* * *
Felicia had spent a day at what to her was simply "our place", getting reacquainted with her body, and experimenting with fire. She had lit branches like torches, she had boiled the river water until steam rose, she had spent minutes on end watching her dragon, and she had bathed herself in flames and danced around because it felt so ecstatic she never wanted to stop. Maybe it was an illusion, but she felt her power had intensified. Perhaps she was better at using it, or perhaps she was more herself now. Her mind was filled with things she wanted to try, things she thought it important to achieve. It was filled to the brim with plans and possibilities.
And her mind was inevitable also filled with him, with the ice magician and his mysterious ways. She had used the time on her hands to ask herself why she loved him, and come up with surprisingly many small and big things. She loved his intelligence, his hunger for knowledge. She loved the way he was always in control and filled with such confidence, and it didn’t matter that it bordered on arrogance sometimes and drove her up the walls. She loved that he knew and appreciated the real her, was special, and had high expectations.
Moments and snippets of conversation drifted into her conscience, ebbed and flowed like waves licking at the shore. Inevitably, her thoughts strayed to their last hours together, after the shocking revelation.
She would never forget that night, and how it changed everything between them. The secret out in the open, with its bitter aftertaste of betrayal, masked by the sweetness of having been told the truth, late but not never. His declaration of love, twisted and true, echoed by the emotions running amok inside her. The loaded air around them, keeping them close, but not allowing them to touch, held back by the confines of who they were. Felicia could hear inside her head the way his voice was drenched in meaning and rough as sandpaper when he whispered, “You are the most important part in my life.” She didn’t care that he hadn’t said “You are my life”, for honesty weighed more than romance, real feeling more than false promises. And she would have chosen the same words if she had made the statement.
He wasn’t her life, but he was what made her life worth living.
When she recalled how he had warned her that he was not used to company and commitment, and that he didn’t want to lull her with the fake sense of security of promising he’d never leave her, pain had mixed with pleasure, as it so often did when they were together. So what if he might grow sick and tired of her or scared of his own emotions and bolt, so what if they were so different they’d drift apart over time, so what if fire and ice couldn’t exist without trouble and danger and perpetual tug-o-war? She had been ready to take what she could and to make the most of it. And ready to accept the challenge of keeping him from running. If need be, she could be passionate for two, seeing how he was sensible for two.
Felicia had been willing to risk it all—and she was still willing.
She was in love with the one man who deserved it, and who she was almost sure loved her back.
The man who chose exactly this moment to walk to the river.
Her heart skipped a beat only to kick into a sprint as if racing toward an invisible finishing line. Uncharacteristically hesitant steps brought Joshua closer to the river’s edge where he stopped to stare blankly ahead. He wasn’t more than a few feet away from where she was hiding, wedged between a shrub and a tree trunk, most of her body covered by her flowing red locks. If he looked her way, his sharp eyes would have no problem of detecting her, blazing against the dark, solid shapes around her.
He didn’t look her way, though. He didn’t look anywhere, just lowered his head and let his gaze droop into the water below, rushing and rushing in mindless madness.
It was the first sign to tell her something was amiss.
Being anything but alert and energetic was so completely unlike the man she knew that her stomach tied itself into knots of worry. She was ready to bust her cover and run into his arms… arms hanging lifelessly by his sides.
She narrowed her glowing eyes and tilted her head, and fought hard to suppress a gasp when she found more signs that this scene was wrong.
Within a span of a couple of weeks, he had gone from slim to downright skinny. In fact, his tight black T-shirt outlined skin and bones more than flesh and muscle. His sand-colored jeans, which would normally have hugged a body honed to perfection, were sagging. His whitish hair looked disheveled, and his posture spoke of listlessness. When a bird flapped over their heads, the movement startled Joshua into lifting his head, and this time, the gasp couldn’t be suppressed.
His face was a mask of anything but listlessness. It was an artist’s study on suffering. His eyes whose icy blue should have shone in the night were lifeless and red-veined. His gaunt face looked sunken, with hollow cheeks and a mouth pressed into such a thin line it was hardly visible.
Had he been crying? Was he in pain?
