Page 70 of Heart of Night and Fire

“Who did this to you?” he asked, his rumbling voice low with wonder. “Why? Who are you, Zarya?”

His eyes flashed with hints of gold against a midnight canvas, and Zarya gazed into them, letting him anchor her. Letting him take care of her the way she sensed he was supposed to.

He gently turned her onto her back, and she studied the canopy of dark leaves that hung overhead, blowing in a slight breeze. The violet sky sparkled, and a pale golden moon hung so low it brushed the tops of the trees. Pinpoints of lights danced in the sky like they were signaling to her.

He placed his large hand in the center of her chest. It was so big it nearly covered her completely. Her heart reacted, beating wildly.

A dark wave crashed over her and then the pain began to leach away.

More tears leaked from her eyes as Rabin moved his hands, running them over her arms and legs. It was hard to believe someone who looked so fearsome could be so gentle.

The pain dulled, flowing away in eddies, like a thunderstorm easing to a spring shower. Her body, so tense and rigid, began to soften, bit by bit. Relief cascaded in shallow bursts, rolling over one another. A tempest blowing out. A squall gusting away.

With his head bowed, Rabin placed his hands on her stomach and went completely still. The forest held its breath, too, silence descending as every bird and insect and even the breeze paused, waiting.

Zarya felt it then—the vise leached away, pulling up through her body. First releasing her feet and then her shins and then her knees, rising up and up. It drew away through her fingertips, through her arms and her stomach and her chest and her shoulders and her neck until the pain gathered only in her head.

“Hang on,” Rabin whispered. “I can’t help you with this part, but it will be over soon.”

Then the pain behind her eyes squeezed, and Zarya screamed. Her back arched off the grass as it echoed in every part of her, in every corner of her heart, moving through her, becoming her. She screamed and screamed until her voice cracked away, and then she continued screaming, her body robbed of sound.

Pressing against his hands, she thrashed and writhed and then Zarya exploded, coming apart in a thousand points of blackness like the night sky crashing down from the heavens.

It finally stopped.

Zarya stared up, her vision blurring. She sobbed, her tears flowing down her cheeks, touching her head, her arms, her stomach, searching for the pain. Only an ache remained. The soreness after intense physical activity. Muscles strained but free, no longer crushed by the weight of mountains. She floated on frothy tendrils of airy relief.

Rabin put a hand behind Zarya’s back and helped her sit. Their eyes met, and she had the unmistakable sense of falling into something with no bottom. That this moment had just set her on a path that could never be undone.

“Thank you,” she said, mourning the complete inadequacy of those feeble words. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough. I thought I was dying.”

He shook his head, his eyes boring into her, into that secret place only he seemed to be able to reach. “You don’t need to thank me.”

His hand lingered on her back, the touch warm and firm and inexplicably protective.

“Who are you?” Her raw voice barely carried above the din of the wind that had returned to rustle through the leaves.

“Who are you?” he countered.

“I’m nothing,” she said, recalling Suvanna’s callously tossed words.

With his other hand, he gripped her chin between a thumb and forefinger and drew her gaze towards him before he tipped her face up. They were so close she could feel his breath on her lips. She couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth—the curve of his lips and how soft and inviting they looked.

“That isn’t true,” he said, and it sounded like a truth so absolute it could tear apart galaxies.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, too, just for a moment before he raised a dark eyebrow and said, “So, let’s see.”

“What?”

“Start with a flame. That’s usually the easiest.”

Zarya blinked, confused by his words.

He released his hold on her and then waited, intent but expectant.

“I don’t unders—”

And then she noticed it.