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“They burned me!” she cried with her hand-covered face resting against her knees. Her chest heaved in heavy bursts while she struggled for breath. “I did nothing to deserve it!”

Rurik’s anger vanished as he watched her.

Her head shook side-to-side as a distressing sound escaped her, one that sounded like she was in agony.

“I have never hurt another being. As I saved you, I saved them. From death, from sickness, from themselves, and they still burned me.”

She is wounded.Wounded in a way no one could heal. Wounded on the inside where no kind of magic could touch.

Her hands moved from her face to hug her midsection as she rocked over her knees. She screamed out her sobs.

“I felt fire. I felt it eating me. I stared at the faces of the people who I cared for, and all they did was watch me squirm in pain with glee.”

Rurik thought she had moved past it.

She has been holding this in?

“I still smell it on my hair. I can feel every flame upon my skin, even now. I was in so much pain that I wanted to die. I held my legs up so I would, so I could escape it.”

She no longer smells of fire.He couldn’t smell the burning of flesh on her skin or hair, which meant it was a figment of her imagination, her trauma not allowing her to escape.

He didn’t know what to do with this woman crying on her knees. He didn’t know why she was releasing this in front of him, but he thought perhaps seeing his room of skulls had finally pushed her over the edge.

She has gone from betrayal and fire to imprisonment with a Witch killer.And he knew he hadn’t been truly welcoming to her. What he had mistaken as a hateful look was actually a look of deep sadness.

“All I feel is pain in my heart, and it will not goaway.” Her voice broke on the final word like she was losing her voice to her emotions.

With no idea what else to do or what she wanted from him right then, he tentatively moved his paw towards her. He felt for her because he couldn’t imagine how she must be feeling or how she must be hurting.

I would pity any Dragon who had their scales removed. The pain is the same.

“What did I do to deserve fire?”

Nothing. You did nothing to deserve what the humans did to you.Even he could see this.

With the back of one large forefinger, being careful of his claw, he brushed against the back of her knees and the top of her head.

She reached out and clung to it tightly.

“Please do not burn me,” she begged, her body heaving harder as her sobs seemed to worsen. “I do not want to feel fire again.”

She continued to cling to his scaled finger as though she needed something to hold.

I have brought a female who is now afraid of flames into a Dragon lair.Inside his chest, he now held the worst of her fears.

He pulled away from her, his own chest feeling heavy for her sorrow. Rurik, who usually only felt hate and anger, felt tribulation because of this woman weeping in front of him.

All Amalia could do was cry as everything she’d been trying to push away finally crashed over her and threatened to drown her.

She was riddled with pain, and her heart was filled with so much agony that her chest was so tight she could barely breathe. Her legs were hot, and she worried that any moment they would combust.

Her tears wouldn’t stop falling, even when she knew she distressed him enough that he pulled his paw away from her grip.

She held on, desperate to feelsomethingother than herself and what she was feeling. When he pulled too far, she held onto the cold ground beneath her as small droplets wetted the dirt.

Why me? Why did I have to suffer such a terrible fate?

“Why do I have to live with the memories?”