CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
The fire got closer. Close enough to dry the tears from my eyes before they could fall.
A hand closed around my neck, yanking me forward.
“What are you doing? Stop—please, don’t—” Will’s voice kept tearing through the night.
The heat crawled over my skin. Slow and sweet. Like poison ivy’s gentle touch before the blistering sting.
“Kera. Do something!”
But I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My body didn’t feel like mine anymore. It moved, but I wasn’t inside it.
I tilted my head up and found the moon. Pale and distant, just watching. I thought of the riverbank.
Of wind in the fields.
Of my mother’s voice.
The flames reached the edge of my vision.
I could have done something. I could have burned them. But I didn’t.
My captor leaned in.
“What a waste,” he rasped, his voice low and ugly against my ear. “You’re a pretty thing,”
I didn’t have time to process the words.
He shoved me.
Hard.
I didn’t hit the ground.
I didn’t land.
I vanished.
The moment I touched the fire, I stopped being Kera.
I became pain.
The heat sank its teeth into me. It tore and gnawed and peeled me apart. My skin split open. My clothes dissolved into ash. Flames curled around my arms, poured down my legs, seeped into my chest and lit my ribs from the inside.
I tried to scream. Nothing came. My breath had already been stolen. Smoke surged into me, thick and bitter, filling my throat, my lungs, my skull. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. Blood and ash filled my mouth and my nerves lit up like strikes of lightning. Everything burned. Inside. Out. Gone.
It wasn’t pain. It was obliteration.
Unraveling.
Splintering.
Worse than dying.
Worse than anything.
And through it all, I still heard him.
Will.
Screaming for me.
His voice cracked. Fractured. It cut deeper than the fire ever could.
I couldn’t let them kill my friends.
I wouldn’t.
And then, something shifted.
The fire wasn’t killing me. It was moving into me. Past skin. Past muscle. Deeper. Into my veins. Into my bones. Into the hollow place behind my ribs where everything else had already burned away.
I should’ve been ash. But I wasn’t. I was still there.
Still me.
My heart beat. Steady. Defiant. And the fire pulsed with it.
It wasn’t consuming me anymore. It was becoming a part of me. I pressed my hands against the burning wood and coal beneath me and pushed myself upright.
I rose.
And the fire rose with me.
Will lay on the ground, his eyes were wide and unfocused, the horror still etched into every part of him. As if someone had stolen the life from his body and left the rest behind.
He thought I was gone.
He had watched me burn alive.
And the man who’d done it, the one who had thrown me into that fire, was walking toward him. Slowly. Knife in hand.
He wasn’t in a hurry. He thought he had all the time in the world.
My eyes locked on Will, on that knife, and something broke in me.
“NO!”
I didn’t just scream it. I unleashed it.
A sound that cracked the air, tearing from my throat.
It wasn’t just a word, it was a command.
A cry of rage and grief and something deeper.
It ripped through the trees, sent birds scattering from the canopy above.
It shook the earth beneath us, and made every last one of them stop and look at me.
The man froze mid-step, knife still raised, and I stepped forward.
My bare feet pressed into the ground, embers still glowing beneath me. The fire clung to my skin, wrapped around my arms, but it didn’t burn. Not me.
My body glowed, skin gold and red, the air around me shimmering with heat. I walked through the smoke, through the silence of their fear.
"What. The. Fuck," he gasped, stumbling back a step.
Not far enough.
I didn’t stop.
I reached for him. My fingers closed around his throat.
He convulsed the moment my skin met his. Fire leapt from me into his body. Flesh blackened beneath my hand. It bubbled and split, the stench of burning meat flooding the air.
His whole frame jerked violently, and a silent scream stretched across his face. Eyes rolled back as the flames crawled down his throat, devouring him from the inside out.
And I felt it.
I felt the moment the fire consumed him. The moment he took his last breath. The moment I became a murderer.
And then I felt the eyes of the other men, staring at me.
When I snapped my head in their direction, daring them to do anything but run for their lives, a wet stain spread across the crotch of one of them, trailing down his thighs.
I actually thought he might shit himself too.
The one who’d kicked the shit out of Aran backed away. Slowly. Hands raised, as if he didn’t deserve to die.
And the third one bolted. Just turned and ran for the trees without a sound. The others followed, tripping over each other., falling into the dark.
They wouldn’t dare come back.
And that fear, the way they looked at me like I was something monstrous, it healed something in me. That sense of safety I never thought I'd see again.
Because if men like that were scared of me...
What did I have to be afraid of?
And if being the monster meant Will and Aran lived, even if it took everything from me, it would be worth it.
The fire curling around me began to pull back. It pierced itself inward, slow and quiet, sinking beneath my skin. The air stilled. Only ash and faint embers remained. I stood there, shaking. It settled, and everything that happened came crushing down.
My arms were covered in blisters, raw and weeping, the skin red and pink and half-gone in places.
It hurt.
Everywhere.
But I was still standing.
I blinked through the haze. My vision blurred, but I could just make him out—Will.
He was sitting on the ground, legs splayed in the dirt like he’d fallen there. Blood dripped from his mouth, smeared down his chin. He was breathing fast.
But he was breathing. Relief surged through me, just enough to keep me upright.
Then I saw Aran.
He wasn’t moving.
Not a twitch.
He lay crumpled on his side, his face swollen, blood drying on his neck and jaw. One eye swollen shut.
I staggered to him and dropped to my knees.
“Aran.” My voice came out small. Croaked. “No, no. You don’t get to die on us. Wake up!”
I pressed my hands to his chest. My fingers trembled, and the moment they made contact, pain tore through me.
My skin. Red. Split. Pink and slick like peeled fruit. Light finally spilled from my palms, but it was dim. Flickering.
“Kera?”
Will’s was frantic. Barely able to from a cohesive sentence. “Oh shit. Is he—are you—oh gods. What was that?”
I didn’t look at him. I just kept pushing magic into Aran’s chest. The shaking in my arms getting worse.
“Your skin—your fucking hands—what the hel just happened?” Will’s voice was rising. “What do I do? Kera? What do I do? What do you need?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Aran groaned.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, voice slurred. “Been through worse.”
He spit blood onto the ground.
He was wrecked.
So was I. My arms collapsed. The strength went out of me like a snapped thread, and I fell forward.
“KERA!”
Will’s arms caught me just before I hit the ground. He was shaking.
“No. No, no, no—please. Kera. Please stay with me.”
His voice broke completely. I could feel it. Hear it. I blinked at him, barely holding on.
I had killed a man.
Me.
I’d burned him alive. I was a murder.
“He... he deserved it, right?” I asked.
Will's eyes filled. “Yeah,” he said. “He did.”
It didn’t make it hurt any less. Aran groaned again behind us.
“Just remind me never to get on your bad side, Kera,” he mumbled. “Like, ever.”
I managed a breath of a laugh. Barely.
Will looked at me, eyes still wide.
“What was that, Kera? How did you do that?”
"It's... part of me," I whispered. "The fire. I can feel it inside me.”
Then darkness swelled at the edges of my vision and I fell into nothing.