Chapter 7 #2
"Then sit down and let me tell you about Mikhail, and why staying on this island is the worst decision you've ever made."
I sink onto the edge of the bed, suddenly aware of how exhausted I am.
The adrenaline from the coastal path attack, from meeting the Brotherhood, from standing my ground against five apex predators—it's all crashing down at once.
But I force myself to stay alert, to listen, because whatever Finn is about to tell me matters more than sleep.
He moves to the window, putting distance between us like proximity makes this harder. The pre-dawn light catches the sharp angles of his face, throws his expression into shadow. When he speaks, his voice carries the weight of centuries.
The story takes an hour to tell. By the time Finn finishes explaining Mikhail, Saoirse, and centuries of friendship twisted into obsession, dawn lightens the window behind him.
"He murdered her." The words feel inadequate for what he's described. "Your mate. Your friend killed her and called it a favor."
"He believes it." Finn's voice carries the weight of centuries. "That's what makes him dangerous. He's convinced himself that love is weakness, that caring makes immortals vulnerable, and that removing what I loved was an act of friendship."
"And now he's watching me." Ice floods through my veins. "Watching us. Waiting to see if history repeats itself."
"Which is why you're leaving on the morning ferry." He stands, crossing to the window like distance will make this easier. "Before he decides you're leverage worth exploiting."
"I'm not Saoirse." The name tastes foreign on my tongue, borrowed grief for a woman I'll never meet. "I'm not helpless."
"You're human." He turns, and the raw pain in his expression makes my chest tighten. "Fragile. Mortal. Everything Mikhail believes proves his point about weakness and vulnerability."
"So what's your solution? I run, and he kills the next woman who catches your attention? I leave, and the drownings continue, and more people die because I was too scared to investigate?"
"Yes." The word comes out flat. "You run. You survive. You live a long life somewhere far from this island and the war that's coming."
"That's not living." I cross to him, closing the distance he's trying to maintain. "That's just existing with the knowledge I ran when I could have helped."
The muscle in his jaw jumps. His hands clench at his sides like he's physically restraining himself from reaching for me.
"You don't understand what you're asking for."
"Then explain it." I'm close enough now to see the gold flecks in his eyes, the barely controlled tension in every line of his body. "Stop pushing me away and tell me what you want."
His control fractures. One moment he's across the room. The next his hand is in my hair, tilting my head back, his breath hot against my lips.
"I want you safe." The words come out rough, raw. "I want you alive and far from here. I want to never see you again because that's the only way I can be sure Mikhail won't use you to destroy me."
"And what do you want that has nothing to do with Mikhail?"
The question hangs between us, charged with everything we're not saying. His thumb traces my jawline, callused and gentle and possessive all at once.
"I want things I have no right to want." His voice drops to something dark and dangerous. "Things that would bind you to this war, to me, to a life you never asked for."
My pulse pounds hard enough I'm sure he can feel it beneath his fingers. "Maybe I'm asking."
His eyes flash. Not metaphor. Actual light, gold and fire and dragon. The transformation threatens, scales rippling beneath his skin where his hand touches my face.
Then he pulls back, control slamming down like a steel door.
"The ferry leaves at dawn." His voice carries finality. "Be on it."
He's gone before I can respond, disappearing through the door and down the stairs with the kind of speed that marks supernatural reflexes.
I stand alone in my room at Flynn's Inn, heart racing, skin still tingling where he touched me, and make a decision that's probably going to get me killed.
I'm not leaving.
The certainty settles into my bones as I listen to his footsteps fade down the hallway, then the back door closing with a soft click.
The sky outside my window shifts from black to deep purple, dawn approaching whether I'm ready or not.
The ferry will leave in a few hours. Finn expects me to be on it.
But the microscope sits on my desk, samples waiting. The algae data still needs analysis. The drowning victims deserve answers. And somewhere on this island, Mikhail is watching, planning, using people as fuel for rituals I don't understand.
Running won't stop any of it.
