrow my eyes, strike a match with a precise flick of my wrist, and light the candle. The flame wavers, small and steady, mocking in its control. I lift the rose quartz above it, smoke curling up around the edges of the stone.
My chest is tight, my throat raw, but I force the words out anyway, the ones I’ve recited into mirrors and captions like they were precious. “I am aligned with purpose,” I whisper, voice splintering on the edges. “I radiate power.”
The flame beneath the crystal flickers.
“I am the fire. I am the flame. I am the light that cannot be dimmed.”
The words taste false, but I cling to them anyway, repeat them louder as if volume alone might make them true. I see Nessa’s wide eyes, hear the way her voice shredded apart, feel the sting of Declan’s absence, and shove it all down under the chant.
“I am the fire. I am the flame. I am the light that cannot be dimmed.”
The crystal warms against my palm. Soft at first, like sun on bare shoulders. Then hotter. The petal pink deepens, pulsing faintly.
The crystal flashes yellow. Then orange. Then red. The colors swell inside the quartz like a sunrise. Heat builds, and the crystal vibrates with energy that buzzes up my arm.
The heart of the quartz continues to flare—yellow, orange, red—the colors spiraling inward, collapsing into a single burning point of light.
“It’s working,” I breathe.
Boom!
The crystal detonates, a fiery shockwave scorching a black ring into the silk bedding. Heat lashes my palm, and I shriek, flinging the stone. It rolls to a stop, glowing like an ember. The candle topples, flame devouring the affirmation card until it curls and crumbles into ash.
Fire races across the sheets. Panic clamps around my throat. My hands flail uselessly, slapping at the blaze.
The tent flap snaps open. Declan barrels in, eyes taking in the scene in one sweep. He seizes the bucket of water we use to wash up and hurls the contents over the bed.
Water slaps the silk, dousing the fire. And me.
I gasp as cold rushes over my skin, thin dress plastered to me, hair dripping, embarrassment and adrenaline making my teeth chatter.
Declan sets the empty bucket down. For a long while, neither of us speaks.
The air between us crackles with leftover anger, smoke, and everything I don’t know how to say.
My throat aches with the things I should apologize for but can’t.
He doesn’t look away, and I hate how much I need that steadiness when I’ve given him every reason to turn his back.
My palm throbs, skin flushed red and tender. I shift, trying to gather what’s left of my dignity and wet spell ingredients, but the saturated silk beneath me squelches.
Declan sits in the dry spot beside me, eyes dark with concern. He leans in, tears a strip from the wet sheet, and gently reaches for my wrist. “Let me see.”
His fingers cradle mine. His touch is warm and steady as he turns my hand over, inspecting the burn on my palm.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
His mouth lifts in the faintest curve. “Because you need someone to be.”
I slump against him, suddenly exhausted. “I was just trying to… I don’t know. Feel like I had control again. Like I wasn’t completely at the mercy of this place.”
“You’re not,” he says quietly. “When you patched me up after I clocked Dav, I remember thinking you had it all figured out.”
He reaches for a little clay jar the healer gave him and scoops out a small amount of balm with two fingers. Gently, he dabs it onto my burn. My skin stings, but the cool salve soothes almost immediately. His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist as he rubs it in.
He shifts beside me, leg pressing against mine, his warmth curling around me like a blanket. He rests his cheek on the top of my head, breath ghosting over my damp hair. The weight of him, the stability and safety makes the space around my heart unclench.
“I thought maybe…” My throat works as I force the words out. “After everything, I worried you wouldn’t look at me the same.”
His chuckle shakes my shoulder. “I think I like you even more now that you’ve become a fire hazard.” I feel his mouth curve, the heat in his voice unmistakable. “And I’m not even going to say anything about how wet you are.”
“Are you flirting with me?” I ask, smile breaking across my face. “I feel like I need to ask now so I don’t automatically assume the worst.”
“That’s a trade secret. Can’t give away all my moves.”
“Hmm.” I glance down, splashing my toes lightly in the puddle soaking through the tent rug. “Might want to work on those moves.”
“I was saving your life.”
“You threw water on me.”
“Same thing.”
Declan’s hand stays wrapped gently around my wrist, thumb moving in the barest, most absent-minded stroke against my pulse point.
I catch the faint scent of smoke in his shirt and the earthy trace of salve. I breathe it in. I breathe him in.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, the words catching as they leave me. “For earlier. For all of it. I shouldn’t have…pushed you like that.”
Declan doesn’t answer. He just keeps his hand around mine, thumb drawing the same steady arc over my pulse.
That hum in the base of my spine is back. The tug in my chest. The one that feels like something ancient and knowing is threading an arrow through my ribs and drawing back the bow.
I shove myself to my feet so fast the blood rushes in my ears. My gaze snaps to the tent’s entrance. The silk flaps shiver in the breeze, but the air inside the tent is heavy. A low sound builds, the crackling of flames, distant at first, then swelling, rushing closer.
Declan’s attention turns toward the noise outside, and he goes to stand, but like his limbs suddenly weigh twice as much, his motions slow. His movements take too long. His breathing is so slow, it nearly stops.
The edges of the tent opening ripple as if submerged, silk moving like fabric under water. The air thickens, turning viscous, syrup-slow. Like time itself is falling asleep.
“Declan,” I whisper, panic crawling across my skin.
The familiar bite of burning wood and smoldering ash fills my nose.
It’s happening again. The world around me is stopping. Just like the last time Fortune came. Just like the last time she had a message for me.
“Declan,” I say again, more urgently now.
It takes full seconds for his dark gaze to drag to mine.
I lunge and grab his hand.
The moment I make contact, heat pulses through me like lava. A pop of static at my fingertips. The air shifts again.
Declan jerks the rest of the way to his feet, sways, catches himself on the edge of the bed. He blinks hard. Shakes his head like he’s coming out of a daze. “What the fuck was that?”
“Don’t let go.” I tighten my grip on his hand. “Please. It’s her. It’s Fortune.”
Around us, the world is suspended in a viscous hush when the smoke thickens.
Fortune glides past the tent, leaving behind a trail of scorched earth, her silhouette flickering like a flame. My body jerks toward the flap before I fully register moving.
“Come on,” I hiss, dragging Declan with me.
He pulls back. “Wait.”
I spin, breath swollen in my lungs. “She’s literally right there, Declan. She has the answers. We need her help. She’s the only one who can tell us how to get back.”
But he’s already moving, dragging me across the tent, dropping to one knee in front of the trunk at the end of our bed. He flings aside a pile of clothes and an unraveled silk sash until he finds what he’s looking for.
He lifts a scorched scroll, edges curled and blackened. The scroll. The one we read aloud in the only real room in this kingdom. The one that made the torches flare and set something ancient inside me on fire.
“You stole this?” I ask, half shocked, half impressed.
“I rescued it,” he says with a shrug. “Figured it might come in handy.”
I take it from him, already turning toward the exit. “Fortune led me to that room. This scroll. There’s a reason for all of it. She knows what that reason is.”
We shove past the curtain into the night. The air is thick and gray with smoke. The torches lining the caravan flicker unnaturally slowly.
Dav stands outside our tent, one finger jammed halfway up his nose.