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He will come.I hoped.
Although the fire stayed far from my skin, the smoke didn’t. With each passing moment it thickened, making each breath as painful as the next.
I coughed into the crook of my arm, trying to keep my lungs clear.
I should stop this.The thought rang true. All around me was the raging red of fire. It burned as though it had been starved for centuries, devouring the area around me in only moments.
My gaze flicked to the door constantly.Come on.He had to come.Come on.Dread strangled my lungs.Come on.Then my heart skipped a beat. The key. I had left it in the lock on my side.
Horror cut its claws down my spine.
I moved, swinging my legs from the bed. But the fire crackled across the bedframe, spitting red fingers out to reach me.
It kept me in place.
The smoke was becoming unbearable. Each breath weaker than the next.
I was surrounded in flames.
Heat seared at my skin, threatening to melt it clean off my bones. I pulled my legs to my chest as the fire found its way onto the sheets.
I was losing my mind. Unable to hold a grip onto reality. Each blink was longer than the last. Each time I fought to open my eyes, the fire was closer than it was before. The open window did little to rid the room of the engulfing smoke.
Mother’s voice rang clear across my foggy mind.You have doomed us all.
Wooden beams snapped, raining debris over me in sprinklings of burning ash. I raised a hand to batter it away from catching across my hair, my face. In that moment I felt the world slow as the amber glows flew around me. My breathing hitched and my eyes grew heavy, each blink dragging on into an eternity.
My connection to the fire dissolved with my lack of clarity. And in that moment my eyes refused to open again.
Then I felt a touch.
The cold kiss of ice that wrapped around my body, lifting me from the bed. My neck lolled back and I was unable to lift it up. It was as if I watched from a deep cave in the darkness of my mind, unable to act or speak.
The world was upside-down now.
The room moved away from me.
“Be still.”
I wanted to breathe but my lungs hurt too much. The pain was terrible, yet in the same moment I couldn’t register it.
“You foolish boy.”
My chest heaved as I tasted my first gulp of fresh air. Air unspoiled by smoke or fire. It slid down my throat and stretched my lungs. I breathed, in and out, eyes still closed as though if I dared open them, I’d see my skin melting from my body. I feared this was a trick, my mind’s way of lulling me into a false sense of comfort whilst my mistake burned away at my skin.
“Wake.” I barely registered the growl, even though it was inches from my ear. “You come into my home, raise a hand against me. Now you will for it to burn.”
I cracked an eye open, only enough to see a face of woven moonlight hovering above me, nose close to the tip of my own.
Then I forced the other open only to see the points of sharp, white teeth before me.
* * *
I bolted up to sitting,aware of the way I melted into the bed I was in. The chill of air brushed against my bare chest, kept from my knowingly naked body by a thin sheet tucked around me. I half expected to see nothing but red. But there was no fire here. Nothing but the few candles that barely light the room I was now within.
That and the broad figure that blocks their light from reaching me.
He stood before me. The creature. Shadow cast across his cheekbones which hollowed out the features of his devilish face.
