Chapter Twenty-One #2
Another scream echoes off the walls, and this time it’s female.
I turn, even though Blackfire warns me not to, and look down.
The woman that I’ve made eye contact with several times across this test is crushed underneath a rock, her dancer in a pile of wood next to her.
The bottom half of her body is pretty much gone, but she’s still alive somehow and crying.
She is crying for her mother, and my heart can’t take it.
We dance close, and I grab Blackfire to make him stop. “Let me just stay with her as she dies. Please.”
He growls. “This is a dangerous time for you to grow a heart, Hopeless. Be cold and leave her. She wouldn’t stop for you.”
“No one deserves to die alone, though, Blackfire,” I whisper back.
Blackfire goes rigid, but he nods once and lets me go.
I need only to kneel on the tiles to be near her head.
Her arms are free, and she pushes at the rock brutally, like it hasn’t crushed half of her body already.
She’s not going to survive this. Blood pours out of her mouth as she meets my eyes with her red ones.
The beautiful green gown, the exact same as mine, is ripped into shreds around her, and her blood mixes with the leaves. “I guess I sh-should have focused more on dance classes.”
“I’m so sorry.” I touch her shoulder. “But I’m not leaving you. What’s your name?”
“Imogen,” she coughs and chokes on her name. “I’m so-so-rry too.” I don’t register what she’s done. Not until I feel the pain. The world slows as my eyes drop down and see a red dagger pushed straight through the middle of my corset and into my ribs, just underneath my heart.
I gasp and cry out. “Bl-ack-fire.”
Blackfire’s roar is nothing but fury as he reaches for me.
Imogen looks at him with a bloody smile, ignoring me, even though the sick bitch just stabbed me in her final moments.
“Tell the alpha that I did what he asked, and I killed her. We were all told we had to kill the human, make sure she died before the end. Otherwise, our families would suffer, and I want my daughter to live. Tell my daughter I will love her always.”
“You failed and I won’t tell her shit!” Blackfire thunders, leaning around me, and he snaps her neck with one hand before he pulls me up to him.
My legs feel like they’re weak as blood pours down my dress, and I can’t keep my eyes open, and I don’t even care about his brutality.
I collapse in his arms, and he holds me to him like I’m precious and not his enemy.
Like he doesn’t hate me at all. I must have lost too much blood, because this can’t be real. This can’t be.
“Don’t you dare die! I forbid it!” he growls, so careful not to touch the dagger that’s still embedded in my ribs.
“I can’t pull it out. Not here. We are not close enough to Reed.
You need to stay awake, and I will dance for the last part.
You are not dying because you’re a stupid good person and sat with her in her last moments.
Heroes always end up dead, you utter fool. Stop being good!”
“Aw, you think I’m a good person.” I groan in pain.
“That’s it. Argue with me; be sarcastic.
Call me a dickhead, but don’t you dare close your eyes.
” He grabs my hand, and he begins to dance us away.
Faster this time, much faster, like he is dancing to fight away death itself.
Blood pours down me; everything goes fuzzy.
In the blurriness, I see those strings in the air.
All the colours are so bright, but the dark one feels like it is shouting to me. I should grab it.
“When I was born…” His voice pulls me from the depths of darkness, from the string.
He promised to tell me something no one else knows.
“My parents had tried for nearly four hundred years to have a child. No children ever came to them. They loved each other dearly, and they were good people. Good and kind rulers. They would have liked you and been very ashamed of me. When my mother fell pregnant, the Crone Pack rejoiced. They were so happy that they threw parties every day of my mother’s pregnancy.
The day I was born, things changed in an instant.
The second I was delivered into the world, every fire in all the packs turned black.
Not just in the Crone Pack, in Maiden and Mother too.
Black fire poured out of the birthing chamber, killing the midwives, killing everybody other than my mother and father, who were left in the ashes of the room, my mother cradling me in her arms. Black fire danced around me like will-o’-the-wisps in the air that still stalk me even now, and they never leave me.
I have learnt to control the wisps over time, even make them move for me.
Now you know. That’s why they named me Blackfire.
My fire isn’t warm. It can be if I force it, but it’s naturally not.
It’s like ice, drifting cold across the skin, almost like death was with me from the second I was born.
I know, without a shadow of a doubt, I will not let death take you from me, Hopeless. ”
“Even you can’t stop death. I’m s-sure you’ll try, as stubborn as y-ou are,” I whisper, seeing the black wisps of fire moving from his body and dancing down my arms. My teeth chatter.
I’m so cold. The wisps nestle into my hair, and this time, I don’t fear them.
The wisps are Blackfire. “D-did you know your uncle told them to k-kill me?”
Blackfire holds me closer to him, and I see we are near the statue now. Good, because I’m not sure I can stay awake much longer. His tone is clipped. “No.”
I believe him. I shouldn’t, but I do. Reed shouts my name, and I look up, pausing.
Pure terror must register on my face as he follows my gaze.
Reed’s warning is too late. “B-lack-fire, l-oo-k ou-t!” A hundred rocks fall from the very top of the ceiling, and the last thing I see is Blackfire throwing me to the ground, covering my body with his before everything goes black.