CHAPTER NINETEEN #2
“You fucking traitor.” I spat. The words felt like they burned coming out.
“You had a choice,” I said. “And you chose them.”
“I didn’t.” His voice broke. “Please. Just let me explain.”
“NO!” The scream scraped its way out like it wanted blood, like it had been sitting in my chest since the last time I saw him. “There’s nothing you can say. Nothing that makes it better. Nothing that brings them back. Not Einar. Not my parents. Not me.”
He stepped closer. Lifted his hand, like he thought he still had the right to reach for me.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Kera, please. Just let me—”
Like he still had the right. Like I’d ever let him close.
“I’m sorry. Kera, please—”
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare.”
But he did.
Aran reached for me, his fingers barely brushing my arm, and that was all it took. The fire within me responded.
It didn’t ask permission. It didn’t wait.
It burst from me. Wild and alive, a crackling inferno that roared between us.
It hit him in the chest, and the sound he made wasn’t human.
A guttural scream tore from the back of his throat as he staggered, his arms flailing, mouth open in a twisted, howl until his lungs caught up.
The flames crawled over him like they knew him.
They raced down his sleeves, wrapped around his ribs, climbed his neck like fingers reaching for his throat.
His coat blackened, peeled away in flakes of ash, as his shirt fused to his skin.
His skin.
Gods. His skin blistered and split, raw and red and smoking. The smell hit me like a wave, burnt wool, burnt hair, burnt flesh. Aran collapsed, mud squelching beneath him as he writhed, tearing at his own body.
The fire didn’t just burn. It clung. It devoured.
Slow. Deliberate. Every part of him.
“Aran!” I cried.
I tore off my cloak and stumbled forward, threw the fabric over his chest and pressed down hard, suffocating the flames.
Trying to save him. He kept screaming, loud and broken, as his body twisted beneath me.
I beat at the fire with my hands, over and over, as the smoke rose in thick, stinging waves.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” The words poured out of me, messy and frantic, half-choked through sobs.
Aran’s hand shot up, and he shoved me back with the last bit of strength in him.
“You—” His voice cracked, ragged with pain. “You burned me.”
Tears blurred my vision. My chest heaved. Bile crept up my throat.
“I didn’t—Aran, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t—”
But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie.
Somewhere inside me, I had meant to. I had wanted to. I just didn’t know I could. I hated him, and I wanted him dead, but I didn’t want to be the one who killed him.
I stared at Aran as his chest rose once… then again… slower each time.
“Kera!” Will’s voice cut through.
I turned.
He stood at the mouth of the alley, frozen. I saw it hit him—the smoke curling into the air, the stench of burned flesh, the ruin of Aran’s body crumpled in the dirt… and me.
“What’s going on? Is that...?” Will’s voice faltered as he stepped closer, eyes flicking to the body on the ground. “What happened?” he asked, rushing to Aran’s side. He dropped to his knees, his hands hovering like he didn’t know what to do.
“Kera, what the hel happened?”
Aran gasped for air, his breath coming in short, jagged bursts.
“She—she burned me,” he choked out. Then louder, more frantic: “Get her away from me!”
Will flinched. “She what?”
“Burned me,” Aran hissed through gritted teeth.
“What the hel are you even doing here?” Will snapped, still not looking at me. “I was hoping you were dead.”
But Aran wasn’t listening. He started to thrash, groaning, the sound raw and awful, people had started to slow near the alley, watching. Whispering.
“Shut up,” Will muttered, pressing a hand over Aran’s mouth. “You’re gonna get us killed.”
Then Will’s eyes snapped to me. “We need to move him. Now.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat felt too tight, my limbs too heavy. I felt drained, like whatever just happened had sucked the life out of me.
I managed a nod, before dropping to my knees beside Aran and doing my best to help Will drag him toward the stables.
Aran didn’t fight us anymore. He barely moved.
Will kicked open the stable door, and we hauled Aran inside. The air hit damp and sour. A row of horses stood in their stalls, heads rising as we stumbled in. They shifted, their hooves clunking against the floor, and as one let out a sharp snort, another tossed its head with a restless huff.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
They didn’t believe me. Neither did I.
