Chapter 28
Rosie
I run and run, without thought or plan. Pure terror drives me, but no matter how hard I run, no matter how many turns I take or cool dark passages into which I plunge, there is no escape.
Fire fills my every sense, consuming my perception.
I cannot escape it, cannot be free. I cannot outrun it; it is with me, not just pursuing me, but inside me.
Welling up from the very depths of my soul.
I feel I will go mad. Perhaps I have already.
Perhaps I’ve been mad all this while and am only just now becoming aware of it.
I am cut off from this world, from the souls of the men and women around me.
No longer part of their reality, I sink into this pit of hell where I am apart and alone.
Where there is nothing left but my own consuming fire.
Then suddenly, through the pain, through the terror, I feel…
something else. A prickling, an awareness.
A sense of another soul. Desperate, I turn toward it.
The passages through which I stagger are unfamiliar to me.
There are almost no scintils, and the darkness is overwhelming, but I race onward, pursuing that sense, that only part of my being that isn’t pure heat and hell.
At some point, I leave behind the carved and polished stone of the palace, entering into rough, unhewn caverns.
A small part of me is aware of the danger, aware that I am very likely to be lost in the endless winding tunnels beneath the mountain.
If I don’t slow down, if I don’t take care, I will run straight into the arms of my own death.
But death sounds preferable to this heat inside me. I will gladly die if it means escape.
Almost against their will, my feet skid to a halt, and I stop, arms wheeling.
Though I can see nothing but blackness surrounded by dancing green flames, I feel the gaping drop below me.
Through the roaring fire in my ears, I hear the deeper, darker voice of a river carving its way through mountain stone.
For a brief second, I consider throwing myself over that brink. Surely a water so powerful would be strong enough to douse even hellfire! The fall would break my bones, and the flow would pull me under, fill my lungs, and…
“Rosie!”
The voice echoing up the passage behind me sends a startled thrill through my head. Is that…is that my name? No, it cannot be. My name, my being, is fire, is poison, is horror and destruction and hell.
“Rosie!” the voice calls again, and it’s like a hook painfully lodged between my shoulders, restraining me, preventing me from taking that last step and plunging into the arms of the river.
Torn between heartache and fury, I turn away from that edge and peer into the darkness behind me.
A figure stands there, but a few paces away.
He holds a scintil in one hand, and the glow illuminates his stern, hard-hewn face.
“Valtar,” I gasp. Sparks spurt from my tongue. My heart surges, and I try to take a step toward him. “Valtar, I—”
My legs buckle. I begin to fall and feel the pull of the drop behind me, feel the call of the river’s voice and that blessed, drowning flow.
But Valtar moves too fast. He drops the scintil, which makes a loud crack as it hits the stone floor and rolls away, its white light casting his shadow in wild contortions as he lunges forward.
His hand slips around my waist, his strong arm drawing me toward him.
He hisses through his teeth, a pained sound. “What’s happened to you? Damn it, Rosie, what is this?”
I fall against his chest, weeping, clinging.
The fire inside is so great, burning me alive.
I know I’m going to die a gruesome death.
Just like my mother. Only it won’t be my skin which blisters and burns away first, but my very heart.
“Valtar!” I whimper, tears escaping my eyes, scalding my cheeks.
“Let me go, let me fall. The water…the water…”
Valtar curses again. His black eyes peer down at me, his expression ferocious with horrified understanding. “No water of this world can help you now,” he growls.
Then, to my surprise, he scoops me up, his arm under my knees, cradling me against his chest. Little mewling protests fall from my lips, but he ignores them and carries me back from that perilous edge, back into the stone passage and the shadows beyond reach of the damaged scintil.
There he kneels and, still holding me close, settles his back against the wall.
Stretching his legs out on either side of me, he wraps his arms around my shuddering, burning body, rocking me back and forth like a child.
“It will pass,” he says. He sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself. “It’s not got hold of you yet. You’re strong, Rosie. You’re strong enough to fight this.” His lips are in my hair, murmuring the words close to my ear. “Breathe with me. Just breathe with me, Rosie.”
