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He squeezed me.
I felt it.
Not the pressure of his touch but the burst of heat of his support.
It gave me comfort, and my next breath wasn’t such a struggle.
The fire hissed and crackled.
Words travelled on embers and eddied with cinders, sharing messages I was too slow to understand. But Solin caught them. He smiled with flame-tinged lips and nodded with fire-licking at his neck. “The heart of Quelis welcomes you, Girl.”
I started with surprise.
That word.
Quelis.
I knew that word.
Not because Solin and Niya had mentioned it before, but because it belonged to the language I spoke with him. The stranger. The guttural, lyrical tongue that came from my heart not my head.
It meant fire.
And not just the fire that cooked our food and warmed our lupics.
Fire within us. Fire of our spirit. Fire of the everlasting.
I gasped as the words for the other three realms poured through me.
I’d been too slow in my mortal form to see.
Too blind to their true meaning.
Lokath, the word for earth. Not just the earth we travelled and aged on, but the very essence of our creation, the marrow of our bones, and the true substance of life.
Rivoza, the word for air. Not just the air we breathed and took for granted but the very aura of our spirit. The unseen power that could travel ions, hear all, and summon winds to protect or destroy.
And Vetak, the word for water. Not just the water we drank and swam in but the crux of our lifeblood. The crucial liquid in everything, the very nucleus of intelligence and existence.
All four of those words originated in the tongue I used with the stranger.
But there’s another...
Another word that suddenly hummed in my heart as if the fire had gifted it to me.
Semetzi.
The fifth element of life and universe.
Semetzi, the word for ether and spirit. The singular power that granted animation, willpower, and sentience to every breathing creature. A power that could be harnessed, controlled, and honed. A power that could never die.
Solin scowled, his brow smouldering with coal. “Let’s walk deeper into the flames and see what messages it grants us.”
He didn’t give me time to argue, pulling me into a walk.
The paste Meko had spread on my feet sizzled and melted off my fiery skin as I slipped into pace with Solin. The fire bristled and burned as we walked through its glow, but it didn’t speak again.
It watched.
It waited.
I felt it.
Felt the heat of its judgement; the lick of its tongue as it tasted the depth of my spirit.
Solin kept his hand tight around me, pulling me through a meadow of blazing fire-flowers. They erupted into dust as we stepped through them.
We kept walking.
How far, I didn’t know.
The fire remained silent and assessing.
The deeper into its brimstone world we travelled, the less and less I remembered where we’d come from. I lost the urge to return, lulled by the brightness, the noise, and the endless hiss and smoke.
I liked the warmth after being so cold. I liked the blinding power when I’d been so powerless and alone. I wasn’t alone now. I was fire itself. Flames consumed my arms and legs, pouring down my back and nipping at my heels, watching...always watching.
Listening.
I was content here.
I belonged here.
I was happy here.
A soft, fiery chuckle sounded in my mind.
I opened myself to speaking without words. “You laugh at me?”
The fire blazed around us. “Merely intrigued that you find yourself so at home here when you don’t remember where home is.”
“Do you know where my home is?”
The fire dragged sizzling fingers through my burning hair. “Perhaps.”
“Will you tell me?”
“To tell you would be to destroy you.”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“You forgot for a reason. That reason is greater than your desire to know. We refuse.”
I arched my chin.
I hadn’t realised how much I’d believed Solin’s assurances that this trance would free my history and give me back myself. But to be told no? It fisted my heart with pain. To be told I was the cause of my forgetfulness? It made the caverns within me widen.
“What did the fire say to you?” Solin asked gently. “You look sad.”
I met his eyes with my shoulders braced. “I’m not permitted to know who I am.”
Solin snapped straight, fire crackling up his legs as we continued to walk. “Why?”
I bit my ember-glowing lip.
I didn’t want to tell him what the fire had hissed: that to remember was to destroy me. Why? Why would it destroy me to give me back what was already mine?
I only wanted peace and happiness.
A family.
A home.
Him.
My knees locked as I pictured the stranger.
His image unfolded in my mind as clearly as if he stood before me. His earthen skin that bordered on grey with shadows that seemed to whisper around his bones—
“Him...” the fire snarled in my head, hot and lashing. “You must not think of him. You must not touch him.”
