I don’t let her see how much the words sting. How I feel them punch through one side, shred muscle, sinew, and bone, then burst out the other.
Yes.
Yes.
Fucking yes.
But I lost the right to be greedy with her.
I watch Agni work, Pyrok juggling between his mender-aid duties and guzzling pilfered mead. “She’s a dream come true, but she’s not just my dream,” I say, packing the space full of truth-laden stones. “Not anymore.”
Even the air seems to still, and an eerie quiet blankets the room, gnawing at me from all angles.
I look at my bloody hands, stretch them out, inspect both sides before I crunch them into balls. “She’s so much more than a power play. So much more than the love of my existence. There’s someone out there who needs her more than any of us do, and it’s not our fucking brother,” I growl, looking straight into Veya’s glazed eyes.
She blinks, and a tear slides down her cheek.
“I will slowly, gently ease her into her truth—painful as it is. Then she can choose her own path. Make her own choices.”
Come what may.
Veya drops her stare to the floor as another tear drips down her cheek.
I look away.
She never cries, so when she does, it feels like the world is cracking. Like I’ve failed to protect her.
Again.
My hands loosen, fist again, trembling with a crushing amount of untethered energy.
Agni uses a metal tool to cleave Raeve’s wound wider, giving her direct access to the fissure in her skull so she can first mend the bone—
I look away from that, too—wanting to crush the image from my memory. But its claws are already in.
Digging deep.
“I’ll be back,” I mutter, then jerk my chin at Grihm and make for the door, expecting Veya’s final hit well before it lands.
“Nobody can suffer what she’s been through and not be pitted with a well of dragonflame—whether she remembers her past or not. Tread carefully, Kaan, or she’ll incinerate herself and turn to ash in your fucking hands.”
I growl, charging down the hall, chased by the heavy thump of Grihm’s boots.
I know.
Istalk down tunnel after tunnel, the air chilled by glowing runes etched onto the curves of russet stone, flaming sconces shrieking at me as I charge past.
Those who can’t hear Ignos probably think flames are happy to be alive no matter their size.
Wrong.
A candlestick flame will stretch and squirm in the presence of anyone who wanders by, screaming for more sustenance to burn. Desperate to grow.
Ignos doesn’t like being small and unimpressive. He craves rugs to singe. Forests to obliterate. Fields of dry grass to rip across.
I call a small flame to my hand, and it writhes in my palm with hissing excitement as I pass mercenaries shoving against walls, fists thumping against bare or garbed chests.
“Hagh, aten dah.”
“Hagh, aten dah.”
“Hagh, aten dah.”
Their respectful bellows drone into oblivion, paling in comparison to the rage rumbling through my bones, heating my blood, licking against my organs with fiery malice.
I haven’t slept in cycles. Not since before I woke to Raeve straddling me, one of Rygun’s scales poised at my throat, her eyes flared with the promise of a death I’d rather have at her hand than anyone else’s.
Before they softened.
Before I caught a glimpse of … something. A tender emotion that split my chest. Made me think her memories are in there.
Somewhere.
Fucking somewhere.
The aurora rose and fell three times while Rygun beat across the plains to get us here as fast as he could, and still, I don’t crave sleep—a rabid amount of energy thumping through my veins, pumping my muscles full. Making me picture blood on my hands, fingers shredding flesh, bones snapping beneath my tight grip.
Grihm’s heavy steps echo mine as I crack my knuckles, turning down the wide stairwell that spills into a dusky training ring.
I whisper my flame into segments that flit through the air, latching onto the flammable heads of many wall torches. Engulfing them in hissing shrieks—casting the wide, round, rough-hewn cavern in a rage of amber light.
I didn’t craft this space with gentle precision. The ceiling isn’t high or paved in grandeur. I didn’t bother willing the walls into a fine polish.
This space is exactly what is required, nothing more. A crater-sized arena to throw fists and split skin. To break bones and fray feral tendencies before they grow their own blood-letting pulse.
Stepping down into the sand peppered with grains of iron, the voices in my head extinguish like a blown flame. I make for the arena’s epicenter, the doors thumping shut, followed by the sound of Grihm removing his boots.