Page 19

A FLICKERING FLAME IN THE DARKEST OF DARKS

Severath

S everath paced. Sitting was impossible, and the kitchen was already scrubbed twice over, so there was little else to do but walk and worry.

His eye darted up the darkened staircase with every pass, but of course there wasn’t movement, he only hoped there would be. And that hope was ludicrous at best.

What an idiot he had been to touch her. An absolute fool.

Ember had been given every opportunity, two knives and an utterly distracted guard, but he remained ungutted—physically, at least—so perhaps he was even more foolish for everything else, chucked vegetables included.

The tray of food he’d left outside her door was gone, the smallest of reprieves.

Hopefully she had eaten, and hopefully it tasted all right since he had finished without her instruction.

His stomach remained unsettled, and his mind was even worse.

Sitting alone at the table for the first time since she’d arrived hadn’t helped, each moment she didn’t join him eating away at his hunger until there was none.

But that was a second problem. He’d gotten far too used to her peripheral companionship in such a short time.

No demon had ever spoken to him— really spoken to him—the way she did.

Yes, her words were often cold, but they carried the chill of a window opened for the first time after winter’s last frost. Perhaps a shock, but a welcome one—needed even.

Her quiet footsteps filled the silence of his home in a comforting way he hadn’t imagined possible, but did her presence only blind him to the truth of her?

Or worse, the truth of himself? He’d lost an eye for fuck’s sake, and a horn besides—was it all that absurd to think his perception was just as off, especially after so many years alone?

A noise overhead made Severath turn too quickly and knock into the wall.

He swore under his breath, tail next to unwittingly connect with a chair as he strode to the foot of the stairs.

In the darkness above, there was nothing.

He stood still and listened, peering into the lantern-less upper hall.

Hours had passed, and he’d let the house fall almost as dark as the night beyond the walls.

His imagination—it had to be—toying with him, making him think she’d called his name. But why in blazes would she do that? He’d been the one to make her run away .

Severath took to the stairs, head hanging as he dragged himself up one guilty step after another. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew, but he would make a valiant, soldierly attempt. That was all he was good for anyway.

Then a whimper broke the cold quiet of the house, and he was on the landing in seconds. He pressed a hand and ear to Ember’s door, heartbeat flying madly but not so deafening that he couldn’t hear her cry out.

Severath threw open the chamber, but Ember lay there alone and unharmed, only tangled in her bed linens.

She continued to make strange sounds in her sleep until the noises finally aligned in his mind to the ones he’d heard years ago when he lived in the barracks.

Almost every scout had night terrors at some point, and the bigger the scout, the more dangerous their sleep flailing surrounded by weapons could be.

But Ember was no hulking guard, and her next thrash only knocked a book off the edge of the bed. “Don’t touch her,” she mumbled with a rawness to her dream-weary voice.

The trick he’d learned after many lashing tails and horns to the face was not to wake them suddenly, which only worsened the horror, but instead to call them back through their dreams to peaceful sleep.

Yet the urge to shake Ember free of the nightmare burned under his skin as he approached the bed.

Don’t be hasty , he told himself as he descended to his knees. Control yourself for once .

“Let me go,” she pleaded, eyes closed as she tugged at an arm constricted by linens.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, slipping the blanket out from under her elbow.

She panted, head rocking as if telling him no, nothing was all right, and it never would be.

“They can’t hurt you.” The dreams, when scouts could recall them, were always of being chased, caught, tortured, inspired by Dreadmoor beasts or something baser they refused to discuss.

But they always had a reason. Whatever she imagined gripped her, it was really just fear, and fear was all the same in the darkness of the night. “You are safe.”

Ember screamed and then sucked in a shaking breath as she rolled away, her whole body trembling.

Rarely did words alone work on the guards. The mind didn’t always understand, and Severath had trouble with conjuring a soft enough tone anyway. He flexed his fingers and reached out to her back. “Ember?”

She mumbled painfully into the pillow.

“Can you hear me?”

“Severath?” she croaked.

“I’m here.”

