Page 77 of Born in Fire

But no one asked me. I simply had to be grateful that they allowed this ceremony at all.

“She didn’t have family.” My voice cuts through the silence. Behind me, Caleb shifts—the fucking empath all of a suddensince he found love. Elena’s quieter, but I feel her stare like a branding iron. “No one to miss her. No one but me.”

The elders don’t answer. They stand in a hollowed circle, silent, their disdain a living thing.A human on a dragon’s pyre.Even in death, she’s breaking their rules.

Lydia steps forward. Mud squelches beneath her feet, steam curling around her ankles. “Thisisn’tour way, Dorian. Fire is for our kin. Her soul won’t find peace in ash.”

I whirl on her. “You think her soul waspeaceful? She spent her life serving burned coffee to monsters. She died shoving me out of the way of a collapsing building. She didn’t get to bepeaceful.” My claws slip free, slicing my palms. “But she gets this. She getsfire.”

Elena touches my arm. I shake her off, reaching for the flaming torch. I need to get this over with.

The torch feels too light in my grip. Juno’s face is pale under the moonlight, her hair fanned out around her. It’s an unremarkable color; sandy, she’d called it. I told her I thought it was beautiful. She’d thrown a biscotti at my head.

Barely two weeks ago.

“You stupid, reckless—” My throat locks. The torch trembles.

Caleb’s voice, low behind me. “We can do it.”

“Fuck. Off.”

I thrust the flame into the kindling.

Fire devours the pyre in seconds. Dragonfire would’ve been cleaner. Hotter. But Juno was human. Mortal. So I gave her mortal fire. Let it be slow. Let it hurt for me to watch. Let itlinger, like the ache in my ribs where her name is carving itself into bone.

The heat blisters my cheeks. I don’t step back.

She’s not here.

I know that. The clever mouth, the eye-rolls, the way she’d hum Patsy Cline off-key while steaming milk—gone. All that’s left is meat and memory.

The clan murmurs, their silent judgment seeping into the dirt as they trickle away. Caleb and Elena stay, but their pity is worse.

Leave.I want to scream it.Leave me with her.

But sinners don’t get wishes.

The flames gutter out first. Then, the voices. One by one, they vanish into the pines until it’s just me, the rain, and the pyre’s skeleton.

I sit.

I sit until my knees fuse to the sodden earth. Until my breath fogs and stills. Until the embers fade from crimson to gray.

“You’re a shitty tipper,”she’d said the day we met. I’d spilled coffee on her apron, and she’d threatened to ban me from the café.“But you’ve got sad eyes. I’ll allow it.”

A sob claws up my throat. I choke it to death. I’ve never cried in my fucking life. I don’t plan to start now. Even if she died for me. Even if she made me laugh… truly laugh, for the first time in my life. She doesn’t deserve my tears. She deserves my laughter. She earned it. But I can’t bring myself to do it right now.

I sit in the vacuum created by my own determination to stay stoic. Until the silence is broken.

Footsteps.

A figure emerges from the tree line, a silhouette wavering in the smoke. Too tall. Too still.

Malakai?

I lurch up, sparks igniting in my palms. But the figure steps into the moonlight, and my pulse stutters.

A woman. No—nota woman. Her skin glows faintly gold, eyes twin coals, hair a ripple of shadow and flame. She walks into the embers, barefoot, trailing through the ash.

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