Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Something inside me gives—My Threads snapping like pulled wire—and the smoke surges back, swallowing him whole.
I try to throw myself forward, palms smacking the tile, but my legs won’t follow, trembling beneath me as if they belong to someone else.
Shit. I can’t move. My ribs clamped tight, vision tunnelling as every nerve sparks too hot, too fast.
Panic.
Not just any panic. This is the panic. The sound of fire, it’s too close, too familiar. It thinks. It moves. Like it remembers who I am and it wants to finish what I started.
Sweat slides down my spine, cold, as my fingertips start to tingle, lungs working too hard. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memory of that night rips through anyway.
I thought I could outrun it—the fear. That if I just kept moving, moved fast enough, I could leave it behind.
But it’s still here, crawling up my throat, locking my ribs, dragging me back to the night everything burned.
The fire doesn’t just surround me, it owns me.
And no matter how hard I try, I can’t forget.
And now I’m stuck. Can’t move. Can’t get out.
A cough rips out of me—once, twice—then nothing.
Breath won’t come right anymore, shallow and weak as the smoke and heat press in, until walls and doorways twist together in a blur I can’t trust as real. My mouth tastes sour.
Air. I need air.
Oh god, I'm going to... No, no, Bren knows where I am, right? But what if he can’t get in? What if he’s too late? The fire’s faster. Always faster.
Something shifts in the haze, a shadow moving. Charlie? My stomach lurches. Instinct screams to get up, but my body still won’t move. I claw at my Threads, begging them to answer, but nothing. They sputter out, choking like my lungs.
Too hot. Too dizzy.
I’m slipping.
This can’t be it. I didn’t save them. I didn’t save Ashvale.
The roar of the fire dulls, fading to a muffled hum, like I’ve sunk underwater.
My lips part around a name—Rhiann, maybe it’s just in my head.
My hand claws out anyway, reaching for her, for anything—but for a second, something else answers.
A hum under my skin that doesn’t belong to me.
A pull, magnetic and strange, like someone tugging on a thread I didn’t cast. It sharpens, cutting through the fire’s roar, before, finally, blackness.
It curls in, slow and steady, until it’s all there is.
Then - Footsteps.
Heavy. Close.
“Get up.”
The order brushes the edge of my mind, so faint I can’t tell if they’re real, or just the last thought my brain conjures before everything fades.
Bren?
“Thorn, get up now.”
This time it slices clean through as a hand clamps around my arm and yanks me forward—abrupt, jarring—my lungs seize, choking on the sudden shift.
Not in my head, someone’s here.
But my legs won’t hold, I can’t feel my feet, and my chest won’t clear. I’m dead weight in their grip. Then arms scoop down, one under my knees, one bracing my back as I'm lifted into solid strength—my chest pressed to warmth, my head falling sideways.
The scent of clean sweat and leather-warm heat cuts through the smoke as he pulls me close.
I force my eyes open—just a fraction—long enough to catch the dark hazel of his gaze, rimmed with gold and steady on mine for a single heartbeat, before smoke folds between us again and he turns, carrying me toward the ruptured light.
Each step jars. The heat presses harder.
The fire’s roar closes in, until, all at once, it breaks.
Cold air hits my face like a slap.
The sound shifts, roaring replaced by the distant crackle of burning and the jumbled shouts of voices outside. The heat fades, smoke thins, and the arms around me stop in front of someone else.
“Take her and get her the fuck out of here. Now.” Not soft. Not a question. A command, low and raw with fury.
My weight shifts, the solid heat of one grip giving way to another—arms not as strong, not as steady, but known. Safe.
My head drops against a shoulder I could find blind, one I know better than my own reflection. Bren.
Bren lowers me on to the slope above Ashvale, propping me against the old chapel wall, the stone cold enough to bite through skin. My head lolls back. Can’t hold it up. Can’t hold anything up.
“Breathe,” he says, low and hoarse, but the way his hands tremble tells me he’s not sure I can. I’m not sure I can.
Pain claws up my throat as I cough, the sound raw and wet and awful. My ribs feel like cracked stone. But I’m not drowning anymore. Just burning.
