Page 74 of He Who Ignites The Flame
Fire engulfed every guard holding me down in a pyre of screams. They released me, and Father turned to me, crazed and furious.
“What will you do, boy?” he demanded, his own flames rising to the surface, as if they relished the possible challenge.
The fire spread quickly, snaking around us, and Mother shrieked as she stumbled back. I couldn’t think straight, my vision turning red as heat flooded my system, demanding to end him, to devour him, to burn every inch of this cursed place to the ground.
I grabbed one of the burning guards and reached into his coat, feeling a sickening satisfaction in the way he flailed, how his skin was already blackening, his screams melding with the others.
“I should’ve known you’d never amount to anything,” Father bellowed, and I threw the guard to the ground before stalking toward him. “You’ve always been weak, just like your sister.”
He swung at me, his flames winding around his arm, concentrating in his fist, and I dodged it before crashing into him. Air rushed from his lungs, his eyes bulging before falling to the dagger protruding from his gut, a dagger that one of Atticus’ guards had carried?—
The blade laced with Aethersbane.
The flames at his command flickered before dying out entirely, and he lifted his wide eyes to me as my own built and built.
I growled, my teeth grinding together as I let them grow. “Burn.”
My flames wrapped around him, and he cried out as they crawled over his skin, burning every inch of him. Mother’s screams filled my ears as she caught fire, and I let the flames do as they wished until nothing remained.
My eyes fell to her bracelet dangling from my wrist, the inscription engraved on the gold plate haunting me just as deeply as her face.
vôu hallôs apeirïsï.
Love you infinitely.
It was meant to be a joke, a way to one up her in the words we always shared, but now, it felt more like a promise—that I would always keep her with me, that her memory would haunt me until the day I died, that my failure would remain engraved in my mind the way my message was engraved in the metal.
“I hadn’t meant to lose control like that, but I...I don’t regret what I did.” I admitted.
“He got what he deserved,” she said, resting a hand against my shoulder. “And I hate that I let this happen when you were children, that I hadn’t listened to my gut about him and launched an investigation.”
I shook my head. “You made it right in the end.”
“There’s one more thing before it’s fully right,” she said, and my brows furrowed as she brought a slip of parchment into view.
“Barrett Stratos, you are hereby cleared of all charges.” She tore the parchment in half before me. I couldn’t speak, could only watch as she smiled and handed me the torn piece of parchment that had been my undoing.
“Enjoy your freedom, hothead.”
PART TWO
1889
(420 years later)
27
BARRETT
Iwas in hell.
There was no other way to describe it. Bodies littered the ground, making it near impossible to fight off the beasts coming for our throats without tripping. Exhaustion gnawed at my bones, clawing at every muscle in my body after countless hours of fighting, which seemed to get us nowhere. The foul, rotting stench of darkling blood had overtaken the scent of grass and life that once filled this field, and I longed for anything else.
Agonized cries of wounded warriors filled my ears as they bled out on the ground, their stomachs ripped to shreds, succumbing to the darklings’ bites as they changed. I’d seen too many fall to the corruption, unable to end them before black veins crawled across their skin. The shadows swirled in their eyes as their mouths split into gaping smiles, their hands clawing at their necks as they writhed and rose again as creatures that hungered for death.
I was responsible for them, commanded a unit of fifty warriors, and yet, here I was…failing them. I always failed those who relied on me.
Nearly a third of my unit had fallen, and many of the other units had joined them. I’d lost track of how many of our own I’d killed before they could change into darklings—how many I’d failed to end before they’d changed.
