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Baron Lester approaches, the growing flames reflecting in his eyes. “Maybe you would have been better off with one of those monsters. They might have taken pity on you.”

“Fuck, Lester,” Baron Gregory barks. “You feeling pity for the devil girl now?”

He whips away from me, arguing with Baron Gregory, but I hear only the crackling flames, the wood splintering, and me shifting my feet to avoid the flaring flames.

Tears race down my face. Bastards, the lot of them, staring at me with satisfied smirks. They should be the ones screaming and burning, not me.

Flames suddenly billow up to my chest, and I cry out. Any second now, it’s going to engulf me and burn me. I pray it’s fast.

However, my feet still aren’t burning, yet the wood I’m standing in is in flames. My slippers are blackening, and the hem of my white dress curls and smokes. Heat roars around me, and I wait to die.

For my skin to blister.

To feel the agonizing pain.

For my body to know what fire is meant to do.

Flames surge higher, snapping savagely around me. They engulf the pyre, swallowing me. The intensity heats my body, but it doesn’t burn. I watch it reach for my skin and then flick away as if repelled.

This is so wrong, and I sob harder.

I’m unsure of what’s happening. There’s no excruciating, burning pain.

My dresses catches alight instantly, browning and burning away, my underwear gone just as fast, and I’m left naked, still unmarked.

Screaming into my gag, I heave against the restraints as the pyre behind me starts to wobble, my ropes loosening. My gaze lifts to the men, who are blurs beyond the flames.

Can they see me still alive in here?

The fire sizzles where it should sear me.

Unimaginable heat curls around me, pouring through to my bones, yet it’s all impossible. Are they right to call me a devil? Is that why fire doesn’t singe me?

Yet I’m screaming, because I should be on fire. Unless I’m already dead, my body giving up before my head. Is that why I can see it all happen but feel nothing.

The ropes around my body and legs fall away, burning up, crumbling into ash. I desperately pull the gag out of my mouth, tossing it to the ground.

Is this what death feels like? Or am I in the afterlife where there’s no peace, experiencing my death on repeat?

The logs crash over behind me, sparking the fire higher.

And I lurch sideways to get out of the pyre that’s breaking apart. I hurry forward and shove toward the wall of fire when a shadow falls over me.

My mind screams that it’s one of the guards trying to push me back inside.

I don’t think; I strike back, my hand with tipped black fingernails whipping toward them. I slash at the outstretched arm, wanting to hurt so much. To suffer. My claws tear through both fabric and flesh at once.

Stumbling out of the flames, I blink to clear my vision, convinced I’m about to be attacked. But no one’s coming for me. The guards and the Barons are far away. While someone in a black coat stands just feet from me. They’re tall and broad, and I’m still blinking the smoke out of my eyes to see clearly.

“Wh-who are you?” I croak, glancing at my hands to confirm that they’re back to normal. Despite these men having already seen my disfigurement, I’m still desperate to conceal that part of myself, hating that it makes me different.

I pant for breath and cover myself with my arms.

That’s when a sharp stabbing pain spreads just below my left shoulder, so intense I cry out, grasping for it, expecting to find a dagger. My knees wobble as I struggle to remain upright.

But there, on my flesh, is a black mark the size of my palm in the shape of a dragonfly with wings spread wide, one of them stretching up and over my shoulder. Smoke lifts from the mark as though it burns with flames.

I scratch at it frantically. “What is it?”