She ached to reach out and smooth out the lines etched into his marble forehead as if a sculptor had taken hammer and chisel to it.
Half of her felt like crying because seeing him suffer meant she was suffering too. Another part of her thrilled in the fact that he was mourning her absence and probably yearning to be with her as much as she did. She shifted her weight onto her toes and was about to push herself up into a standing position when the air around her grew cold so unexpectedly it made her freeze. Before she could snap awake and turn her heat up, goose bumps had risen over her exposed skin. The air had grown so shockingly chilly in an instant that she could have been inside a freezer instead of in a forest during summer.
Motionless, her senses on edge and the dragon inside her shaking itself all over from the uncomfortable onslaught of wintry cold, she watched a bizarre spectacle unfold before her.
His body had switched from limp and beaten by suffering to rigid as a statue and tense as if ready to spring into action. Did she imagine it, or did he whisper a single word full of meaning and despair?
Goodbye.
He inhaled deeply and slowly, raising his arms, as she had watched him do it the magical night after their first encounter. When he breathed out, cold mist crawled out of his mouth and nostrils and ears, and seeped along until it had enveloped his body. Frozen in place like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck, she looked on as the coating of mist tightened until it was a layer of snow, only to harden and glisten like ice. It formed a hard shell around his contours, followed in rapid succession by a second and third layer of ice glistening like a forbidden invitation in the moonlight.
What was he doing?
While the temperature dropped and dropped, and the ground around him got covered in what reminded her of hoarfrost on winter mornings, the eerie mist never stopped pouring out of him. A fourth layer of ice got joined by a fifth one, and she found it increasingly difficult to make out his features underneath the solid, sparkling shield.
She felt panic rising, her heart beat on overdrive, and flames bursting forth from her hands without her command.
Was he going to turn himself into a giant, grotesque ice-version of an insect trapped in amber? Was it his life essence escaping in misty wisps of cold? Was he… was he dying? Killing himself?
With an incoherent shout, she launched herself out of her hiding place and bridged the short distance in a run, crashing into him. It was like running against a brick wall. With a thunk and a muffled yelp of pain, she fell back and rubbed her chest and chin.
Was there still something living and breathing behind the ever-growing layers of ice? In front of her stood a statue, rock-solid, unmovable, the barest hint of face and body shining through.
Oh God, no!
“No, no, no! You can’t do this to me! You can’t leave me! Joshua!”
She screamed and screamed, drumming her fists against the impenetrable shield that wouldn’t crack but made the skin on her knuckles and palms split.
Her dragon left her body with such force she was thrown to the ground a second time. Stumbling to her feet, t
ears streaming down her face and evaporating in the mix of dry heat and cold air around them, she watched as her dragon stilled itself in mid-air, inches away from the ice sculpture’s expressionless face. It opened its mouth wide, revealing razor-sharp teeth and a tongue of flame. With a whooshing sound, it breathed a stream of fire against the icy head.
This was it! She was so stupid, had let her emotions get the better of her. Wasn’t it logical to fight ice with fire, cold with heat? Hadn’t she impacted him before? With the image of her palms burned into the alabaster of his chest as motivation, she summoned every ounce of strength, and followed her dragon’s suit.
While it circled the figure’s head, continuously spitting flames from as close as it dared to get to the cold, she sent fire flying out from her hands until tongues of flames licked their hungry way across the iceman’s body. It was hard work, and she was vibrating with the effort of bracing the cold that tried to use her weakness to invade her. Flame after flame left her body and was flung at his immobile form, and after what felt like infinite minutes, no new ice layers were formed.
Gradually, the double onslaught of heat and fire made the surface melt. Soon, rivulets and veritable rivers of water were running down the figure. The frost on the ground had retreated, and she would have found it easier to breathe if she hadn’t been so absorbed in sending as much fire power his way as she dared, aiming for intense enough to melt, but not so fierce it would turn him from mummy in an ice block to living—or not so living—torch.
