Page 49 of Surge of Fire

I remember. Yes, I do. Clearly. One day my dad had been sick of me, so he’d tossed me out into the snow. I was little. So little that he could still pick me up with ease. I hadn’t been able to get out of the snow. I’d cried and cried, feeling the snow all around me. In my mouth. In my lungs.

My mom came home early from work. They’d cut her hours… and she was the reason that I lived. She’d heard me crying in that snow and pulled me out. She never said a word, just gave me a hot bath that made all my fingers and toes burn, and I’d developed a healthy fear of the snow.

But am I in the snow now? Am I a child? Or had someone else thrown me away in the snow, seeing me for the useless thing I am?

My father said he’d wanted to throw me away when I was in my mom’s stomach. He wanted me scooped out like the trash I was, but she said I wasn’t trash. She’d said she loved me before she even heard my heartbeat for the first time.

And she’d kept saying she loved me. When she grew thin. When she lost all her hair. When I was a strong man, in the military, finally capable of protecting her and giving her the life she deserved. Except, instead of doing that, I’d held her hand while she drew her last breath, unable to save her from the terrible thing that was cancer.

Life had given me so many blessings since then, but none of them mattered without her. I had to find meaning. Meaning didn’t find me.

Because she was gone.

“Mom?” My voice sounds small, like it had when I was little.

Her warm hand presses against my cheek, and I find the energy to roll to look up into her face. She’s herself again. Young, but without the pain in her eyes she always seemed to have. Her lips lift into a smile, and my breath slows in my chest.

“Evander,” she whispers.

“Mom.”

“Evander,” she whispers again.

“Mom.” I’m crying now, and I don’t even care.

“Evander. It’s not time for you to die. You need to fight. You’re dying, sweetie, but you need to fight.”

“Dying? Me?”

“Fight. Can you do that for me?”

“Mom, I’m not–”

“Fight!” she says, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

Then she’s gone, and I try to fight, but I can’t move. I can’t even lift my head. My body twitches around me, but I can’t do anything. I’m useless again. Just like I was back then.

Another breath is drawn.

Then, nothing.

Nothing.

Then… heat? Warmth? A shedding of my flesh…

An explosion makes my eyes fly open as my heart sits still in my chest, as fire pours over my skin. A green dragon is in the opening of the freezer door. He’s torn it off. Warm air comes pouring in, but the dragon's focus is on sniffing the ground. For what? I don’t know.

But when it sees me, I’m dead. I try to move. I try to save myself, but I can’t.

The dragon’s dark gaze pins on me. It opens its mouth and roars. It starts to press and try to squeeze itself into the opening, rage flowing from it, and I realize that its presence might have saved me from the cold, but that I was going to die anyway.

Hot. Too hot. Skin too tight.

Fear awakens within me. I have a primal awareness that this is it.

Half a second passes, and I feel that heat spread over me. My body is twitching and changing, but in a different way this time. It swells and swells around me, and then I’m filling the room, bringing the roof down above me. I flap my… wings, and they are wings.

Now, I’m something different. Me, but a different me.Fucking hell. Am I a dragon?

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