Page 44 of Crown of Flame

“If you hate it so much here, then just get away from me.”

He hesitates. I hope he won’t take me at my word, that he’ll stay and try to work things out. I don’t know anymore if there’s anything worth keeping alive, but he brings me a peace unlike anything I’ve ever known.

I feel safe with him.

Instead, he floats away from me, and I’m left alone in the hovel he built, a sturdy reminder of the life we shared together, however brief.

“I have to get out of here.”

Before he disappears from my field of vision, the fire inside the hovel lights, his final parting gift to me.

If I’m able to make it back, then I still have a home at the camp. It’s a long way from here, but at least I’ll be welcomed and I’ll have a chance of surviving.

Perhaps it’s best to let somebody else deal with the dark elves for now. I can’t be the only one still ready to take up arms.

“I should have had him take me back,” I mutter.

I would have loved to introduce him to that world and show him the people I spent my time with. I spend some time alone with my thoughts, mourning my loss.

I feel the tender flesh on my palm. It stings to the touch.

I lost my mother’s amulet. My one reminder of her, which she gave to me as a child. And I lost Cinis.

Finally ready to accept the end of a beautiful thing, I move to close the door. That’s when an unnerving feeling crosses over me, sending cold prickles down my spine.

I hear the stomps and snorts of equus.

And I’m face to face, yet again, with my captors. I can see them dismounting, ready to overwhelm me.

“Oh, no.”

16

CINIS

“I’m nothing more than a tool to her,” I mutter aloud.

This wasteland is so much colder without her if that even makes sense. I’m a being of glistening fire, as Serena has made a point of reminding me, but I miss how brightly my home world burned.

Compared to this world of ice and frost, elements of nature I didn’t know existed prior, my realm feels a lot more welcoming.

And yet how strange is it that I’d rather be in her arms, even if I’m pretty sure by now that she betrayed me.

Deep inside one of the caverns, I’ve found a hot spring, where I like to contemplate my thoughts. It sits on a mountaintop, far away, and I see faint hints that this cavern was once occupied.

“Months, possibly years back,” I remind myself, looking out over the raging river below. I stoke the firepit in front of the cave as I head inside. It burns brilliantly with a simple breath, a raging flame that lay dormant having awakened to see the world’s changes.

I need to think. I need to remember.

There’s a nest that seems to have once belonged to some giant bird, and among the materials, there are tattered pieces of clothing that might have been a woman’s. The hot spring deep inside the cavern almost looks like it was pried open and made accessible, the walls seemingly clawed or mined into.

Suspending myself over the hot spring and letting my flames shoot downward, heating it even further, I meditate and pause to reflect.

The water boils under me as I hover. Water drips from the ceiling around me, and I can see several openings where the cavern opens up into endless tunnels.

I’d like to explore these caverns with Serena someday.

But then I remember that I cannot as I close my eyes.

---