Page 12 of Firebird (The Fire That Binds #1)

XI

JULIAN

I awoke well before dawn. My senses prickled again. Something had pulled me from a deep sleep. Pushing my bed curtains aside, I stood and looked around, listening.

A soft whimper on the other side of the house. Malina. I rushed through the dark corridors toward the slave quarters, knowing she was in distress.

Passing her room on the way to the end of the corridor, I pushed open the door that was ajar. She knelt beside the bed, her friend Enid’s hand clutched in her own. I could already smell the first whiff of decay .

By the oil lamp burning, I could see the tears streaking her face when she looked up.

“She’s dead.”

I held myself rigid and witnessed her agony. It wasn’t proper nor was it my place to comfort her. By all means, I was the one who’d killed her friend. It was my army who’d killed her entire clan.

She sniffed and stared at the dead woman. “She told me she was going to die. I just didn’t want to believe it.” Her chin quivered as another tear slid down her cheek. “She was the last person alive who loved me in this world. Now, I have no one.”

I shouldn’t, and yet there was no stopping me. I couldn’t stand there doing nothing and watch my fiery girl consumed with pain and grief.

Moving slowly, I closed the space between us and scooped her into my arms like a child.

“No, I can’t leave her.” She struggled.

“Shh.” I settled in the chair beside the bed, likely where Kara had sat tending to the sick woman.

Malina settled, her gaze turned toward the bed, her chest heaving with each sob. I pressed my chin to the crown of her head, holding her close in my lap, my entire soul engulfed with the small pleasure of it.

“Pluto will take care of her now,” I assured her.

“She doesn’t believe in your Roman gods,” she hissed tightly, body trembling. “Pluto does not wait for her.”

Even in grief, my firebird let her voice be heard.

“There are some who believe that it doesn’t matter whose gods you worship. There is an order to the world we cannot comprehend. To life and death. Pluto will grant passage into the underworld for those who deserve it, where her soul will find peace whether she believes or not.” I looked on the woman in the bed, who seemed peacefully asleep rather than dead. “For your kind friend, he’d take her in.”

Malina pushed out of my arms and to her feet. “One of your ph ilosopher’s beliefs?” She swiped the back of her hand roughly over her cheek. “It’s all nonsense.”

“Would it comfort you to believe she was granted passage to Pluto’s realm of peace?”

“Of course it would.”

I shrugged. “Then what could it hurt to believe?”

She turned to look at Enid. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I heard Ruskus say she’d be dumped in a mass pit outside the city where all the dead of the poor and enslaved must go.” She turned her head back to me. “She can’t go to any afterworld without the proper rites.”

“We could burn her in a pyre here if you like,” I offered calmly. “With whatever prayers and to whatever gods you’d like to send her on her way.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked, disbelief coloring her words.

“Do you want to? Because if you do, we’d need to do it now and quietly before the world awakens and wonders why there’s a plume of smoke coming from my back terrace.”

“Yes,” she rushed eagerly, “of course I do. But I need more time with her,” she begged.

“I can’t give you that. But I can give your friend a funeral pyre. We must do it before first light.”

She nodded, my brave girl. Then we both hastily wrapped Enid in the blanket on the bed together. When she grabbed an oil lamp to guide us into the corridor, I shook my head.

“We don’t need it. Just follow me.”

I could see clearly in the dark, and I didn’t want to wake anyone. Ruskus and Kara would ask, no doubt, when they saw the woman gone, but I wanted Malina to have time alone to say goodbye.

“We’ll need the lamp to set the pyre,” she protested.

“No, we won’t. Leave it.”

Frowning, she did as I said, then followed me. We walked briskly past the atrium and to the larger back terrace that I used to entertain politicians and soldiers whenever I had to and the platform I used to come and go in dragon form. Malina followed me in silence, the half-moon shining softly on the expanse of white marble.

“I have no dais to raise her up. The ashes will simply blow away,” I told her as I set Enid’s wrapped body near the balcony railing, which was made of slim columns of stone.

