Page 47 of He Who Ignites The Flame
“The darklings attacked a few days before I was taken.” My voice began to quiver, my vision blurring. “I got separated from Mama and Papa. There was so much fire.”
Her eyes widened, her breath picking up, but then she she drew a deep inhale. She didn’t speak again for a long while as she dabbed and cleaned my wound.
“Do you have a name?” she asked. The question was hesitant, fearful.
A name… Did I? I couldn’t remember. Had I ever had a name?
I did. It had been taken from me. Stolen.
“I don’t remember it…” I muttered, tears blurring my vision, and I winced at the sting in my right eye.
“I hoped you might’ve somehow kept it, but it was foolish of me.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Have a name?”
“It is not the name gifted to me by my parents, but you can call me Kish,” she said as she pulled back. “I guess you’ll need one.”
She tapped her chin as she looked me over. “What to call you…”
Silence stretched on, and a strange anticipation swelled in my chest before a smile stretched across her face. “Thalia.”
“Thalia?” I echoed, brows furrowing.
“It’s a special name, one I hope will have great meaning for you,” she explained as she cupped my cheek. “It’s a name of prosperous destiny, one that I gift you in the hopes you will thrive and flourish.”
“I think that’s a lovely name, Kish.”
I gasped at the sound of Rhyas’ voice and twisted to find him leaning against the stone outside our cell.
His soft amber eyes welled with pain the moment he saw my face, and he knelt. “Is that the only wound Yressia gave you?”
“It’s the only one I’ve found so far,” Kish explained.
“That’s a relief,” he said and checked both ways down the hall before reaching into one of the satchels tied to his belt. “Here.”
He held out a small container, and Kish reached out to take it, her eyes narrowing to make out what it was before her body tensed. “If they find out you gave us somethi?—”
“Better not let them find out,” he whispered, and for a moment, something passed between them as he held her hand through the bars. “Take it. Make sure she’s well and tended to.”
“Why do you care?” I asked. “You took me.”
“He didn’t have a choice,” Kish said, her sadness filling the room with the scent of freshly fallen rain. “He was like us once.”
“Once.” Rhyas scoffed. “I still am.”
“But you’re not caged,” I said.
“Don’t mistake the lack of bars on my cage for freedom,” he said, and pulled the sleeve of his shirt up, revealing the same inscriptions that now marked my skin. “He marked you too, right?”
I looked down at my hands, at where the ink peeked from beneath the hem of my sleeve. I pulled the coat off, and my heart plummeted at the sight of the inscriptions decorating my entire left arm, from my wrist all the way past my shoulder.
Rhyas’ and Kish’s eyes lingered on the tattoo, something akin to pity dulling their expressions.
“As long as that mark remains, he will have power over you,” Rhyas explained. “Over you, your magic, everything.”
“How can I get rid of it?” I asked, my heart hammering. I needed to get back home, needed to find Mama and Papa.
“You can’t,” Kish muttered. “Unless he dies or releases you, you are trapped here.”