“Just stay with me.” Not a command, it’s a plea. I try to open my eyes, but they close before I can focus.
Somewhere nearby, the fire’s still crackling. Distant. Or maybe just quieter now. I can’t tell. The air tastes like smoke and copper, and every inhale feels like I’m dragging down broken glass.
I think I drift. The heat clings under my skin, deep in my bones. Could be minutes. Could be longer. Bren shifts beside me. His leg brushes mine, solid and real. He hasn’t moved.
I don’t know how much time has passed, just that I finally drag in a full breath. And when I do, I open my eyes.
In front of me, the sky’s still black—night holding, but below it, Ashvale. Gone.
God, just a month ago, I sat here—the night before my twenty-first—looking out over the place I called home.
Now it’s nothing but orange haze rising in thick columns, glowing where the fire hasn’t burned itself out.
Walls lie in heaps, roofs caved, the tight lines of streets I’ve walked my whole life reduced to smouldering rubble.
The heart of the town is gone, and only a ragged edge of the outer quarter still stands, flickering like it knows it won’t last. And all I can do is sit here, hunched and shaking, staring at nothing as I fight for breath—each inhale ragged, but a little easier than the last.
“We need to go back,” I rasp, my voice cracked and weak. “We have to help them.”
Bren’s hand presses firm against my shoulder. “No. You need to rest. You nearly died.”
“I’m fine, I’ll be fine.” I snap, though the words tear on the way out, raw as my throat. “At least you need to go back. Help them.”
“I’m not leaving you again.” His hand finds mine, fingers lacing tight, steady even as mine shake.
“But Rhiann, Charlie. Oh god, Nessi…”
“Lyra.” His eyes catch mine, soft, steady in the flicker of firelight. “They’re gone. It’s too late.”
The ground tilts, my chest squeezing so hard my words hardly come. “No. It can’t be. I should have stopped it—I could have stopped it.”
“How could you have?” His voice frays. “Three dragons, Lyra. We didn’t stand a chance.”
But I could have, I could have tried harder, trained harder, learnt to control my Threads, got more answers. I had the opportunity.
My gaze drags across the wreckage, down toward the ravine, the wall beyond it, until finally it lands on the Citadel, perched like a crown, black against the smoke-thick sky.
My fists tighten. All the lies, all the power they hoard, all the control. I know this ties back to them. The pieces in my mum’s journals. She knew they were up to something—that’s why she ran, why she left. I did the same. And look what it cost.
Rhiann, Charlie. Nessi... Nessi’s the only person I’ve known since I was born. She’s the one who kept me fed after mum died… Now she’s gone, they’re gone, Ashvale’s gone.
And I just sat there choking, paralysed, watching as it burned.
Heat prickles beneath my skin, sharp and restless, my fingers twitching against my palms like something inside me is clawing to get free. I glance down—threads shimmer faint under the surface, taunting, waiting. And all I can think is how worthless it feels.
I have all this magic inside me, but it’s fucking useless.
I can’t keep being this weak, always one step behind until there’s nothing left to save. If I’d had any control—if I knew how to use this—maybe I could’ve done something. Maybe they wouldn’t all be dead.
My mum’s journals, the answers I never got, the lies Merrin fed me—there are answers buried in all of it. I need them. I need to know who did this and why.
And when I know, I need to be strong enough to make them pay for it. To stop this from ever happening again.
Not Lyra the smuggler, not Lyra the runner. I need to be what they think I am. A weapon.
A squeeze, warmth against my hand. I look down. Bren’s fingers are curled around mine, steady and safe.
I could stay here, with him. Let it end here. Try and love him, let that be enough. But I’d be choosing comfort over truth. Over justice. Over every name burned into the rubble below me. And I can't do that. I won’t.
I know what I need to do.
A shiver crawls over me, and Bren pulls me closer, his arm hooking around my shoulders, dragging me flush against his side.
Warm. Solid. But it doesn’t quiet the thought slamming through my chest so hard it steals what little air I’ve got left.
A thought I can’t bring myself to say out loud, sour on my tongue before it’s formed.