Her next breath lifted her back so that his fingertips grazed her. “Please.” She shook under another ragged breath. “Don’t let them…”

He pressed his palm fully to her sweat-drenched tunic. “I won’t,” he said, leaning closer so he could see her face. “No one will hurt you in this house.”

She fell still, the terror and anger twisted up in her features ironing themselves away. Her next breath was fuller, slower, and she sighed out something like relief. Wherever she had been in the dream, she had found a sanctuary.

He didn’t dare touch her face again to move the hair that had fallen into it, but her neck was uncovered, and the brand caught the dull light of the stars beyond the window.

It must have been so painful, having flaming metal pressed to her skin.

She wouldn’t have remained still for it, wouldn’t have taken it willingly, and wouldn’t have been offered any comfort after.

He looked to his own hand and imagined the fire beneath his skin, but also watched the way it rose and fell with Ember’s calm breaths.

Both the fear she would wake and the greed to remain connected urged him to leave it there, but he reluctantly let her go.

On the floor at his knees lay the book he’d lent her.

He retrieved The Sisters Brim , quietly shifting to lean against the bed as he sat fully on the floor.

Sometimes terrors returned, and if they did, he would fend them off again much like Vorgomesh the Great and Hairy scared away beasts from the lost children in the Dreadmoor in one of the sister’s tales.

Severath may not have been as hairy and he definitely wasn’t as great, but he would do what he could as many times as was required.

Though the light was scant through the window over the bed, the sight he had left was enough to make out the words.

“Once upon a time in a pit of fire and brimstone,” he read in his softest voice, “there lived a demon so small his horns were still nubs and his tail could not yet lift more than a pebble.”

In the margins were the words, “This one’s my favorite when you do the voice,” scrawled in Lazerath’s handwriting.

Severath grinned and continued to read aloud, punctuated only by the gentle sound of Ember’s breath.

When he reached the middle of the second story in the demontale collection, he felt a shifting on the bed and waited until he was sure no more screaming would come, then continued on.

By the story’s end, a yawn caught him, and in the silence, Ember stirred.

The touch on the back of his head was hesitant, but he didn’t flinch, expecting it when the air in the chamber changed.

Apparently his warrior senses hadn’t completely abandoned him nor his instincts, knowing she wouldn’t attack.

Ember’s fingers nestled into his hair and slid upward to the base of his cracked horn.

For the briefest moment, the constant headache he’d been enduring receded, but then she pulled away, and it was all he could do to keep from begging her to remain connected.

“You’re really here,” she said, breathy and close. “I thought I just dreamed it.”

“You were having a nightmare.” He turned slightly but didn’t peer past his shoulder.

She swallowed in the darkness. “That happens every few months. I’m sorry I woke you.”

He shook his head and then turned fully. “Was it…was it me?”

“Hmm?” She was wearing the infirmary tunic again, and it fell off the shoulder she leaned against the headboard as she sat up.

“The one who was hurting you in your dream?” The words felt like glass in his throat, but then they came quicker because they would have to be if they would be spoken at all.

“You said my name, and I know I frightened you in the kitchen, but I swear, Ember, I didn’t mean to. My duty is to protect, not to?—”

“No, no, it wasn’t you. Not until the end, but you were just…there.”

“I shouldn’t have grabbed your hand, and I definitely shouldn’t have touched your face. I will let the council know in my next report, and if they see fit to remove you?—”

“No!” The whites of her eyes flashed in the dark, chasing away any sleepiness. “Don’t make me leave.”

He was thrown, more apologies and amends caught in his throat. Hadn’t she been begging to be free of him since they met? “I would not make you,” he said carefully. “It would be up to the council.”

“Well, tell the council I don’t want to leave.” Her fingers flexed into the linens. “I’m just not good at things like…like physical contact. I think I want to be better at it, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

Severath wasn’t sure one was meant to do anything, but he’d never really thought much about it. Few people dared to touch him, even when he wouldn’t have minded. “At the very least, I should have asked. If I had treated your wound appropriately, you wouldn’t have been in such a state.”

“It was the blood.” Her gaze fell between them and bore into the blankets as if she were staring at the crimson splotches on the kitchen linen again. “It reminded me of when I killed him. When I killed Sulien.”