Page 33 of A City of Flames

As I straighten up and uncross my arms, Lorcan dismisses Sana. He walks over to me, stopping a few inches away.

“How did it happen?” I ask. Why of all people, them? I want to say as if he’ll have the answer.

“Most of us split up, heading into different sectors of the forest,” he recalls, glancing down at the floor. “After a while, there were screams and—there was nothing we could do.”

“Did you kill the rümen?”

He shakes his head. “Disappeared before we arrived.”

To the herd of rümens, I suppose. Just how bees have a queen, rümens drift back to their leaders.

My shoulders sink low from how stiff they are. Nothing can save Adriel from the bite. It is only a waiting game now for the venom to seep into his system, rendering him blind after the first twelve hours. And then, slowly, all his organs will shut down. Oran’s death was at least quick. He didn’t have to suffer.

Lorcan is silent, as am I, for what feels like seconds, minutes, hours. My desire to tell him I’m glad he is okay replaces itself with stubbornness—stubbornness because of last night. And almost like he can sense what I’m thinking, he expels a long breath saying, “About yesterday, I’m—”

“I know,” I say, so soft I can’t recognize my voice or myself.

He stares hard enough that something inexplainable inside pulls at me, wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped that hand, his fingers touching me. I don’t like that I’m thinking it. I don’t want this feeling.

“Nara, I just—”

“Deputy,” The general interrupts us. The oil-lit lamps flicker onto his rich brown skin. “A word.” His icy gaze frisks over me to Lorcan.

Lorcan ducks his head for a second, turning rigid before he looks at me and follows the general out of view.

I tip my chin up towards the ceiling and sigh. Freya will likely be asleep by now, exhausted from everything. Still, a reason I had stayed waiting outside the infirmary was that I had the intention of going in to see Adriel.

As strange as it is, I’m ready for forgiveness. I don’t have the urge to shout how it was their own doing even if they’d done me wrong, tormented Link, and Solaris knows what else. I’m aware it could have happened to anyone else, me included if I’d gone in their place. Nonetheless, this is what we all signed up for. To be a venator no matter the hardships, no matter the deaths.

Plucking up the courage, I turn to the double doors and enter into a room full of cots of those ill and injured, white linen curtain barriers between each one. I scan the beds and walk up to the end of the room, sliding the curtain. My stomach twists into a rope and I wince as I survey black blood oozing through bandages covering the middle section of Adriel as he lies there. Dragging my gaze up, four fresh deep cuts slice diagonally down his face like the claws of the rümen attacked there first.

“Come to gloat in the hour of my death?” Adriel croaks. Nothing in his words sounds welcoming as he hisses air through his teeth, trying to sit up.

I nudge forward but keep my distance. “I’ve come to show mercy.”

“Why?” His frown across his gaunt face is expected. “Shouldn’t you despise me?”

“I do,” I say. If I was feeling kinder, I’d scrap his name off my enemy list too. “Except I’ve always been told to forgive even in times I wouldn’t want to.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness.”

“And I’m not asking you to take it,” I say, harsher than I intended to. Adriel looks away, unbothered, to which I huff out a breath and shake my head. “I forgive you, do what you will on that.”

I don’t expect any type of reaction, so I turn and take my leave when his voice—the voice of a dying one, says my name. I glance back at his face, hollow and blanched. He looks terrified.

“You should know... the rümen that attacked us,” he says, lowering his head. “It wasn’t a normal one.”

My breath tightens in my throat, not expecting that.

“It looked—” He hacks a wet cough like blood is clogging his throat. “It looked like a dragon. It had the build of one, but its tail was thinner, its eyes entirely black, and it’s like it couldn’t, see?”

Could it be... could it be the new breed?

I try my best to keep a blank face, but the words of the Golden Thief ring in my ears, “Is that what they’re saying?” He’d flashed that confident smile, but thinking back, why would someone who everyone spoke of as the one creating this breed act like he didn’t know of it himself?

“Why are you telling me this?” I whisper.

“Because one of these days, you might be the one lying in these beds nearing death,” Adriel says. “Or far worse.” He lowers himself back down, resting his head to the side, intending not to speak further or for me to question more.

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