Page 64 of Of Flames and Fallacies

Cole shrugs. “I think in part it’s to test me. He doesn’t think I deserve the title.”

I whip my gaze back to him. “If anyone deserves it, Cole, it’s you.”

Cole shakes his head, his eyes falling to the ground as his cheeks redden.

I jab his arm to get his attention. “Have you seen the way Archie looks at you? He quite literally bows before you every time he’s in your presence.”

Cole laughs. “Well, it’s misplaced.”

“Stop it.”

“What?”

“Stop doubting yourself,” I command him.

Our eyes lock, and the desire to kiss him heats my chest. I want to kiss away that stubborn modesty of his. The way his eyes smolder before his gaze lowers to my mouth, tells me he’s thinking the same thing. As if lured by an invisible force, I take a half step toward him. But he turns away, no doubt to hide the longing he masks from the others around us.

“I can’t,” I mutter, averting my gaze from the flaming torch Cole holds, to the pile of wood on his stone floor.

I can’t incinerate the last tether to my family and my father. Guilt, sadness, and anger swarm me all at once. Guilt washes over me—I can’t be the one to burn it. Sad that, after tonight, I’ll have nothing left of my father. And angry I can’t do anything to change it.

But it’s the only way to eliminate any proof if Marge decides to report me. The required proximity to a flame petrifies meas much as destroying the journal. Staring at the kindling Cole collected for us to burn the journal in, my mouth goes dry as I picture the wood engulfed in flames. The crackling branches mimicking a snapping neck. Screams a whispered echo in my ears, and nightmarish words I can’t decipher coming to life.

With a shaky hand and eyes still lowered, I hold out my father’s journal to Cole. “I can’t be the one to do it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks for the third time. His fingers close around the journal, but he doesn’t take it from me.

I stare at the leather cover. I’ve lost so much—and perhaps I shouldn’t be so sentimental about a silly journal.

In the grand scheme of things, it is only paper and ink.

Struggling, I convince myself that between the journal, and Cole and Daeja, I’m making the right choice.

With a nod, I let my hand slip from the journal. Before Cole notices my glossy eyes, I turn away and head for his door.

“Wait—where are you going?” he asks.

“Just…burn it. I can’t stay to watch,” I whisper over my shoulder before exiting Cole’s room. When I get to my own, I sink into my bed and cry.

At least I fulfilled my father’s written wish of burning the journal.

twenty-one

TWENTY-TWO SECONDS

I dream of fire and smoke, haunted by the constant flux of flames from red to blue. Horror grips me in its merciless talons as the faces of the little girl and her family swim in and out of my vision. The shudder of a tied door. Flames licking up the sides of a house.

Beating my fists against a glass window until I bleed, I scream at the girl and her family stuck inside their house. Yet, they still can’t hear me, their round eyes staring.

In one blink, they’re gone, and I’m pounding on the window of my room back in Padmoor instead. I watch as fire roars around the room, inching closer to the bed where my body lies. My eyes are squeezed shut, a soft smile on my lips. The doorknob jiggles, and my mother’s distant cry is muffled by the inferno.

But I don’t stir.

I punch the windowpane, again and again. “Wakeup!”

My scream echoes and morphs into other voices, tones, and pitches.

I jerk awake, my heart racing and sweat drenching my back. The screams from my nightmare still ring fresh around me.

---