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“I’m so sorry, Solin,” I whispered in Firenese, bowing my head in the dawn-lightening lupic. “I’m so sorry I left you trapped.”

Nothing answered. No chilly gust or heat-thick wind.

The fire continued blazing, the pop and sizzle sounding impatient.

Syn licked her lips, her intelligent gaze never leaving my face as I shifted on the furs and did my best to be strong.

Sharing a look with the lynx, I nodded and reached for the box of damaq root and the sharp stone blade.

My heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

No one had told me to complete the ritual that Pallen had made me do last time. I hadn’t bathed away the sweat from the journey. I wasn’t clean or painted in ash and tallow. I’d eaten no grounding mushroom and had no desire to poison myself with a root that carried enough toxin to be fatal.

Gritting my teeth, I placed the damaq root neatly back into its box and pressed the prettily patterned lid down tight. I hadn’t needed the root when I’d requested an audience with the flames for Darro by the river.

And I didn’t want to take it now.

Syn watched my every move. Her two tails flat on the grass-mat covered ground where she lay on her belly. Her front legs outstretched, and her claws unsheathed, digging into the mats as if holding onto the world she was familiar with, all while tasting one that didn’t belong.

Inhaling, I twisted to look at Solin, catatonic on his back. With trembling fingers, I reached out and linked my hand with his, ensuring our palms locked tight together, just like before.

He was warm and alive like any other mortal, yet stiff and unyielding as a carving.

The fire flickered in its never-burning fuel, dancing with eagerness.

An urgency filled the air, stifling the lupic with its searing welcome.

“Solin.” I squeezed his hand. “Please, Solin. It’s time to wake up.” I slipped into a string of sentences, rushing without thought. “I really need you to wake up, Solin. I’m lost. So many things have happened, and I don’t understand any of them. The fire made me Quelis, yet the river sings to me. I was able to sense every spirit in the grasslands tonight, yet now I feel empty and so terribly cold. I don’t know who I am, but you convinced Tral and Tiptu that you do. I need you to wake and tell me, Solin. Wake and tell me who I am, so I can avoid whatever monstrosities I’m supposed to commit. Please don’t make me step into another trance. The fire doesn’t want me to walk amongst its flames—”

“Lies.”

The fiery hiss whipped through the silence, the force of its heat lifting my hair.

I shuddered. “You can hear me?”

“We always hear. Everywhere.”

I narrowed my eyes at the fire. “If you hear all, then you tell me. Stop refusing and tell me who I am.”

Syn growled low, a threatening purr. She stood and padded around the lupic, her two tails lashing with annoyance. She could sense we were no longer alone but couldn’t understand it was an element not a mortal who conversed.

“Let Solin wake,” I demanded, my voice pure and cool in the ever-sharpening light. “Return the Fire Reader to his people and—”

A sinister laugh echoed around the lupic.

Syn snarled and swiped at the air with her claw-sharp paw.

I stiffened and tried to stand.

But it was too late.

I gasped as my body switched from real to myth.

The fire yanked my spirit from my mortal casing and wrapped me in its flaming embrace. I no longer sensed blood flowing or muscles twitching. I was no longer made up of bone and sinew but light and bright and heat.

I struggled but there was nothing to struggle against.

Just sameness.

We were one and the same.

Merged.

Through fire-flickering eyes, I looked back at the world that made sense and saw the body I’d grown to know as myself. My white hair danced with firelight. My sun-browned skin was dull and lifeless. The sunburst mark on my thigh, that hummed constantly now I was always in Darro’s presence, blazed a glowing crimson, bright as a ruby star.

I watched as the girl I believed was me folded backward, her head bouncing off thick furs, her hand still locked with Solin’s. The lynx yipped and flew to the girl’s side, nudging her lolling head and snarling at the fire’s magical aftertaste.

The flame-world blazed around me, manifesting into reality with a rich orange glow.

I tensed for its smoke and brimstone, preparing to walk upon hot coals, but then...something happened.

A tearing white light ripped through the solidifying existence.

My stomach fell into my toes as some entity snatched me tight and yanked me high.

Past sunrises and storms. Through rainbows and mist.

I spun and twisted.

I gulped and gasped.

And when I opened my eyes, the world was aflame once again.

But this time, there were no landmarks of the fire-world I’d grown to know. No burning trees. No smoking bushes. No cinder-glittering grass.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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