The sun beats down on Nox’s neck, browning it in areas that once were so pale, sallow.
Nox tries not to think of those times, of the years he spent pent up as the queen’s slave, her son and magister and executioner. He tries not to think of them, so I remember them on his behalf.
I feel as though someone needs to remember.
The little boy who had his childhood stolen from him deserves that much.
Nox turns and smiles at me, wiping dirt onto his pants and smudging the fabric.
His face is tanned, too.
There’s something about it that isn’t right.
Perhaps it’s that he typically wears a hat, but today he’s forgotten it indoors. I gently scold him, warning him he’ll catch sunburn again.
But that’s not right either.
The not-rightness of it all hovers in the air, warping the edges of my vision, of the scene before me.
It’s the way the road in the distance leads to nowhere, or the fact I don’t know where it leads, when we’ve lived here for years and that seems like something I should know. It’s the way Rose is sometimes Theo, and how she’s a bit younger than she should be, given the wrinkles creasing the backs of my hands.
It’s that we’re in Mystral, yet the day is sweltering with heat.
It’s the sun that beats down on Nox’s neck. On his face, his exposed arms.
“Blaise? Baby?”
Confusion wrinkles his brow, and by the time it hits me what’s wrong, I’m too late.
“Nox! You have to get insi—”
My husband bursts into flames. Fire licks up his exposed arms, eating at his flesh, at the lumps of fabric where he’s rolled up his sleeves.
I sprint for him, and the heat of the flames berates my cheeks, but I grab at his hand.
Nox doesn’t scream. He doesn’t move.
“Darling, you’re burning. You must get inside,” I plead, but his feet remain planted, even as the flames encroach on his shirt collar.
“I’ve missed the sun, Blaise. It doesn’t hurt,” he says, and his voice is so confident, so soothing, I’m tempted to believe him. But the smoke is filling my nostrils now, and his skin is beginning to peel back in dark, curling flakes, and I know if I don’t get him inside, he will die.
“Please, do it for me. We can see the sun another day,” I say, like I might to a child in need of coaxing, and when I look at Nox again, he’s no longer Nox but Theo.
My child is burning.
Horror slithers through me, and I don’t think, don’t breathe, before I’ve lifted my child into my arms and am running running running for the house.
“But Mama, I want to play,” Theo says, even as the flames lick through my shirt, burning my skin and sending a jolt of pain through me I can hardly feel, hardly pay attention to when my child is dying.
We reach the threshold, and I practically launch us through the door, throwing my body over Theo’s and rolling us both to smother the flame.
It works; the fire dies down, and when I peek open my eyes to witness the burn marks that have surely singed Theo’s face, it’s not Theo I find.
It’s Ellie.
She’s gasping, crying through her bared teeth, struggling to breathe. At first I think it must be the smoke from the flames, that she’s suffocating, but then…
But then I smell it.
The blood.
My vision goes clear and my attention snaps to her belly, where a sticky red substance soaks through her shirt.
“She stabbed me…” My friend gasps, but I can hardly hear her, not over the ringing in my ears.
“Who stabbed you?” I ask, but my voice is a mumbled whisper, an automated response.
“You.”
The single word draws my gaze away from the blood, but not my attention.
Its scent fills the air, saturating my senses with fresh rainwater and lavender and copper.
I am suddenly very hungry.
“You. You did this to me. It was you.”
Ellie’s perfect features contort in pain, but whether it’s from the wound or my betrayal, I cannot tell.
