Page 12 of Burned Alive to Be His

JUDITH

F our days pass in a strange, suspended reality.

The terror has not gone, but it has settled, from a raging fire to a bed of hot coals in my gut.

It is a constant, familiar companion now, not a paralyzing force.

The clan leaves me alone. After my public humiliation of Phina, I have become something other than a victim.

I am a strange, unpredictable creature, a piece of grit in their perfectly oiled machine, and they seem content to watch me from a distance.

My body heals. The deep, aching soreness from Xvitar’s assault fades to a dull throb, and the cuts on my feet, protected by the crude shoes he made, begin to close. Strength, a thing I have not felt in a long time, slowly seeps back into my limbs. It is a strength born of his reluctant provisions.

Every morning, a young male leaves a waterskin and a bundle outside my cave.

Every evening, just as the sun bleeds across the horizon, Xvitar himself appears.

He never enters my cave again. He simply stands at the entrance, a towering silhouette against the dying light, and tosses in my meal.

It is always cooked now. Always accompanied by a piece of fruit or a handful of edible roots.

His face is always a mask of cold indifference, his words always a lash.

“Do not choke on it,” he’ll growl, before turning and stalking away. Or, “Eat. Your continued existence is a necessary inconvenience.”

His cruelty is the rock, but his actions are the water that slowly wears it away.

He is a walking contradiction, a puzzle I spend my waking hours trying to solve.

He is a monster who brings me food. A captor who gives me clothes.

A beast who could snap my spine with a flick of his wrist, but who has not laid a hand on me in violence since that first, brutal night.

This strange, fragile peace gives my mind room to breathe, and with breath comes memory.

It happens on the second day. I am sitting at the opening of my cave, tracing patterns in the black grit with a stick. My fingers idly sketch a spiral, a shape I have seen in the shells that wash ashore. And then, the world tilts.

The smell of sulfur and ash is replaced by the scent of old parchment, dust, and cloying, sweet incense.

The hot, dry air of the island becomes the cool, stale air of a windowless room.

I am back in Vhoig, in Lord Tarsus’s study.

I am on my hands and knees, polishing the dark wood floor, my movements small and silent, a ghost in his private domain.

He is drunk. He is always drunk in his study. He sits at his massive desk, a half-empty bottle of zhisk at his elbow, his fingers tracing the carvings on a heavy stone tablet.

“The Hearthkeeper…” he slurs to the empty room, his voice thick with a scholar’s obsession. “The Mother of Flame. They think she is all comfort and tradition. Fools. She was born of the planet’s core. She is fire and creation. Power.”

He leans forward, his eyes gleaming with a feverish light as he stares at the tablet. “It speaks of her sanctum. A fire-swept island, hidden by a glamour of steam and storm. A place where her first children, the true dragons, were forged…”

The memory shatters, and I am back in my cave, my heart hammering against my ribs, the stick frozen in my hand. The spiral I have drawn is not just a spiral. It is a stylized flame, coiling in on itself. A symbol I saw etched onto that very stone tablet.

The Hearthkeeper. A fire-swept island.

I look up at the smoking peak of Bloodstorm, at the landscape of black rock and shimmering heat. A cold dread, mingled with a strange, terrifying sense of purpose, trickles down my spine.

The flashbacks continue over the next two days, brief, jarring flashes of memory.

I see other artifacts from his collection: a tarnished silver amulet bearing the same coiled flame, a tattered scroll depicting a great, winged beast with horns like a crown, its scales the color of obsidian.

I hear his voice, a drunken litany of forgotten lore.

“The glamour will fall when the world’s magic shifts…

The sea will deliver the key… A trial of courage to prove the heart’s worth… ”

The words of Vorlag. The words of a drunken dark elf lord, half a world away. They are the same.

On the fourth day, I begin to see the symbols.

They are not obvious. They are weathered and ancient, carved into the rocks at the edges of the settlement, almost lost to time and erosion.

A coiled flame on the lintel of an abandoned cavern.

A stylized serpent devouring its own tail on a standing stone in the training circle.

They are the same symbols from Lord Tarsus’s study.

This island is old. It is a place of forgotten power.

And I, a human slave with a head full of a dead master’s drunken ramblings, am somehow connected to it.

The knowledge does not frighten me as much as it should. It is a weapon. And I will use it.

That evening, Xvitar arrives with my meal. He tosses the bundle into the cave as usual, his expression a familiar mask of bored contempt.

“Your rations,” he grunts.

“Thank you,” I say in a clear, steady voice.

He freezes, halfway through his turn to leave. He looks back at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. I have not spoken to him, not a single word, since the day of the trial.

“Do not thank me,” he snarls. “Gratitude is a weakness. You eat because I command it.”

“And you cook it because you command it?” I ask, my heart beginning to pound. This is a dangerous game, but the silence has become a cage of its own, and I am tired of being caged.

A muscle works in his jaw. “Raw meat is for predators. You are prey. Prey that is, for the moment, more useful to me alive than dead. Do not mistake my pragmatism for kindness.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, a strange, reckless courage bubbling up inside me. “Kindness is not a word I would ever associate with you.”

He takes a step toward me, eyes blazing with a sudden, hot fury. “Be careful, little human. Your tongue is sharper than your blade. And I broke your blade easily enough.”

