Page 6 of Fire Kissed
“I’m responsible for you! Do not leave this room. Don’t make a fucking sound.” His wide eyes search mine, and I say nothing in response. I don’t give one inkling of agreement. “I’ll lock the bedroom door behind me. I have to keep the light off just in case, but there are lamps in the cabinet near the book shelf.”
A strange uncertainty passes between us as he watches me and I watch him, both of us seemingly waiting for the other to lash back out at any moment. That’s our normal now.
And we clearly have no idea how to function in a new form of basic human decency toward each other.
“Okay,” he nods, but the fear and doubt of his decision to let me out is written all over his face like a sexy bearded caveman considering if fire really is magic or not.
“Okay,” he reassures himself once more. “This will be fine.” He nods hard. I squint at him. Another hard nod seems to rattle his caveman brain enough to get him moving. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Time literally doesn’t exist for me anymore. Be back from your anniversary fuckfest whenever you want.” I fold my arms and stare him down.
It’s very evident now that our trial run at human decency was not a success.
Partly my fault for trying to wade through this weird, jealous bitterness I’ve stumbled upon, but mostly his fault for being a total lying, conniving, queen-fucking hypocrite.
His lips tighten, but he seems to bite back his remark.
“Enjoy your night,” he says stiffly.
“You too,” I antagonize dramatically.
His features fall into that same dark look he wore when he first came in.
“I won’t,” he says on a whisper but just loud enough to break my heart.
The hard wall of confidence I’ve built up around myself in this place crumbles to dust as he walks away. My hands lower from their tightly folded spot to a numb place at my sides. The light dims out into heavy darkness around us. Each beat of my heart hurts for him.
I hate that I don’t know any more if I should comfort him or kill him.
Maybe I never will.
A Nice Hot Bath
Rhys
After the thirdattempt at reading a book from the mostly empty book shelf in Torben’s room, I’ve realized they’re all in Latin. But after hours of lazily turning pages in the warm, golden light of a small gaslight lamp, I’ve come to appreciate the art.
I have no idea what the words say, but every few pages, an illustration of chariots and lightning and gods sketch across the thin paper of the book. They’re detailed in ways that hold mystical beauty and disturbing destruction.
I’m halfway through one when a new scrawling image covers two full pages from corner to corner.
It’s a tree with limbs and creatures making up layers of life, it seems. Light beams just above the many branches. Clearly the clouds of some sort of heaven are at the top, but a snake is all that shows where Hell must be. Even stranger... a dragon lies quietly alone far beneath the section of the snake, even below the thinning roots of the tree.
Just shadowy ink and the lonely dragon. A line pinches at my eyebrows. My fingers shift back and forth over the image of the creature, remembering how beautiful Aric was in his natural form.
A sinking feeling drops through my heart, and I have to close the book quickly before all the emotions I’ve buried inside myself flood out.
Hela wouldn’t hurt him. Not really. She needs Aric and Latham. She wouldn’t hurt them.
That’s what I’ve told myself every single day. And I still don’t know if I believe it.
I close my eyes and take a slow breath before carrying the book back to its place on the stone shelf. I stand there for a second and try to think of what to do next.
Another nap?
God, please no.
What an asshole to offer me a warm bath when literally all I have at my disposal is a bed, books, and my own brain. He doesn’t even own knitting supplies. Not that I know how, but I would have given it a go.
