“No,” I whisper under my breath, though I am not certain who I am speaking to. Him. Myself. Whatever answered me last night.
The fire spikes higher. A section of the shed roof caves inward with a shower of sparks, and the crowd stumbles back in collective alarm.
“She’s doing it again,” someone breathes.
I shake my head instinctively. “I’m not,” I try to say, but my voice barely carries beyond my own lips.
Ravik wheels toward me, face red not only from heat but fury. “What did you bring here?” he demands.
I take a step back and the lifeline reacts to that, too. Heat floods my veins so suddenly that my vision blurs at the edges.My pulse races, and with it the flames answer, leaping sideways to catch on a nearby fence post that had not yet been touched.
The crowd gasps. It is not subtle anymore. I feel it. The connection between my rising dread and the violence across the square is no longer coincidence. It is immediate and merciless.
Stop.
I drag in a breath, forcing it deep into my lungs the way I do when a patient is bleeding and my hands must not shake. The fire hesitates, just slightly.
Hope flickers, before someone shouts, “She’s calling it!”
That word breaks whatever fragile control I have grasped. As though I am commanding this. As though I wanted this.
The shame and fear twist together, sharp as barbed wire, and the bond answers in kind. The flames surge outward again, racing up the remaining beams with predatory hunger. The heat becomes unbearable.
Villagers scatter, dragging Ravik back as a wall collapses inward with a thunderous crash. Sparks rain down across the square. Smoke rolls thick and choking.
Through the haze, I see something else. A distortion. The smoke shifts unnaturally. For the briefest moment, the chaos parts enough for me to see the outline of towering shoulders, the curve of sweeping horns etched against the glow.
The sight of him does not terrify me the way it should. Instead, beneath the smoke and shouting, I feel the pull of him inside my chest, vast and unyielding, as though the fire is not the only thing that answered me.
4
THREXIAN
The surge hits me before the smoke reaches the sky. It slams through the bond with crystal clarity, a spike of panic so sharp it might as well be a spoken order. Her pulse accelerates, fear flooding her bloodstream in a rising tide, and the tether between us translates it into compulsion instantly.
Infernal energy answers the spike without hesitation, coiling outward from me in a reflex older than thought. It seeks a target. It seeks a threat. I feel the precise moment her fear crests inside the council hall. I felt the judgment, the isolation, and the accusation.
The bond interprets it as danger. And I am built to eradicate danger, or more importantly, to avenge it. I am a wrath demon, created exactly to show people what happens when they mess with something of mine.
The first spark ignites before I consciously intervene. Flame licks along the dry beams of a structure, Ravik Keld’s hay shed, brittle with summer heat and neglect. The demonic current flows toward it with predatory eagerness, eager to manifest in flesh and bone instead. I tighten my control.
“No,” I murmur into the unseen current, though no mortal ear could hear it.
The energy resists. Not defiance. Momentum. It was triggered by her distress, and it seeks a form proportionate to that distress. The bond does not distinguish between humiliation and mortal peril. It reads fear as a threat. It demands response. This is the flaw. Or the design.
I redirect the surge with deliberate precision, widening its target and diluting its intent. Instead of flesh, it takes timber. Instead of blood, it devours straw.
The shed erupts. The fire climbs fast and hungry, but it is not white-gold. I temper it, suppressing the full arcane signature that marked the alley the night before. Mortal flame amplified. Destructive, but not annihilating. It is the most restraint I have exercised in centuries, and I don’t even know why I am doing it. Why don’t I leave it burning and destroy as always? Because I know she won’t like it, and this is somehow enough reason for me…
Through the bond, I feel her shock as she steps into the square and sees the blaze. Her pulse stutters. Confusion sharpens into dawning comprehension. She is beginning to understand.
The crowd recoils from the heat. Accusation thickens the air. Fear shifts direction, coiling around her like smoke. I feel it tightening.
Suspicion is an insidious weapon among mortals. It does not require proof, only a pattern. A burned man. A healer is present. Now a second fire is erupting at the height of public tension. Their conclusions are inevitable. Not that they are wrong, yet she doesn't know anything to be accused.
I stay half veiled by smoke and shadow, and observe them. Matron Yselle stands near the council hall doors, spine rigid,eyes narrowed not in grief but calculation. She does not shout. She does not react. She watches Elowen instead of the flames.
She is already building a structure around the chaos. Interrogation. Witness accounts. Narrative. Her gaze lingers on Elowen’s hands as the blaze falters under my imposed restraint. She notes the timing. The proximity. The villagers’ fear. This one will not be easily swayed by denial.