The sound of my name on his lips has a hypnotic effect.
Though I’m still choking with panic, I make little hiccupping efforts to time my breath with his.
He draws long, steady inhales through his nostrils, and while I cannot match them, I concentrate on their even rhythm.
Breathe in for a count of six. Breathe out for a count of ten.
Every breath out that I make sears my throat, my tongue, my lips.
I could almost swear I see spurts of green flame flickering in the darkness but suspect it’s just my imagination.
Slowly, slowly, the blaze in my veins recedes, and the fire reduces to a dull burn in the pit of my gut.
I close my eyes, breath finally steadying out.
Valtar continues to hold me, his strong arms almost painful in their grip, rocking me gently like a child.
The fear and, worse still, that sense of cut-off aloneness dulls.
I’m not alone. I’m with him. Here in the dark of my prison, far from all hope of help or escape. But not alone. Not alone.
“What…what happened to me?” I ask at last, forcing the words through blistered lips.
His arms squeeze a little tighter, and he nuzzles into my hair. Though his breaths have been slow and steady for the last I-don’t-know-how-many minutes, the inhale he draws now is ragged. “You were…on the brink of your first step to manifestation.”
I shake my head. More tears spill out over my lashes, burning hot as though the fire inside me had brought them to a boil. “No, no, no,” I murmur. “No, I can’t. I won’t.”
He pulls my head back onto his shoulder.
I don’t resist. I’m too weak, too exhausted.
I turn toward him, almost limp with exhaustion.
“You have hellfire in your blood,” he says.
“But I…I don’t know that you can survive its rise.
You’re not like other dragon spawn.” He rests his mouth against my brow.
Not a kiss, just a moment of pause, though I feel the shape of his lips.
Then he speaks against my skin, “Some beings are simply not intended to carry hell inside them.”
I huddle into him, hunching my shoulders and tucking against his chest. His heartbeat thuds against my ear, racing as though with great exertion, despite all his careful breathing.
Slowly but surely, my dulled brain begins to form thoughts once more, and a bitter laugh huffs from my raw throat.
So apparently I am a dragon after all. Just…
not a dragon that can survive actually being a dragon.
Great.
“I cannot manifest,” I say at last, forcing myself to speak the words out loud. Then I tip my head back a little, trying to catch Valtar’s eye. “Can I?”
He shakes his head.
“So…even if I am who they think I am…it’s hopeless.”
“It was always hopeless,” Valtar murmurs. There’s such terrible heaviness in his voice, it seems to drag silence down after it. We sit for some while again, neither of us speaking.
“Do you think…” I begin, then stop, uncertain I can bear to shape the question out loud. “Do you think Lord Elis might still be alive? Down there in the dark? Do you think there’s a chance they’ll find him before…before…?”
Valtar is very still. He holds me but does not rock me, and even his breath seems to have ceased. The only sign of life is that still-racing heart of his thudding against my cheek. Finally, I feel him shake his head.
I cannot help the tears that fall. Turning my head, I simply weep into his shoulder.
He wraps me closer, murmuring gentle words I do not hear.
I’m overcome once more, this time not with heat and terror, but with cold despair.
It is a long time before I can manage to find words again.
“Was it so very bad?” I ask, knowing even as I form the words that it’s a stupid question.
“Yes,” Valtar answers simply.
“Tell me,” I whisper. “Please. Tell me.”
It’s cruel, perhaps, to make him talk about it.
But there is some part of me that feels if I can know the truth, if I can face it straight on, then maybe…
maybe I can bear some of it for Valtar. For Elis.
It’s a foolish idea, one to which I cannot even quite put words.
But I press on even so, refusing to shrink away.
At first, Valtar resists. But then, as though my voice has worked a compulsion over him, he begins to speak. The words are reluctant but clear in this shadowed sliver of reality in which we huddle together, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“In that place,” he says, “down there…one comes face-to-face with oneself. There is nowhere else to look but inward, no other monster to be vanquished than that which dwells in one’s innermost being.”