Page 171 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Please,” my father croaked out, hoarse from begging them to release her.

Or what I assumed he had pleaded. His voice had been too faint to reach me, and the sole sign he had spoken had been his head turning to my mother and then the boom of the commander’s laugh, the sound as cold as frostbite.

The spindly branch swept in a vicious arch again.

Crack.

“Extendyour arm above the fire and hold it there,” I ordered, paying no heed to the gunshot wound throbbing under my right collarbone, the tissue held up by numerous stitches.

Physical pain was nothing compared to having witnessed your parents be tortured and then abandoned to the assault of nature’s force. Their lives had faded away in tandem with the sun rising to the zenith and the summer heat reaching its highest point.

Zion stumbled back, the shock on his face deepened by the night’s gloom. “What? It’s going to burn me.” His head swiveled to Conall and Damia, both standing at the front of the crowd gathered around the funeral blaze.

Damia stepped forward. “Gedeon?—”

I held my hand up. “No.” I had lost everything: my family, my old life, my feelings. The tether of human connection had been severed, and a void occupied my rib cage. Forty-two people had died because of Zion’s reckless race to save his sister. I had gotten shot and would bear a circular scar on my shoulder because I had rushed to the city to bring him back. Because I could not go on without him. “It’s going to leave a reminder.”

Zion’s throat bobbed. A breeze tousled his hair and the chill ticking my nape burrowed deep inside me at the gradual hardening of his jaw.

He lifted his chin up and swiftly, rushing before the self-preservation instincts kicked in, raised his arm above the funeral flames. Their tips licked his flesh, searing the outer layer of his skin, its sandy shade reddening. The crackle of firewood mixed with his muffled scream as he slapped a hand over his mouth. His usually blue, now glistening in the darkness, eyes remained firmly focused on me as he bent to my will.

The cloying stench of charring meat invaded my nostrils, curling the tiny hairs inside, and the odor of a person burning alive singed its notes into my memory.

“Enough,” I said, my voice icy calm, all emotion having been incinerated.

He and I stared at his shaking arm, scorched beyond scarless recovery. Shades of crimson colored his forearm—an imprint of the fire.

The funeral wood crackled.

A flame shot uphigh in the sky and heat blasted my face from the sudden burst. It brought me back to where we sat around the bonfire, where tiny rocks prodded our legs folded underneath us, where wind howled and attacked us in brutal gusts of freezing air.

Kali picked up the pencil, and a drop soaked the top corner of her sheet. Shortly, the brothers and sisters of her first tear joined it, and she shivered.

A claw slashed at my chest. It had been years since I experienced true pain, but the last months ticking by had crumbled the walls of the hollowness inside me.

“Pretty birdie,” Zion murmured, rubbing her back.

She sniffled. “I’m okay. It’s just…” She watched the bouncing flames, their reflections morphing into warring forms on everyone’s clothing. “I don’t know what to write.”

I squeezed her thigh. “What do you need?”

“Forgiveness,” she whispered.

Heaviness enshrouded me like a cloak. I knew the cost of your actions too well. It had been dragging me into the depths of a bottomless pit for years.

“Only you can give it to yourself,” Zion said quietly, his gaze set on me, his ocean-blue eyes glowing in the firelight. “She forgave you years ago. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have stood by your side all this time.”

Yellow and orange hues danced on the burn scars on his inner forearm, and I mouthed what I had not believed I was capable of, “I’m sorry.”

Kali had once said I was a fucking idiot. I truly was. My mistakes had wrecked Zion when he was already in ruin, and yet I had refused to take responsibility for my actions, instead pushing him away and taking too long to admit it.

An idiot. I was a fucking idiot.

Zion nodded in response, a small smile softening his high cheekbones.

Gradually, that stone-heavy cloak choking me dissolved, incinerated by the fire before us. I welcomed the scorching heat. Better than the cold.

“May your soul sail the stars,” Ava said, observing the flames devouring the letter she had scribbled.