When there was only a dangerously thin layer of protection left, she sent a silent prayer for self-control upward, called all the flames back, and shot her dragon a thankful glance. It stared back at her, and its quiet, slanted, golden eyes with red irises spoke of strength and support. She swallowed hard and fixed her gaze on the man before her who was now clearly visible beneath a veneer of ice. His eyes were closed, and his face was a calm mask of rigidness, with polished cheekbones, as white as snow.
Swallowing again and taking a steadying breath, she lifted her hands and laid them cautiously against his chest. From inside, there was a tug of reaction. Was it because she had left her imprints on his skin and the little part of her connected to her essence, or was it his heart wanting to beat with hers?
Felicia bit her lip in concentration, and exerted pressure, increasing the heat inside her veins. Her hands, warm but not yet hot, trembled slightly on his icy chest. She kept them there, willing the warmth to do the work and break the last boundary, her eyes never leaving his face, her ears straining to pick up the thudding of a heart or the rush of breath. Neither sound reached her, nor did he open his eyes, but underneath her touch, ice turned to sleet, and ran down his body until her hands touched a wet T-shirt and met cold, not so hard resistance.
Was a heartbeat fluttering under her fingers, or were her fingers shaking with hope?
When nothing happened, she let her impulses take over, stood on tiptoes, and pressed a kiss onto the fine, taut line of his stony lips. Nothing yielded under her touch at first, not even after she parted her lips to breathe warm air onto his mouth. An instant later, two icy, hard arms snaked up and pressed her to his body in a vice-like grip. For a moment, he yielded to the kiss, but when she wanted to rejoice, he stepped back abruptly, and she felt desolate and bereft.
Wide eyes stared back at her lifelessly, opening with painful slowness to an expression of… of what? Suspicion mixed with tentative happiness? Hope mixed with despair?
When he spoke in a rough, dry, quiet voice, it tore at her heart strings, yet was the most beautiful thing she had heard in a long time.
“At least in death you and I are united. Though I am not sure I deserve such mercy.”
She felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes, and willed them back, her body shivering with the effort to control herself. His gaze was fixed on her in a stare as hungry as a starving man’s.
Her voice was more emotional than she would have liked it when she spoke to him, forcing each word out clearly to leave an impression.
“Joshua. Listen to me. You are not dead. Neither am I. You are alive, although you wanted to kill yourself. I was there. I saw you, and I saved you because I can’t and don’t want to live without you.”
Pain crossed his face, hitting her like a fist in the gut.
“No, this cannot be true. Why am I being lied to and enticed by this mirage in my afterlife? I guess I deserve it.”
With these disillusioned words, he sank to the ground and groaned before burying his head in his hands and heaving dry sobs like a small, forlorn boy. What had looked unbreakable had been broken. The ice magician was weeping, the last trace of detachment gone.
By the time Felicia had reached his side to embrace him, she was crying too, copious tears evaporating in her heat.
“Please, please listen to me. You didn’t die. I didn’t die either. Look at me, I’m alive. We’re in our place in the forest. Over there is my fire dragon. Don’t you feel human and alive? Don’t you feel me? Can’t you feel my love?”
She let her fingers slide into his hair and pulled his head up, her other hand lying over his beating heart. He looked at her, but she wasn’t sure that he could see her, or that he believed what he saw. Tears ran down his cheeks, hardening into glittering diamonds. She leant forward as if in trance, and licked them away, tiny drops of ice which melted instantly and tasted of clean, fresh water with a hint of mint, like she remembered his taste on her tongue.
A shiver went through her body, echoed by his. When she claimed his mouth in a searing kiss, trying to inject her message of truth into it, he responded with a moan. Their lips pressed and urged, their teeth nipped and dug until they drew blood, their tongues delved deep, both of them desperate to get beneath skin and beyond invisible boundaries to the other’s core. Her heat flared and made her glow until it grew so much that he broke the kiss and jerked away.
They stared at each other, breathing ragged, pulse racing, minds in a jumble.
“Is… is this real? Are you real?” he asked in a voice filled with wonder and not yet hope.
“Yes.”
She fought not let his nearness impact her, not to squirm under his gaze raking over her naked, shimmering body. For a moment, light filled his eyes, but the next moment it was gone, and another groan of suffering escaped him.
