Chapter Fifteen #3
It was so mesmerising I was almost tempted to stop and watch – and I might have had his life not been on the line, had my magic not been thrashing out ropes of panicked flame.
I darted around them, blasting out streaks of fire whenever I had a clear shot at Fischer – but they were so closely entwined that my magic kept arching wide rather than risk hitting Caelan with its damaging intent.
Still, I took aim and sent wave after wave of pure flame after them, too desperate to notice the shimmering heat in the air until my lungs were raw and burning.
I finally glanced around in horror. Fire climbed the pillars and glittered from the rafters.
Little pyres were forming all around us and the air was thick with smoke.
I whipped around and saw two figures darting past behind a veil of smog.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I was losing sight of them and it was my fault.
I tried to spool the fire back to my chest, but it wasn’t all mine – not anymore. My panicked bursts of flame had brought forth fresh fire, fuelled by the wood and alcohol that was in no short supply. This inferno was of my making, but it didn’t answer to me.
“Caelan,” I screamed, his name choking off in a cough.
“Rosie, get out of here,” Caelan’s hoarse voice snarled back.
The words came from somewhere to my left, and I swung around toward his voice.
My head swam like a turbulent sea before cold fear sliced through the dizziness.
If I was struggling this much in the rapidly crumbling heat, what would it do to a body that wasn’t a natural home to flame?
I staggered blindly through the smoke, panic and instinct driving me toward the sound of increasingly laboured grunts even as my vision blurred and my lungs tightened to the point of pain.
“Caelan,” I called again.
No sooner had his name left my tongue than a pair of strong and gentle arms wrapped around my middle – and for a moment, my heart soared with relief.
But my Flame was still spiralling outward, still wild with panic, and I forced my eyes to focus on the arms that were now dragging me backward. Not Caelan’s arms – not Caelan.
“No,” I tried to scream, but my throat burned and the man was not listening.
All too soon I was thrust into the cool black night, wet air flooding my swollen lungs. I fought weakly against his hold, straining for the burning tavern.
“It’s gone, Miss Roz,” the voice behind me shouted over the roar of the growing inferno. “It’s gone. Let it go, girl.”
“No,” I choked, the word ripping out this time, slicing my throat raw on the way up. “Caelan. Caelan!”
The grip around my middle changed, the bunched muscles flexing and shifting and thinning down to wiry forearms with weathered brown skin.
I broke free of the weakened grasp, but promptly fell to the ground.
And when I tried to crawl, my would-be saviour rounded my heaped body and dropped to his knees before me, halting me with a firm hand on my shoulder.
I couldn’t spare the energy nor emotional capacity to be shocked.
It was Roy staring back at me.
“Caelan?” He said. He was hoarse, his muddy green eyes wide with horror. “He’s here?”
“He’s inside,” I wailed.
Roy turned and stood in one movement, and sprinted back into the doomed glow.
I tried again to get my legs beneath me, to follow him, but collapsed at once.
My Flame was still crackling manically over my skin, still reaching in vain for the tavern as though it would drag me there through sheer will alone.
It couldn’t, but I could feel the weak pulse of another flame nearby, an ember of my magic independent of my body.
Please, I called to it, praying to the little flicker of heat like it was some benevolent deity. Please bring him back. Please.
“Please,” I sobbed aloud.
And perhaps it was the Dagda himself who answered.
In the next moment two figures staggered through the door.
A buoyant wave of relief swept me to my feet and I lurched forward, colliding with Caelan before we both fell to our knees.
A wave of black swept over me, and I fought my way through it, clung to consciousness so I could be sure he had really made it.
He was coated in soot, red-eyed, wheezing, but so gloriously whole and alive that I began to weep, quiet and weak though it was.
My head was swimming and my lungs were swollen and tight, but he was alive, and for that blessing my body would devote this last drop of energy to tears of sheer, earth-shifting relief.
“Don’t, Rosie,” was all he could manage.
He lifted a shaking, grimy hand to smear tears and soot across my cheek, and when he gave a grimace at the mess he’d made I wanted to laugh.
“You’re alright,” I wheezed.
“More so than you,” he said, brows flickering. I realised distantly that it was true. His eyes had already cleared and were now sharp with concern, but mine could barely stay open. “S’just a serpent thing.”
I wanted to ask if that meant he could heal. I wanted to ask him so many things, but I was fading so fast, my lungs raking in barely enough air to keep me conscious, and before I could give in there was only one thing that seemed to matter.
“Will you stay?”
The look on his face was utterly devastated, but if he answered I did not hear it. My dry and aching eyes rolled back in my skull and I heard nothing more.