Page 34 of Shrine of Fire

I sucked in a gasp, sorrow pouring into me.

“Her bonds are just scraps,” Aki snapped. “That damn spirit can’t do that again. Can you help her?”

“I will do my best.” It was the warm, soft voice again, like soothing flames. The warmth and comfort of a nest.

Hands touched my wrists, and I instinctively pulled away from them.

But instead of rushing forward, the warmth of the fires stayed there.

“I will not hurt you, fire omega. I seek to build you a shield against the Mother of Woe, so she cannot again make your own grief into a knife that cuts you.”

“It’s already cutting me.” No one responded, so maybe I wasn’t talking out loud.

I let myself float on the warmth. It was the coziness of a cup of tea by a crackling fire, cuddled under a blanket in the lap of someone I loved.

I reached out for the energy. I saw a great firebird, wings outstretched to the sun.

Heat suffused me, heating me inside and out. I sighed, relaxing into it, the heavy weight on my chest lifting.

Until a wave of coldness hit me. My chest sucked in like I’d been struck through the heart with a lance—just like Barrett, his lifeless eyes pleading with me to save him—and I cried out.

Suddenly I was back in the ethereal forest I’d seen in the Shrine of Everlasting Fire, when Hella Mora had appeared to us.

Ghostly moans wafted on the wind, and a chill sank down into my bones. The forest was thick with trees, their bark ghost white on the branches that stretched up so high only a thin light broke through.

I huddled in against myself. The wind sent skeletal branches reaching for me, and I pressed my hands against my chest, the sucking wound an icy burn I couldn’t stop.

I wailed again, the cry rising in unison with another—Hella Mora.

She appeared before me, again, nodding. “Yes, child, let it out. They took them from you, your deepest loves.”

I shook my head again, warding her away. She bent over me, close enough to touch. Anguish poured off her in waves like she was drowning in her own sorrow.

“You will never love again like you loved them.”

I sobbed, ice filling my veins.

Hella Mora stood before, implacable as the dawn. “Sorrow and anguish are your only friends.”

I shook my head. “Zara…Hashir…”

“Do they truly see you, as I do?” She gestured at me, and I looked down at myself, my hands shaking. Blue fire wreathed around me, a broken flame of grief. “You are alone in your heartbreak. Your loss separates you from anything they could ever know.”

“Hashir’s family…he knows loss,” I started. I didn’t know why I fought against the cold flame burying itself inside my heart. Not when the image of Geshon’s broken body was forever burned in my nightmares, the sight of Darrin surrounded by a pool of his own blood, long grown cold. I hadn’t been there when they’d died, when Barrett fell over both of them to shield them with his body.

I should have been there, laying over them too.

“His family is a wound,” Hella Mora tilted her head. Mist swirled around her, obscuring everything but the closest trees. “But you know in your heart the loss of your pack cannot compare. Your body is a cage, keeping you in this mortal plane.”

I looked up at her, every breath agony.

“I will set you free.” Hella Mora held her hand out to me.

I stared at her skeleton fingers. She was reaching out the hand that was nothing but bone, keeping the hand still covered in skin pressed to her chest. I narrowed my eyes.

“You lie.” A light flared in the trees, bright burning fire.

I turned, squinting to see.

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