I killed someone by my touch.
My chest heaves, tears threatening to fall, but I hold them back. Not here. Not in front of them.
My eyes flicker, ash landing on my eyelashes as the burnt char singes my nostrils. Everything burns.
Is the ash that is tangled in my hair… him?
The dragon's fire didn’t kill me. How? All the men before me have died from the scorching breath of a dragon's fire, so why not me? I stare at my untouched skin, showing no signs of burnt flesh anywhere. Only the stones.
I did beg the Gods here to curse me to never love, so maybe they have a sick way of granting wishes. I can still love—that is a feeling I suppose they have no power over—butcan never touch a man I love.
Get me out of this damn Realm.
My eyes groggily open and shut, weakly, but that's when I see her.A woman in a raven cloak, blood-red stringed tassel on the sides, her face hidden by darkness. But icy-white strands sway in front of her chin.
Tilly?
My knees dig into the gravel, locking eyes on her as she begins to walk across the ledge of the arena. “Tilly!?” I stumble to my feet. “Tilly!”
Theon whips a concerned gaze at me. “Ren!” He tries to hold me back as guards circle around us, their spears directly pointing at the three of us. “There is no one in the crowd!”
My brows pull inward, frantically glancing between him and the stands, only to see he is right. Everyone has left. The womanwho screamed to kill me, gone. They all fled, but the dead man's body still lies there. Untouched. The arrow is still in his chest.
“I saw her!” My eyes widen and my trembling hands go to touch him, but he pulls away. I stop, letting my hands twist to where I see my palms. “I killed him.”
“You didn’t mean to!” Theon’s eyes soften. “We all saw what happened.”
“I killed a man!” I weep, grieving a man I never knew.
“On accident, Ren!”
“He touched me and then burned to ash!”
“He did, yes. But you never meant to!”
“How the hell is that even possible!” I choke on my words, my voice tinged with gasps of sobs that I try to suck in. But my chest hurts. My heart hurts for this man, a man that never deserved death.
“On your knees!” a guard shouts, his spear sharply glinting with the flames that still flicker from wood that caught on fire. Ash flies in the thickening, smoky air around us. Fire embers still fall down on us, a few landing on my skin, but I don’t feel a thing.
I don’t feel the heat that should be radiating off of it.
I feelnothing.
Theon and I gradually fall to our knees with our hands up. I notice Theon’s palms filled with blisters, turning raw and red from touching me. Just from touching me.
“Does it hurt?” I whisper out to him.
“Felt as if fire itself was scorching me alive.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You are alive. That’s all that matters.” Theon’s lip tugs into a soft smile.
Is that truly all what matters? That my heart is still beating, even though now somehow my skin is cursed?What the hell did this dragon do to me?
Koen.He must have left. My heart slows at a deadly rate, mirroring the intense emotions I experienced watching him plead desperately with the Gods not to let me go. His voice—I can still hear every raw emotion that sliced in the air, begging the Gods with everything he had for them to not take me.
But that single tear, shed for me alone. That’s what got me.