“It doesn’t matter. The Celts often buried their ashes from the pyre in their native land. But Enid wouldn’t want to be buried here.”

“Stand back,” I told her, gesturing with my hand for her to move to the side.

I waited until she was a safe distance, then I summoned the fire and let the dragon overtake me. I gritted my teeth as the sound of my cracking bones splintering and lengthening filled the air. Rather than giving the dragon full reign, I halted the transformation, allowing my wings, horns, and tail to sprout, my body bulking into the beast in half-skin. The mutation took only a moment, but the power electrifying my veins made me feel like another man entirely. I was, actually, though I was still sound of mind.

It always made me wonder why I was able to hold on to my humanity in this form when so many others could not. There were many who couldn’t even speak in half-skin, so overwhelmed by the creature they shared minds and bodies with. But I always could. Even as a gangly boy when I first shifted into this half-formed beast, I kept my reason.

Lashing my tail, I pulled away my ripped tunic that still dangled at my waist and threw it aside. Finally, I chanced a glance at Malina.

She’d remained in place rather than cowering farther away, and her expression wasn’t one of fear. It was more of wonder and curiosity. She actually took a step toward me, seeming to want a closer look.

I faced her, knowing my red scales shone beneath the pale moonlight and that my body in this form was impressive. Her eyes roved hungrily, which only made me stand straighter and spread my wings wider.

“Can you speak?” she asked.

“Of course,” I answered, noting that though my timbre rolled deeper, my pronunciation was clear.

“Why did you transform?”

“So that I could send Enid on her way.” When she only seemed more confused, I explained, “I can make fire in this form. And my fire will burn far hotter than the one from an oil lamp. We need to send her on quickly.”

She nodded, her gaze still devouring my appearance. I couldn’t help but notice that her expression was one of admiration.

“Step farther back, Malina.”

She did.

“Go on and start your prayers.”

She stared toward her friend’s wrapped corpse and began to mutter in Dacian, words I didn’t understand.

I stepped closer to the small bundle, then I inhaled a deep breath and poured out a stream of fire. The impact flicked a flap of the blanket open but I didn’t stop, blowing a continuous flame until she was entirely engulfed. As I knew would happen, the flames licked high, greedily consuming the dead woman.

The flames had barely been lit when the blanket, her clothes, and her flesh had all been burned away, her small skeleton charred and smoldering. I blew a softer flame down the length of her. Then I waited while Malina and I watched her bones, glowing with fire, finally dissolve into ash, orange embers carrying pieces of her away into the night.

Malina continued to whisper her prayers, her cheeks dry now while she seemed to pray with all her heart, holding her palms in front of her, facing up toward the heavens. When there was nothing but a long pile of smoking ash upon the terrace, I inhaled another deep breath but only blew out air to send what was left of Enid over the balcony .

Some ashes fell to the earth while the rest drifted away and upward on a draft. When I’d blown all of the evidence away, leaving behind only a smudge, I turned to her and commanded, “Go to sleep, Malina. I’ll be taking my morning meal in the city. You won’t need to tend to my needs.”

I hadn’t planned on leaving until noon to make my appointment in the forum, but she needed rest. And I couldn’t have her dragging into my room, carrying a tray, with circles under her eyes and grief plain on her face.

She let her hands fall to her sides, still staring past the balcony.

“Malina,” I said with a deeper rumble.

Her head snapped to me.

“Go to bed. Rest.”

She gulped, her expression still full of heartbreak, then she finally nodded. As she walked away, I heard her faint whisper, “Thank you.”

Her gratitude only slid the dagger deeper. I was the cause of her friend’s death. And so many, many more innocent lives. I didn’t deserve gratitude.

My mother’s lovely face flashed to mind. Then my father’s. I couldn’t bear to think how they’d look at me now if they’d seen all the destruction and death I had caused. A son they’d tried to teach better than following the ways of Rome.

I stared out at the city, where only a few lights glowed in windows, the city still asleep.

“It must end,” I hissed into the night. “It will end,” I swore. “Soon.”