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Nobody?
No!
I was both Ella and Ember, but also neither of them.
Swinging my head back and contacting the left guy’s face, he’d loosened his grip enough for me to pull free. Using him as a catapult to roll over the other guy’s chest and fling the first into the wall, a pile of burning hay fell onto him as he crashed into the wall.
The other guy fought. Snapping my wrist with insane efficiency, pain, and rage blinded me. I couldn’t give up.
I had to think. How could I get out of here?
I couldn’t be just Ella or just Ember. They both have weaknesses. I needed to accept myself. Accept that I was not just Ella or Ember, but both of them. Coming to terms with this made me feel empowered and nauseous. I would never get used to my sense of justice being so divided. I thought about my training as Ella. The hours I spent sparring with Quinn, all the protocols and knowledge on safety, and especially the anatomy of the human body.
Cracking his skull with the back of my head as the sparring had taught me, I kicked my feet off the wall, jumping behind him, the motion so fluid he didn’t catch it in time.
Truly, I had to accept both parts of me to make this work.
What would Ember do? Find a weak point and use it to my advantage.
Using the skills and mindset I’d learned as Ember, I focused up, and I could see a beam through the smoke. It was over the head of the man. I ran up his body and propelled myself off his abdomen to jump up and grab onto a beam, spinning his body into an open flame.
The fire from the hay was licking up the entirety of the floor now. The smoke was rising and making my lungs burn. I wouldn’t make it. I was going to burn alive, and if Lucius died out there without my help, I would let the flames claim me.
The soldier burned below me, and his screams were a promise of my soon-to-come fate as the flames licked higher into the air.
My arms burned.
My body singed with the heat.
My every muscle seized with pain.
No, I was not going out like this.
I forced my arms to pull my body up and crawl onto the top of the barn, crawling on my forearms and dragging my feet behind me. I couldn’t see a thing, afraid I’d slip any second and fall to my death.
But then, I felt the cool, smooth texture of glass. Angling myself, I took a deep breath and smashed my foot into the panel.
The blood dripped down my chest, skin, organs, and everything decorating the inside of a human body was plastered to me like glue. My father stood watching as his shiny toy was mauling all of his soldiers. I looked at the barn. My heart sank. Clouds of black were billowing from every crevice.
She was dead.
The man who took it all away from me had taken her, too.
Roaring to the sky, I slammed into my father.
His precision in fighting was so untouched that I felt like I was dancing and losing. My body was smashed and bashed and slammed onto the ground. Sweat poured from me, anger lacing my every cell.
“You killed her,” I screamed, trying to ram into him and roaring louder as he dodged me.
His soldiers were good. Their blows were all precise and strong, but my father was on another level. His blows were pinpointed with such precise points on my body, and the pain was so blinding that I felt bewitched by a curse.
“Love blinds a man,” he scoffed, twirling around as he dodged my wrath again.
“You loved Mother!”
He missed a step, allowing my fist to slam into his face.
Shaking off the blow, he straightened. “Love weakens a man.”