“But I saw you die. I was there three days ago in front of the court, hidden but ready to do something, anything. I had to watch you try to escape and being shot and bursting into flames in an explosion that would have been enough to destroy a row of buildings. My help came too late, because I was too foolish to cast aside my own preaching and go against the rules, too much of a damn coward to use my magic and risk discovery. I sent my ice to freeze the action, but you had already been struck by one of the bullets. Oh, how I regret that I couldn’t save you! I heard you scream, and I saw you burn. You… she… Felicia is dead. You are a dream come alive, a ghost sent to haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Joshua drew a shuddering breath and straightened somewhat, as if accepting his fate.
“What a much better punishment than dying, having to live with this unbearable pain.”
What could she do to make him understand? Why was he so ready to accept punishment? Because he had indeed betrayed her and regretted it? Because he thought he should have told her earlier, and given them a chance to leave it behind?
It wasn’t important. What was important now was to make him believe the truth, and to become one with him again. She was a survivor. She was a fire witch. She could do this.
Taking his hands, Felicia turned them palms up, leaned toward them and breathed out with full concentration, as if she were a dragon. A small ball of fire hovered an inch from his hands, and when she blew at it softly, it shaped itself into a heart, pulsing with heat and energy, growing by the second until it was casting its ruddy glow over them like a miniature sun.
“Do you think a ghost could do this?” she asked.
&n
bsp; He stared at the fire heart and at her, a glimmer of hope flickering in his eyes, ready to die again any moment.
Nothing was able to convince him.
She wracked her brain what to do, and grabbed at a solution that would be her last straw.
Looking him straight in the eyes, she told him what had happened after he had witnessed her go down in a flaming inferno.
Sailing over the scene and following the dragon. Pain worse than what anybody should ever have to go through. Coming to and fainting again and again, while she turned from spirit to a monstrosity with the singed remnants of a body to an adult-sized fetus covered by new skin. She shared her tale of being reborn.
When she was finished, her body was shaking uncontrollably with the memories of agony and anguish and horror, and with her struggle not to let it overcome her.
If she ever had to relive her terrifying metamorphosis again, she’d break into pieces.
It was too much.
She got up and stumbled several paces away on legs hardly supporting her. Leaning against a tree with her back to him, hands balled into fists, nails digging into her flesh, she fought for control. How on earth had she survived such pain when the mere memory of it was enough to make her go crazy?
A cold hand touched her shoulder gingerly, then pressed down hard until its grip was painful.
“Felicia.”
It wasn’t more than a choked-out whisper, but it carried the world’s meaning inside it.
Before she knew it, he had spun her around and enfolded her in a powerful hug, nearly squishing the breath out of her. They held each other, clinging like drowning people to their lifebuoy, feeling more alive in this one moment than they had ever felt before.
“It’s you. You have come back to me.”
He held her away at arm’s length, the first sparks of blue visible in his icy eyes, the first hint at his strength and confidence audible in his voice.
She nodded, and couldn’t help a foolish grin of pure happiness from stretching her lips.
“I’ve walked through hell to get to you, and now beware if you ever let me go.”
“I won’t,” he promised fiercely, his hold on her tightening.
“God, what you have been through… I don’t want to imagine it. Yet I know I’d have done the same if possible, if it had meant living to spend my time on earth with you.”
Her grin grew wider. She couldn’t fight it, she was just so overjoyed.
“I guess the saying 'a baptism by fire' has taken on a whole new meaning.”
A giggle was threatening to slip out.
His mouth mirrored hers in a grin bordering on madness more than on humor.
“Yeah. I guess that’s what happens if you are prone to playing with fire.”
Unexpectedly, they were both laughing, long and hard and with madness seeping in, until they were wheezing and close to crying. The next instant, he had her pinned against the tree while he ravaged her mouth with aggressive, needy kisses, pressing himself against her as if he wanted to make her his, and never be separated from her again.
God knew how they managed to get a grip on themselves, but eventually they did. They sat down at the foot of the tree, facing each other and holding hands, afraid they’d be torn apart again any moment. After long silence and another bout of longing kisses that made her acutely aware of her nakedness, Joshua—as she had fully expected him to—took the reins into his hands.