“Help me tie him down.” Will didn’t even look up as he said it. He dropped to Aran’s feet, already pulling at his boot laces, knotting them tight. He threw a coil of rope toward me without warning.
“Kera,” he snapped. “Now.”
I dropped beside Aran, knees hitting the hay-scattered floor, and started fumbling with the rope, my fingers stiff and trembling, trying to tie it around his wrists.
The horses shuffled behind us, restless in their stalls.
Their breath steamed in the cold air, nostrils flaring, heads bobbing over the stall doors.
Once Aran was secure, Will sat back and leaned over him. He peeled back the burnt fabric clinging to his chest, and I saw his throat tighten as he took it in. The burns were worse than I thought. Angry, red, still weeping, and the smell of burned flesh curled into my nose, sickly sweet and wrong.
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
Will looked up, and when his eyes met mine, something inside me cracked.
“Now, heal him,” he said.
My chest caved. “I… I don’t know if I can.”
“If you don’t, he’s going to die.”
I looked down at Aran, his face twisted in agony. I didn’t know what was worse — that I had burned him, or that a part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to fix it.
“I don’t know how,” I said. “The fire... I didn’t mean— I didn’t—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Will demanded. “You did this. You fix it.”
I flinched. I thought he wanted Aran dead more than I did. Maybe that’s just something people say.
“You’ve healed before,” he said. “You can do it again.”
The horses shuffled again behind us, one letting out a loud breath through flared nostrils.
I looked at Aran, at his blistered and broken skin, at blood pooling at the edges of burns that were still weeping heat.
And I could still feel it, lurking under my skin. The fire. That thing inside me that hurt him.
I didn’t want to touch him. Gods, I didn’t.
But my hands moved anyway. I pressed my palms to his chest and closed my eyes.
Please. Please.
Something stirred at my fingertips, faint and soft. Not fire. Just light. Hope. And then it was gone. Snuffed out before it could become anything real.
“No.” My voice cracked. “No, no, no—please.”
I pressed harder. Nothing. The wounds wouldn’t close. The skin stayed split and blistered and charred.
Aran had let Einar die in my arms. And now he was going to die the same way. Is that what they call poetic justice? It didn’t feel just.
“I can’t do it,” I cried. “I can’t—”
Will’s head snapped toward me. “Try again.”
“I’m not strong enough,” I said, the words ripping out of me. Tears blurring everything—Aran, the dirt, Will’s face. “I’m not—I’m not stro—”
Aran’s body jerked beneath my hands. Then went still. Too still. His breathing had turned to shallow gasps, chest barely rising. Lips pale. Skin clammy.
He was slipping.
Fast.
Dying.
If I didn’t fix it, he was going to die there, in a pile of dirt and blood and charred skin, and it would be my fault.
Mine.
I’d be a murderer. I’d have burned someone alive. And Will would’ve never looked at me the same way again. He’d hate me. He would. And I’d deserve it. Then they’d hang me. Trial or not, I’d get the noose.
Gods. Fuck.
I opened my eyes and looked at Aran, and I tried to see the good in him. If there was still a part of him that I cared for. I thought about his life. Everything before he betrayed us.
Aran was someone’s son. Selma’s boyfriend. Will’s brother, in all but name. What had they seen in him that I couldn’t anymore? I had liked him once. Or tried to. When he was still human. When he wasn’t one of them.
I lowered my hands again, and found the place where his pulse still beat, faint and fading. If he died now, I would never know why. Why he left. Why he helped them, why he betrayed us. I needed to ask because I needed to understand. And if he died, I never would.
So I let my palms settle against his chest, felt the tremble in my fingertips, the sick sweat clinging to my skin.
Please.
It was a small prayer, a pleading to the gods if they were listening. And the light came again. Soft. Barely there. As if it was afraid, too. But this time, I didn’t fight it. I let it come, felt it spread from my chest, through my arms, into my hands.
A pulse of life.
”You’re… glowing,” Will whispered.
I didn’t look. I just tried to feel it.
I thought of Aran as a boy. Running with Will in the woods. Laughing. Kicking mud. Him challenging Licia to do silly dares.
He wasn’t just a traitor. He wasn’t just a coward. He was a whole person once, I had to believe that. I had to believe there was something left to save.
The warmth grew stronger, buzzing through me, steady and low.
Please let it be enough.