His hands moved to her arm, trying to touch her face, her right side. She snarled, pulled him back, and slammed him once more. He did not get to touch her. Not now, not ever.
“M-Mirela!”
“Shut up!” she barked, squeezing his neck like the ropes to the bells. “Shut up, shut up, you… you devil!” She hissed, taking a step forward.
It wasn’t until now that she was close to him, standing straight, on her own two feet and not cowering away like she always did that she noticed she was taller than him.
“How dare you put your hands on her,” Mirela said, her voice low, shaking, unfamiliar even to herself. Her scars burned beneath her skin, heat rising as if the fire had been waiting for this all along. “You will never hurt anyone ever again.”
His eyes flickered with that distinctive spark of fear Mirela knew too well.
“Mirela, p-please, let go,” he begged then stammering, breathless.
If he dared to invoke God, to ask for mercy or forgiveness, she would not grant it. Not when he had hurt Claire, not after all that he had confessed. His words, his blubbering, only made her angrier. Years of prayer, of guilt, of fear coiled tight in her chest and finally unraveled.
“Mirela—don’t,” Claire said suddenly, her hands gripping Mirela’s arm, trying to pull her back. Her voice trembled with urgency. “Let’s leave. He isn’t worth it. We can go. Please.”
Mirela turned her head sharply toward her. For a moment, the world narrowed to Claire’s face. Her expression was soft even though her cheek had darkened, and therewere still traces of blood on her lip. Her eyes still showed mercy toward a man who had never shown Mirela any. That alone stole the breath from Mirela’s lungs.
Of course, Claire would be the one to reach for kindness, even when it was undeserved. She was a divine creature, the closest thing to heaven Mirela had ever known—had ever been allowed to touch. And the thought of that mercy, so freely given, shattered something fragile and burning inside her.
“Mi-rela.”
Ferron trembled under her grip, felt the way his hands clutched uselessly at her wrists, his breath hot and uneven.
Mirela pulled him back up from the wall, her fingers tightening at his throat, lifting him just enough for his feet to scrape helplessly against the floor. “We are leaving. You will not come after us. You will stay here.”
He didn’t answer so she shook him. “Do you understand?!”
“Y-yes, child. P-please.”
Turning abruptly, Mirela slammed to the ground. The impact shook the room.
Ferron hit the floor hard. The breath was knocked clean from his lungs, and as his body twisted, his arm struck the small oil lamp perched on the crate beside her cot. The lamp tipped, shattered, and oil spilled across the floorboards in a glistening arc.
Fire caught instantly, leaping to life as if it had been waiting to be released as if oil had been previously dispersed in her chamber.
Mirela froze. Heat slammed into her like a memory made real as her sketches burned.
Paper curled, charcoal blackened, as faces and animals vanished in seconds.
Her drawings. Her birds. Her gargoyles. Claire’s face, half-smiling, swallowed by flame.
The fire raced across the oil-slick floor, climbed the wooden frame of her cot, crawled up the walls, hungry and fast.
Her lungs seized as her scars burned once more. The room blurred and sharpened all at once, the crackle of flame too loud, too close, the smell of oil, smoke and burning wood dragged something buried straight to the surface.
She was small again. She was screaming. She was burning. She was torn from her mother’s arms.
“Mirela!” Claire cried, grabbing her shoulders. “Mirela, look at me—look at me!”
But Mirela could only stare as the flames grew. The fire bloomed higher, climbing the beams above them, and then she smelled it—smoke from somewhere else, drifting down from above, thick and wrong. The bell tower. The ropes. The wood.
Above them, something was already burning.
Ferron laughed, low and shaking. From the floor, he dragged himself upright, fumbling inside his judge’s coat with trembling hands. When he pulled his arm free, glass glinted in the firelight. In his hand there was a small flask, already uncorked.
More oil.