“What shall we do now? Fairview is a lunatic asylum these days. After the fire had burned itself out, which took hours because no attempt at extinguishing it worked, all hell broke loose once more because they couldn’t find your body. There was no evidence that somebody had been eaten up by the flames, no clothes, no ashes, no bone shards, nothing. Only a trail of blood leading to the area, scorched by heat so intense that the road’s tar had melted.”
He swallowed, keeping the memories at bay, probably like her anything but keen to put her finger into a wound that hadn’t yet healed.
“I ran away before anybody could catch a hold of me, hoping you’d escaped from the fire by some kind of magic. Never going back to my place, I wandered the streets at night and hid during daytime, waiting against reason for you to show up, heck, maybe riding your dragon to safety.”
Heaving a sigh and looking thoroughly forlorn, Joshua went on, “Some days later, the last hope had died. I tapped into several of my investigation resources to find out more. Everybody thought and thinks you’re dead, that some mysterious chemical you used to orchestrate your escape must have caused you to disintegrate in the blaze. The media is awash with sensational stories and ripe with rumors, and the arson case will be closed now because they see your escape as an admission to guilt. I hardly took these things in. I was a mess, functioning in auto mode, barely living.”
He swallowed hard again, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat and enticing her to press her lips, tongue and teeth against it.
“I had died with you, so I came here to end it.”
Joshua stopped and took a minute to collect himself, his face and voice reminding her more and more of the old Joshua before the tragedy, although he appeared more…human…to her.
“This is such a mad mess.”
Felicia nodded and leaned in for another kiss, as she couldn’t get enough of him and of the knowledge that they had won.
“What now?”
This was new, him asking her for advice and handing over some power. She liked it. It would be interesting to see what other changes their suffering had caused.
“Well, for starters, I’m tired of walking around without clothes. You with your experience at being a snooping, sneaky private investigator shouldn’t find it too hard to get me something to wear… and I haven’t eaten anything for days, although I don’t feel the need to yet.”
Her attempt at keeping things light was rewarded with one of his sexy half-grins that made the flames flutter in her belly. His gaze roved over her curves, and turned the flutter into a veritable blaze.
“I haven’t tired of seeing you in your splendor yet. The clothes can wait.”
His silky voice sent a delicious shiver down her spine.
“So, what now?” she mimicked his question, eyes sparkling and skin glowing radiantly.
“I guess you have a plan?” he asked, and cocked an eyebrow at her while one of his cold hands painted a trail of goose bumps onto her thigh.
Again, Felicia nodded, filled with quiet pride. Despite everything that had happened, she had taken the time to think, and was filled with determination.
“You need to throw your weight around without arising suspicion, and organize a trip out of town and out country. We’ll need fake passports and travelling documents.”
Pride was visible on his face too.
“And where does my fire witch think we should travel?”
Smiling her brightest smile at him, she stilled his hand before she’d lose her ability to concentrate.
“Iceland.”
His second brow joined the first.
“Are you serious? Why all the cold, vastness and desolate darkness?”
“It’s full of nature and mysteries and volcanos and endless nights and polar lights. I’ll have room to experiment with my powers. The fire slumbering beneath the earth sounds like a fascinating challenge. Nobody will give a damn about us, and you will enjoy the never-ending winters. It’s associated with legends and dragons and mystery, as is all of Scandinavia, and I want to research those things. Besides, it isn’t called the ‘Land of Fire and Ice’ for nothing.”
Joshua squeezed her thigh, and planted another toe-curling kiss on her mouth.
“Iceland it will be, my immortal fire witch.”
While eager fingers danced and explored and rediscovered, hot smoke and cold mist rose into the night, and two voices whispered of hope.
Eternal flames and perpetual ice.
Nothing and no one would be able to stop them.
THE
END
Book 2 and Book 3 will be published next month. You can find teasers on my website and Facebook page.
Read on for the first chapters of “Dancing with Fire”.
Dancing with Fire
FIRE Trilogy, Book 2
by
Devika Fernando
Copyright © 2015 Devika Fernando
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
Chapter 1