Because saying it makes it real, my gaze drags to Bren, and because god, it means losing this.
His arms are tight around me, like he can hold me here through sheer force. The smell of iron still clinging to his shirt, the way his heartbeat thuds against my cheek—it’s all I have left of home. The only solid thing that survived tonight.
And I’m about to throw it away?
My chest tightens like it’s trying to crush itself from the inside, because even as I tell myself I can’t, even as I want to hold on, the decision’s already there, heavy and final.
Ashvale’s gone. And the girl who ran from Merrin’s offer, who thought she could escape like her mum did—she’s gone with it.
What’s left is choice. What’s left is war.
“I have to go back.” My eyes fix on the ground because I can’t bear to see his face when the words land.
Bren snaps toward me instantly. “No. I told you, we can’t go back down there.”
I shake my head. “Not Ashvale.” My voice cracks on the name. “The Citadel.”
For a second, he just stares, like he’s sure he misheard me. Then—startled, disbelieving: “What are you talking about? No. Of course you don’t. What the fuck are you even saying, Lyra?”
“It’s the only way I can help,” I say, voice raw.
“It’s the only way I can help. I couldn’t stop Ashvale—I couldn’t save them.
But I can get answers. My mum knew something, that the Citadel was hiding something.
If I don’t go back now, it’ll happen again.
Another town. More names. More fire. I have to figure out how to use this, my magic, or there’s no point to any of it. ”
“No. There’s no way I’m letting you go. You just got back. I just got you back.”
I untangle myself from his arm and take his hands in mine, squeezing them tight. We’ve been at this too many times before—different fights, different stakes, but always the same truth. I know exactly how to press, exactly how to make him see I won’t move. And he knows it too.
His throat works, his eyes flick down to our joined hands, and then he exhales through his teeth, furious but accepting.
“Fuck. I hate that there’s no arguing with you. There never has been.” For a moment he just holds on, fumbling like he doesn’t know whether to grip tighter or let go, and then—slow, he looks up, fingers slipping free of mine. “Are you sure it’s just answers? Just training you’re going back for?”
“What else would it be?”
He exhales, rough, like the words scrape on the way out. “You can tell yourself it’s fake all you want, but the way he looks at you? There’s nothing fake about that.” His voice falters, just for a second. “It’s the same way I look at you.”
My lungs stall, stomach twists so tight it aches. “You mean like a friend?” I ask, too fast, too certain. Like if I keep it simple, it won’t become something else.
“Come on, Lyra. Stop lying to yourself. You know how I feel. How I’ve always felt. I can’t hide it anymore. It’s too painful not to say it...”
“Don’t.” I cut him off before he can finish, before he can say the one thing that will make this unbearable. “Please. Don’t, it will just make this harder.”
I’d be a fool to pretend I didn’t know. I’ve been lying to myself, pretending I didn’t see it. And part of me, part of me thinks maybe I should want it. Want him.
“I saw you both talking outside before he left.” The words catch in his throat as his mouth pulls tight, eyes go glassy. “You’ve never looked at me like that.”
“He’s a Veirmont. A Citadel officer. The enemy. I don’t—”
“He’s also someone who's saved your life, what, three times now? Doesn’t sound like an enemy to me.”
My throat goes dry. No. No, he’s wrong. It’s not true. Sure—something about Talen kicks my pulse higher, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t.
Bren shakes his head, eyes shining, voice breaking. “If you go back…” He swallows hard. “I won’t be able to wait for you.”
The words gut me. Instinct pulls me toward him, desperate to close the space he’s just torn open, but when I try to move, nothing answers.
It’s not that I don’t want to.
It’s that I can’t.
My body doesn’t answer me. My legs sit heavy, dead weight beneath me.
What the hell is going on?
And the taste in my mouth, sour, not just smoke but something metallic, rancid—it coats everything now, clinging to my tongue, crawling down my throat until I can’t think around it.
Bren’s eyes lock on mine, focused, and I see his whole expression shift.
“What’s wrong?” he demands as his hands come back to mine, gripping tight like he can pull the answer out of me. “Lyra—what’s wrong?”
“I.... I don't know, I can’t feel my legs....”