Page 73 of Burn

Another tenor followed, this one boyish and childlike. He sang a song, his tone like a metallic bell.

After that, more words and speeches unfolded, each one begging me to fight, to wake up.

Please, Briar. Don’t leave us.

Eventually, unfamiliar inflections emerged. Muffled tones strayed to me in fragments, one of them brisk and formal but compassionate. Every urgent question and cautious answer overlapped, some of them growing in pitch.

“Fever. Chills.”

“She’s burning up.”

“Quite a strong will.”

“It should have killed her by now.”

“No one is able to endure this much …”

“She needs … purge the infection …”

“Stockpile of antidotes … appears to have been tampered with …”

“Nothing we can do … we must contact … appeal for help.”

“She will die—”

That last declaration was cut off, replaced by the sound of someone gagging. I blinked toward the commotion, toward the blots of movement, where a tall male figure had another slender form pinned high against a facade, a single inflated arm trapping the latter, whose limbs flapped.

More figures swarmed the first, urging him to “calm down.” As my mouth opened, another wave of black consumed me.

Time lost all meaning. It lost all shape and substance.

But whenever I stirred, he was there. More than any other sound, that male timbre whispered, keeping me afloat. Always there. Never leaving. Each stroke of his voice felt like a caress, and the contact of his fingers as they clutched my own felt like a promise, his constant proximity akin to a shield or a shadow.

Protective. Eternal.

His tears splashed onto my knuckles. Caught between begging and crying, he murmured many things. Lilting rhymes, passionate entreaties, secret promises.

“Come back to me, Highness.”

“Be stubborn, sweeting.”

“I love you, my thorn.”

Conviction and yearning pressed against the backs of my eyelids. I wanted so terribly to respond. But when I tried to answer, my tongue failed us both.

25

Briar

Blankets cocooned my limbs. Soft drafts of air winnowed past me, the breeze caressing my cracked lips. Words piled in my throat, aching to be set free. Then all at once, a single utterance broke through, shattering the barrier of silence.

“Fenien,” I mumbled, the name echoing as lightly as a plume.

My eyes fanned open, my vision instantly consumed by him. The jester lay slumped in a chair angled beside the bed, and his head was flopped back in unconsciousness. His fingers tangled with mine, black nails meticulously lacquered. Morning light burnished the carved ridges of his profile, laminating him in ochre.

Molten liquid flowed into my chest. I might be dying, and this could be a hallucination. Or I might be dead already, the sight of him an illusionary consequence of the afterlife, like a cruel trick. Regardless, the image erased any lingering traces of pain. The flames had died, as had the cold.

Only one sensation remained, one emotion having to do with this man. His chest rose and fell in sleep, the grooves of his muscles exposed beneath the open shirt and embellished with rows of necklaces.

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