Page 68 of Immortal Sun

I can almost smell the fear.

Instead, she leans down and presses a palm toward the heat, I feel that caress of her palm all the way down my body as if she’s doing it to me. After all, the fire is me, it’s always been me, the one connection between me and the sun, the one thing anchoring me to this world.

A groan escapes from between my parted lips and causes the waves to crash over the bridge.

She quickly stands and takes a step into the water near the flaming bridge.

Home.

It’s the only word that comes to me, as if the bridge needed her, as if I needed her.

It’s all my imagination, but what a lovely fairytale. With its clean happy endings and love.

A lie.

After all, every one of us lies in order to stay alive. So I watch her walk toward me in the water. I flick my wrists and force the flames to harden to an ice walkway as she makes her way toward me like she didn’t just see what I did.

“So…” Her lips tremble, and she doesn’t meet my eyes. “About my stay.”

“This wasn’t how I pictured discussing it,” I admit. “But if you want it to be here, then have a seat, you won’t get cold.”

Her eyes meet mine again. “I’m always cold here.”

I smile. “Sit by me, and you’ll always be warm.”

“Why?”

“Because where there is life, there is warmth.”

“And death?” she asks.

“Darkness. Cold. Despair. But I’m none of those things, at least not right now. Only when I must be will you know and freeze your small ass off.”

“My ass isn’t small.” She lifts her chin.

I laugh, I can’t help it. What a strange human. “You’re on an ice bridge created out of fire and that’s what you focus on?”

She shrugs. “I’m telling myself it’s a dream so I don’t have a nervous breakdown.”

“How’s that working out for you?” And why does she look so innocent yet godlike standing in front of me? What right does she have to be so pretty when she’s a dead woman walking?

“I might still be drunk, or hallucinating, so pretty good.” She laughs and then sits on the bridge. Silver pulses beneath the ice going straight to the cliff only to come back again green, pink, blue; it changes colors, pulsing like a heartbeat.

I tell myself to hate her.

To loathe what she represents.

I remind myself that in the end, no matter how charming, they’re always the same bloodline of the self-seeking asshole I need to kill.

She feels different because it’s been a while.

She’s not.

Nothing unique.

So I just come out and say it.

“I’m going to kill you.”

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