“You did,” I agree, holding his gaze. “But you haven’t broken me.”

We stare at each other for a long, charged moment, the air crackling with a tension that is no longer just about fear and dominance. It is something else. Something new and volatile.

He is the first to look away. He gives a short, sharp growl of frustration and stalks away, his back a rigid wall of anger.

A small, shaky smile touches my lips. I have pushed, and he has retreated.

The next day, the banter continues. He brings me a piece of fruit I have not seen before, its skin a vibrant, fiery orange.

“What is this?” I ask, turning it over in my hands.

“A tizret fruit,” he grunts. “The thorns are sharp. Try not to poison yourself.”

“You’re worried about my health?” I ask, my voice laced with a faint, mocking surprise.

“I am worried about the inconvenience of having to find a new candidate for the trials,” he snarls. “Now eat it and be silent.”

But he watches me as I carefully peel the thorny skin away, his eyes tracking my every movement. And when I take a bite, the tangy, sweet flesh exploding on my tongue, I see that flicker in his eyes again. Not approval. Not amusement. Something else. Something I cannot name.

It is this new dynamic, this fragile, dangerous dance, that leads me to the cliff.

I have been growing bolder, my words testing the boundaries of his patience. I have come to a shocking, terrifying realization. He threatens, he snarls, he looms. But he does not strike. Not since that first night.

“You won’t hurt me,” I say to him that evening, the words a quiet statement of fact.

He has just delivered my meal, and he freezes at my words, his back to me. He turns slowly, his face becoming one of disbelief and pure, undiluted fury.

“What did you say?” he hisses, his voice a low, dangerous whisper.

“You won’t hurt me,” I repeat, my heart hammering but my voice steady. “You talk of breaking me, of my weakness, of my uses. But you will not cause me true harm. You will not allow me to be harmed.”

“You think I am soft?” he roars, the sound hitting me like a hammer.

He crosses the distance between us in two long strides and grabs my arm, his grip like a stone vise.

“You think I am like the weak, pathetic males of your kind? I am a dragon! I am fire and death! I could tear you limb from limb and feel nothing!”

He begins to drag me from the cave, his rage a palpable, terrifying force. “You want to see what I am capable of? You want to see how much I value your pathetic life?”

He drags me through the settlement, past the startled looks of his clan, up a steep, winding path I have not been on before.

The path leads to a high, windswept promontory, a sheer cliff that drops hundreds of feet to the churning, rock-strewn sea below.

The wind up here is a physical force, whipping my hair across my face, tearing at my clothes.

He drags me to the very edge, my toes just inches from the dizzying drop. The roar of the waves crashing against the rocks below is a deafening thunder.

He shoves me forward, his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look down. The world spins, a nauseating vortex of grey water and black rock. Fear, pure and absolute, claws at my throat, threatening to swallow me whole.

“Look down, human!” he roars over the wind. “Look at your death! One push. That is all it would take. One flick of my finger, and you would be a broken smear on the rocks below. No one would care. No one would even notice you were gone.”

He leans in, his breath hot against my ear. “Say I won’t do it. Say it again. I dare you.”

I am trembling, my body rigid with a terror so profound it is almost paralyzing. This is it. I have pushed him too far. His pride, his very nature, demands that he prove me wrong. My foolish, newfound courage has signed my death warrant.

But as I stand there, on the precipice of my own end, another thought, clear and sharp as a crystal, cuts through the fog of my fear.

He brought me clothes when I was cold. He brought me fruit when I was hungry. He made me shoes to protect my feet from the fire. He scraped the very scales from his own body to keep me safe.

He won’t let me die.

I take a deep, shuddering breath and force myself to turn my head, to look up at him. His face takes on a mask of savage fury, his eyes blazing in a wild, untamed fire. He is the monster I have always known him to be.

But I see something else in his eyes now. A flicker of something desperate. Something terrified. And the terror is not for himself.

“You won’t,” I whisper, my voice almost lost in the wind.

“What?” he roars.

“You won’t do it,” I say again, my voice stronger this time, imbued with a strange, impossible certainty. I hold his gaze, my own fear a distant echo. “You can’t.”

For a long, heart-stopping moment, the world hangs in the balance.

I see the war in his eyes, the battle between his pride and his instinct, between the monster he believes himself to be and the male who cooked meat for a human slave.

His hands tremble on my shoulders. The muscles in his jaw are knotted tight.

With a roar of pure, agonized frustration that seems to be torn from the very depths of his soul, he yanks me back from the edge. He shoves me to the ground, and I fall in a heap on the hard, windswept rock.

He stands over me, his chest heaving, his body trembling with a rage that has no outlet.

“You are still useful to me!” he bellows, his voice raw. “The trials are not complete! That is the only reason you still draw breath! Do not mistake my pragmatism for mercy! Do not ever think you know me!”

He turns and storms away, his powerful form a silhouette of rage against the dying sun. He does not look back.

I lie there on the cold stone, the wind drying the tears on my cheeks, and I watch him go. He is a monster. He is a killer. He is my captor.

But he refuses to let me die.

And in this brutal, fiery, hellish world, that is the closest thing to hope I have ever known. A small, dangerous, and utterly thrilling confidence begins to bloom in my chest. The game has changed again. And I am no longer just a pawn.