Not baby, or sweetheart, or rabbit.
It was concerning, and so was the breath he expelled, his body curling inward as though it physically pained him.
“The Ashford Fire… it wasn’t an accident.”
Uhm…“It was an electrical fire. Does that not qualify as an accident?”
He shook his head, pulling away from me. “It wasn’t an electrical fire, Archie. It was arson.”
My eyes widened. “How—how do you know that?”
“Because it was me,” he said. “I set the fire. Ikilledthem.”
19
HENRY
Fire had a sound.
Not just the crackle.
Not just the roar.
Something deeper—alive in a way it shouldn’t have been, consuming everything it touched and asking for more.
It filled the space around me, pressed into my ears, into my lungs, into the back of my throat until breathing felt like swallowing it whole.
Smoke curled thick and black along the ceiling, bleeding downward, turning the air heavy.
Hot.
Too fucking hot.
The walls groaned under it—splitting wood and shattering glass.
I didn’t move.
Not at first.
I stood there in it, heat licking up my arms, my face, my throat—close enough to feel it but not close enough to burn.
My pulse was steady—probably too steady. Maybe my body hadn’t caught up to what I’d done yet. Or maybe it had.
It just didn’t give a shit.
The flames climbed higher, crawling up the walls, feeding on everything they could reach. Papers curled in on themselves, blackening, dissolving into ash before they ever hit the floor.
A beam overhead cracked, sharp and violent, splintering as the fire ate through it. Sparks rained down, scattering across the floor in brief, bright bursts.
Through the crackle and the violent churn of it, something else pushed through, threading into the noise until it stood apart from it.
A human sound.
A scream, gutted and raw, dragged up from somewhere deep enough that it broke on the way out. It twisted through the heat, caught in the smoke, stretched thin by pain until it barely sounded like a voice anymore.
It should have done something to me.
Shock or hesitation, maybe, but all I felt was satisfaction.
