* * *
Felicia straightened up and tore her eyes away from the wall. She glanced down at her hands, the palms full of tiny welts and indents where her nails had dug in over the past days. After being led into her cell, she hadn’t once awakened her fire power, afraid that as soon as she acknowledged it, she wouldn’t be able to channel it and use it to get out. Without looking inside, she knew her dragon was suffering. As was she, silently and stoically, preparing to draw strength from the pain.
Today was the day.
Yesterday, her lawyer—more patient than she deserved it, though less dedicated than would benefit her case—had announced her court hearing was due. He had pleaded with her not to remain silent as she did whenever anybody tried to extricate information. She had nodded, bestowed him with her politest smile, and made up her mind.
Now all she wanted was for the last hours and minutes to pass by as fast as possible. Would she see Joshua at the court hearing? He hadn’t come to visit her, though she didn’t know whether he could or should, given his dangerous double role in the twisted story. Had he visited, what would she have said or done? In the end, it was better this way.
Nothing mattered.
Everything mattered.
She mattered.
Fire mattered.
Love mattered… or did it?
Boot soles on polished concrete floor. Jangling keys, muttering voices, a series of clicks, and the protest of metal not oiled in a long time. Her heart beating in her throat, Felicia turned to the door and composed her face into what she hoped was an innocent yet determined mask of calm. For a second, her thoughts strayed to Joshua, who had mastered the skill of presenting a façade instead of reality to perfection. With a deep breath, she asked her thoughts to stop straying, her pulse to stop hammering, and her dragon to stop stomping its clawed feet and snorting smoke.
Her time had come.
Things happened in a blur. The handcuffs whose icy coolness of steel bit into her skin in a way cold, hard hands had never felt. The guarded walk along endless corridors hardly broad enough for three people strutting side by side in grim silence. The ride to court, taking forever, but leaving no impression on her whatsoever.
As suddenly as it had snuck in, the blurriness sped off. Felicia came to her senses on the sidewalk, half-way between the vehicle and the court, a towering mass of sandstone, columns and Latin inscriptions, a bigger threat than the squat rectangle of the sealed-away prison had felt.
Now.
Whose voice was whispering inside her? It didn’t matter.
She collected her strength and focused. Gritting her teeth, she let her heat spring to life and blossom out from under her skin. A hiss and sudden movement, and two hands resting on her arms were lifted off as if the policemen had burned themselves. The tiny satisfaction derived from this urged her on.
Within a split second, she had concentrated the heat where it was needed most, dimly aware of shocked screams and worried whispers when her body lit up with her inner light and her hair glowed like a cluster of flames. Barely suppressing a groan of effort, she increased the heat until the policemen surrounding her backed off warily, guns at the ready and eyes so wide they were close to falling out of their heads. With a hissing sound, the handcuffs melted away, leaving behind nothing but sticky, shiny goo which she itched to rub off.
“Now!”
This time, she was shouting.
The dragon soared out and up.
All hell broke loose.
Surrounded by a cacophony of sharp, threatening sounds and movement that was at once incredibly fast but played out before her eyes in film-like slow motion, Felicia bolted.
While her feet pounded along the pavement, she was aware of the people following her being attacked by her dragon spitting flames in all directions. She heard screams of shock and pain, but she fought to separate herself from what happened to others, however innocent they might be.
This was about her.
She didn’t know where to run, only that running was the right thing to do. Shielding herself behind heat and flames trickling across her skin and licking at whatever and whoever came close, she ran blindly as fast as her legs would carry her, away from the mayhem. Above her head, circling like a furious beast about to strike and tear somebody’s head off, her dragon shot along, bigger and bolder and more beautiful than she could have imagined it.
There was a snapping sound followed by a series of staccato bursts of heat that made her tremble while running.
Gun shots.
Felicia tried hard to focus, her mind awash with the challenge of escaping. Silently commanding her dragon, she raced along the street to wherever it would lead her, sensing that vehicles had been kicked into life to catch up with the dangerous fugitive.
Her dragon wheeled around in mid-air and released a great whoosh of flames which leapt out and away to attack whoever wanted them caught. No time to fret whether people would be injured. No time to think.
No time.
Just when she wanted to whoop with power and relief because it was exhilarating to have come this far and still be running toward freedom, pain hit her with such force that she couldn’t even cry out.
She had been shot.
Her legs carried her along on their own broken will while her left hand jerked up to cradle the hole of searing pain, burning brighter in her side than any fire could.
Agony. With a sound between a wail and a sob, she fell to her knees, clutching her bleeding wound, words tumbling through her head.
Wounded. Bullet. Blood. Kidney. Stomach. Liver. Lung. Pain. Death. Capture.
It was a nightmare.
The pain was the only thing she could feel now. She was out of control, didn’t know where she was, where her dragon was, where her followers were. The pain influenced her in a way she couldn’t explain, warring with the fire inside her.
Would it win? Would they win?
Everything became blurry, sound, sight, feeling—everything apart from the pain. The pain grew and grew until it exploded, in the literal sense, in a mushrooming cloud of fire as if she were a human bomb.
Chapter 18