Page 20 of Wildfire Witch

There wasn’t any time to hesitate. I pried a damp wooden spatula from Seth’s other hand and got back to casting. He dropped the rest and gestured, his face hardening. Water exploded out of the sink’s faucet with heavy pressure and followed his will. He waved it over to the floor and coated it in a slick sheen of ice. More water rushed around him, hanging suspended in globes around us waiting to be used.

“Isaid, get her out of here!” Ceridor shouted without looking away from our enemies. There had to be a dozen more shifters, all fire bros, stepping over their fallen with determination and navigating the ice with careful steps. The bounty on my head had to be astronomical.

The fae swept the end of his staff low to the ground, tripping every shifter and following it up with a push of his palm outward. Most of the air in the room followed the motion, slamming the shifters into the far wall as if they weighed nothing. Seth slipped sharped shards of ice between the shifters and Ceridor’s magic. They hit the wall next, slicing through several shifters in the process.

“I’m not leaving you,” I protested breathlessly, even while my spatula turned to cinders after another blast of hot water. My arm ached from palm to chest. It was as if I’d cooked my veins in the attempt to wrangle my curse to cooperate, the pain becoming a white-hot stabbing sensation.

Seth was too distracted trying to wrap freezing water around my arm to notice the sliding glass door behind us had opened with a whoosh of outside air. I turned just in time to see the end of a handgun hit the side of his head. He dropped like a stone from the blow and the water he’d been controlling landed on the ground a moment later.

Panting and overheated, I was easy to capture from there. The metal jabbing under my chin quickly heated to match the temperature of my skin.

“Easy does it. Come quietly with me and I’ll let him live, vessel,” a deep voice rumbled behind me, belonging to the man who wrapped a partially shifted arm around my front. It was coated in crimson scales and tipped with black claws.

Vessel. The first leader of the Fire Brotherhood had taught his underlings to call me that, to dehumanize me for their experiments. To them, I was merely a container holding the real prize: Aodhnait.

“Tell me you’re still there,”I pleaded with the phoenix, who’d been silent for far too long.

“Yes. No more fire. Please,”she whispered back.

Considering the man inching us toward the balcony while his men fought Ceridor was probably a fire dragon shifter, any more magic from me would be useless anyway. Those scales were impervious to heat.

Ceridor glanced back and spotted us shortly after Seth dropped unconscious. His silvery eyes darkened with wrath and he brandished his weapon. “I wouldn’t, wind fae. She’s just as valuable alive or sort-of dead,” the dragon said. The muzzle of his gun jabbed my chin to punctuate his point.

“Whatever you’re being paid, I’ll double it,” Ceridor bit out. “All you have to do is release her.”

“Hmm. No,” the shifter answered without hesitation.

He gestured with his clawed fingers, just as Ceridor made a motion with his own. I heard the wind shriek outside, bearingdown on the glass door with enough pressure to shatter it into thousands of shards.

The lackies that the dragon shifter had silently ordered to grab my fae husband’s arms dropped with dozens of those shards skewering them from the throat down. But the man holding me simply laughed as even more pieces of glass plinked off his scales. I felt them thicken from where his arm pressed me back into his chest. Skin gained contours of scale shapes through the fabric of his shirt.

Wings ripped from his back as soon as the worst of the glass assault was done. He flared them, carrying us backward several yards into the sunshine. Ceridor looked on with horror as I reached for him, screaming, “Cer!”

The dragon flew us down and around to the parking lot in a dizzying blur of colors. He’d lowered the gun from my chin to secure me against his body. “Father will reward me very well for you, vessel,” he hissed in my ear.

When he landed on solid pavement, he dropped me, and I skidded on the asphalt after a hard landing on my side. “Secure her now,” he barked. Rough hands pulled me off the ground, pain flaring over dozens of scrapes that screamed to life once they moved me.

As a needle stuck me in the neck, I realized…he’d dropped me on purpose to stun me. Clever. Otherwise I would’ve lit the truck they stuffed me into on fire. Or maybe I’d have incinerated the fleet of other unmarked vehicles they had to leave behind, considering how many people they’d lost just to pick me up.

Intentions didn’t matter when the black fog of oblivion swept in to claim me. Only the truth: I’d been so close to finally figuringout my curse, just for the fire bros to snatch it away from me…again.

CERIDOR

For a moment,the apartment was still, save for me pulling at my hair and chanting, “No. No no no!” The extra wind I’d summoned up with my staff raged around me, shrieking and slashing at the walls of the apartment. It matched the turmoil I felt within.

My wife was gone…again. The longer I stood here, the further away her enemies dragged her. These “Fire Brotherhood” shifters who’d thrown themselves so eagerly into my spinning air blades.

The magical tattoos that formed a half sleeve on my lower right arm tightened and pulsed with heat. A familiar sensation that warned of pain to come, the ebb and flow of agony an echo of what Nix felt.

There were consequences to invoking the universal language of the fae, used only for permanent bonds and vows. I had known the price when I’d made my vows to Verity Carmine that I would be loyal, and always protect and cherish her. It became my truth.She was my fated mate, but my words made her the only woman I would ever desire.

I had never expected her to suffer for over three centuries from the curse of a petty sorcerer. I’d assumed she was mortal, and would take my heart from me when she died and the tattoos representing our handfasting faded permanently. Instead, my vows remained, and the marks punished me with an echo of every negative experience she felt.

When she started again as a babe, the marks were silvery, nearly the same as my skin tone, only darkening when she came of age. Each time she died, it felt like my skin was melting off my body and I screamed and clawed at the tattoos, wanting more than anything for the suffering to stop for both of us.

She’d died too often, the number of times a horrific counter in my head that I swore would not go up again. That was why I’d agreed to work with Seth, to allow him to touch my wife. Otherwise, he would be as dead as the shifters who littered our apartment for daring to have his stars crossed with hers.

He still lay unconscious in a heap on the floor. For longer than I want to admit, I entertained the idea of leaving him here to deal with the fallout of this fight, the dead bodies, and the gunshots our neighbors had no doubt already called the authorities over. But…Nix needed him. And the vehicle they’d stolen her away in could be several blocks in any direction now.

---