The microscope calls me back to familiar ground. Science. Data. Evidence that doesn't care about impossible transformations or ancient vendettas or the way Finn's touch made every nerve ending ignite.
I catalog the algae samples methodically, forcing my brain to focus on bioluminescence patterns instead of the memory of his hand in my hair.
The samples glow under the lens, pulsing in rhythms that match nothing in any database I've accessed.
The cellular structure is wrong. The light emission is wrong.
Everything about these organisms defies classification.
Just like everything else on this island.
The window slides open without sound.
I don't turn. Don't scream. Some part of me already knows what's coming, has been waiting for this moment since Finn warned me about Mikhail and ancient obsessions.
Heat shimmers the air. A shape moves through the opening, fire condensing into human form, elegant and deadly, moving faster than my brain can process the impossibility.
Hands grab me with strength that leaves bruises forming on my upper arms. I try to scream, but something strikes the base of my skull with professional precision.
The world fractures. Sound distorts, stretching like rubber before snapping into silence.
My vision tunnels, darkness creeping in from the edges until there's nothing but a pinpoint of light—the microscope lens still glowing, algae samples still pulsing with bioluminescence I'll never finish cataloging.
Then that light disappears too.
Darkness swallows me whole, pulling me down into depths where thought dissolves and time loses meaning.
I'm aware of movement, of heat surrounding me, of wind and salt spray that shouldn't exist if I'm unconscious.
Flying. I'm flying again, carried through pre-dawn darkness by something made of fire.
The awareness comes and goes in fragments. Stone scraping against my back. Rope burning my wrists. Cold seeping into my bones. Then nothing again, just the vast black emptiness of forced unconsciousness.
Pain wakes me.
The awareness comes gradually. First, the knowledge that something hurts, a distant throb I can't quite locate.
Then the realization that I'm cold, bone-deep cold that has nothing to do with Scottish weather and everything to do with damp stone leaching heat from my body.
Sound filters through next. Water drips somewhere in the darkness.
Wind howls past stone. Flames hiss and pop, burning without wood to feed them.
I force my eyes open against the pounding in my skull.
Everything swims for a moment before resolving into stone walls that curve around me in patterns carved by millennia of tidal erosion.
The geological formations are textbook examples of sea caves, the kind formed when ocean meets volcanic rock over thousands of years.
The air tastes like salt and smoke, thick enough to coat my tongue with every breath I drag into my lungs.
I test my body systematically, the way I was trained during field safety courses.
Fingers respond to mental commands, flexing against rough rope that binds my wrists.
Toes wiggle inside my boots. My legs are free.
That's deliberate. Whoever tied me left my ankles unbound because they're confident I can't escape.
My head throbs where something struck me from behind. The pain centers at the base of my skull, the kind of precise blow that drops someone without killing them. The strike was professional, calculated.
The memory surfaces through fog. The window sliding open. Heat shimmer distorting the air. Fire condensing into human form, moving faster than my brain could process.
I flew. Or rather, something that looked like a man made of fire flew while carrying me like I weighed nothing.
The scientific part of my brain tries to catalogue the impossibility.
I think about the energy required to maintain human consciousness while transformed into living flame.
I consider the thermodynamics of flight without visible propulsion.
I process the fact that I'm alive and relatively unburned despite being held by something that should have incinerated me on contact.
I shove the analysis aside. Understanding can wait. Survival comes first.
I change my position carefully, testing how much movement the ropes allow.
My shoulders protest, stiff from however long I've been unconscious.
The rope is rough against my wrists, some kind of natural fiber rather than synthetic.
When I try to twist free, the bindings tighten.
Whoever tied these knows what they're doing.
The cave entrance is a short distance away, open to sky and churning ocean beyond. Storm light filters through, grey and cold, illuminating moisture-slick stone. I can hear waves crashing far below, the echo suggesting a significant drop. Fifty feet? More? Enough that jumping would be suicide.
Flames dance in a circle carved into the rock floor between me and the entrance. There's no visible fuel source. Just fire burning in patterns that seem deliberately placed, casting shadows that writhe across the walls like living things.