“Careful, Reverie,” he warned.
She was but a few inches away, her defiant figure staring up at him as though she were daring him to use his powers. He didn't know where this was coming from or why she was saying this to him all of a sudden.
But there she was. Standing before him as though she dared him to go off.
“You think I haven’t heard and seen you at night?” she said, head tilting. “Screaming your older’s name. Flames pouring over your naked body. Your body flinching as you run through the fires of your nightmares to try and get to her. Sodesperateto pull the only one of your olders that ever loved you out of danger—”
“Reverie, I mean it—”
His core turned to stone. He could feel the vibration of his ash pulsing up his heating fingers.
“I know the only reason you smoke and drink all hours of the day and night is to try and numb yourself of the pain—“
"Reverie, stop," he cut in, eyes closed.
“—from the voices and screams clouding you. I heard the stories of how she wailed when the fire struck her—”
His fists curled in on themselves. His heart pounded in his ears.
“I wonder how it is you can live with yourself afterletting her die.”
—His hand jumped around her throat.
His vision vibrated. Heat struck his fingertips.
The edge of a knife met his chin.
Reverie stretched her neck beneath his grasp, and her lavender eyes blazed.
“There you are,” she seethed. “There’s theFire KingI was promised.”
He didn’t realize he had picked her up and slammed her against the wall until he noted her as tall as him—something she certainly was not. The black streaks ran up his ashen hand to his chest, and he knew his eyes were as black as his markings.
Her words reverberated in his mind. He knew she was right. And he wouldn’t deny it.
But it still hurt.
For a moment, neither spoke. He could feel her steady pulse beneath his fingertips. As though the fire he threatened her with had not startled her. Her knife creased his skin. His muscles strained beneath the weight of trying not to evaporate her right there.
Aydra and Nyssa’s faces flashed before his eyes.
He released Reverie and took a step back, forcing his flames back inside with a shudder of his body. The crack his neck took chilled him, and his eyes flashed to her figure once more.
“Get out.”
“Why?”
“Are you trying to send me over the Edge?” he snapped. “Do you want me to burn you in my fingers without realizing what I am doing?”
“You do not scare me.”
His heart chilled. “I really should,” he breathed. “Get out.”
“Do your other friends not call you out on your bullshit—”
“No, they certainly do,” he growled in such a dark tone, he swore clouds covered the moons. “But as someone who knows nothing of the decision we had to make that day, you are not allowed to speak of it. You have no idea what we all were put through the day our world came crumbling down around us. You have no idea what that day was like. You have no idea the pain and the agony of the silence we were forced into.”
He paused, swallowing hard, knowing if he continued to speak that he would break into the floor. His hands pushed on his hips, and he shook his head with an audible breath.
