Her voice rises sharply beneath the weight of her terror.
“They were screaming and running, and I couldn’t stop it, and you were hurting trying to contain it, and it was all because of me!”
The words collapse into another wave of sobbing that shakes her entire body. I can feel the devastation moving through her like an open wound — guilt, dread, and a self-loathing so sharp it almost steals the air from my lungs.
I stop walking and pull her closer against me, one hand sliding into her hair as I press her head firmly against my chest.
The heat that normally coils beneath my skin softens instinctively around her, dimming until it becomes little more than a quiet warmth in the cool marsh air.
“You are a healer who was pushed beyond what any mortal should endure,” I say quietly.
“That’s not what it looked like,” she whispers.
I glance back once toward the distant glow on the horizon where Briarthorn still burns.
“No,” I admit softly. “It is not.”
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“I tried so hard.”
The despair in her voice ripples through the bond.
“I know,” I repeat.
She buries her face deeper against my chest, her quiet crying filling the marsh while the wild current between us slowly begins to settle.
I hold her through every shaking breath. Because right now she does not need a demon. She needs someone who refuses to let her face this alone.
21
ELOWEN
Dawn arrives slowly, as though the sun itself hesitates to rise over what remains of Briarthorn.
We did not travel far during the night. The marsh swallowed us beyond the village road while the fire devoured Briarthorn behind us, and neither of us slept as the blaze climbed into the sky. Long after the screaming stopped, the glow of the burning village still stained the clouds above the reeds.
When the flames finally began to fade, I turned back toward the road.
Threxian tried to stop me.
I came anyway.
The first light creeps across the horizon in pale gray streaks, illuminating the thick smoke still drifting above the village like a funeral shroud. The fires have finally burned themselves out, leaving behind blackened skeletons of buildings that once stood proudly along the marsh road. What remains of the square is little more than a wasteland of charred beams and smoldering ash, the air heavy with the bitter scent of burned wood and something far worse beneath it.
I stand at the end of the ruins and stare. My mind refuses to accept what my eyes are seeing.
This was once a village.
The same narrow streets where I carried baskets of herbs to patients’ homes now lie buried beneath splintered timber and collapsed roofs. The apothecary where I spent countless evenings grinding medicine for feverish children has been reduced to a jagged pile of stone and blackened shelves. The bakery where warm bread once scented the morning air stands hollow and broken, its roof gone entirely.
Everywhere I look, smoke rises from places I once knew. Places where people trusted me. The realization settles heavily inside me.
I did this.
The thought does not come with panic anymore. The terror that fueled the firestorm has burned itself away along with the village, leaving behind something quieter and far more suffocating. Guilt.
