Their Fireheart

Chapter One

 - Part One -

Aelin

My knees throbbed as I knelt on the stone floor - the sharp pain grounding, my only defense against my hollow, aching soul.

I was lost, so lost -

That ember that had just barely begun to light within me was now snuffed out completely.

The shattered fractures of my soul had only just begun to meld, and now they were torn apart once more. I didn't think I'd ever be whole again.

Flashes of my conversation with Rowan played in my head, taunting me with their callousness - overlapping until they became a cruel, painful symphony.

There is nothing I can give you. Nothing I want to give you.

What will it take for you to understand that I don't care about you, about what you have been through in your life.

The sooner you can sort out your whining and self-pity, the sooner you can stop acting like a fucking coward, the sooner I can be rid of you.

You are nothing to me, and I do not care.

You are nothing to me.

You are nothing.

A broken laugh escaped me, even as a single tear tracked down my cheek. An all too-familiar numbness engulfed me, a lack of sight or sound or feeling that had me chilled to my very bones.

I'd been foolish. So, so foolish to think after everything I'd done, that someone could care about me. To presume that I had been anything to someone who only saw me as an unfortunate job for the queen who held his devotion.

I was a coward who had left her kingdom in ruins, whose friend had to resort to orchestrating her own death to force me into action. Even the most minuscule scrap of affection or regard was more than I deserved.

Rowan was right, I was nothing, deserved nothing.

The only worthy part of me was the power thrumming in my veins, the weapon I could be wielded as. The only thing tying me to this earth is the thin scar slicing through the palm of my hand.

My promise to Nehemia. To my friend. To the princess who hadn't abandoned her people, even in the face of her own demise.

The cut on my arm pulsed painfully, but my hand was steady as I dipped my finger into the wound and traced the wyrdmark on the ground, copying the symbols I'd memorized from The Walking Dead an age ago. They formed an archway - a door- and my blood gleamed in the moonlight that cascaded into the room.

The room I'd shared with Rowan. That he'd demanded we share after my scars, that painful piece of my past, had been revealed to him. Which I'd foolishly taken as some slim proof that he cared, if even a little.

But he didn't.

No one did.

Only one person had cared. And they weren't here, dead and gone because of me, had chosen death because of me, because of my cowardice.

Rowan was right, I was utterly worthless. If only he knew just how much I too wish I'd died in that icy river ten years ago.

I kept pressing into my wound to keep it from clotting as I carefully traced each mark. It had to be perfect - each symbol flawless if I wanted any chance of it working.

I drew another symbol, nearly finished with the archway. There was only one mark left to draw, the one that would bring me to the person I so desperately needed to see. I knew it was complex, a weave of loops and angles - the easiest to get wrong.

I'd refrained from attempting this again after that disastrous attempt in the bowels of the stone castle - all because of that mark, because of how easy it would be to get wrong.

But I had nothing left to lose anymore.

Sitting back on my heels, I surveyed the marks - making sure everything was perfect, tracing that last mark over and over again in my mind.

And I leaned forward, etching that last marking in blood onto the floor. Nehemia's name.

At that final loop, the symbols written in my lifeblood began to glow green, one after another. Each glowing mark tugged at my power, at my lifeforce. My throat burned, teeth ached as the unfamiliar magic pulled at the deep well of my own.

The stones within the borders darkened, darkened and then disappeared. The blackness filtered away, the faintest twinkling lights began spreading from the center of the marks - like the heart of the night sky.

It had worked. Holy gods it had actually worked.

The silver-flecked blackness reached for me, as if to pull me into its embrace. It seemed warm somehow, light and quietly joyous in a way I didn't understand.

If this was what waited for me when I died, if this was where Nehemia had ended up - it didn't seem so bad.

"Nehemia?" I whispered, voice raw and grating.

There was nothing. No response - nothing in that void beyond the twinkling specks of light.

I looked again at the marks I'd drawn, wracking my memory, but everything appeared correct. I edged forward, leaning closer towards that expanse of sky.

At the threshold of the marks, I paused, whispering into the endless night, "Nehemia?"

Balanced precariously on my knees at the border of the void, I was unprepared for the sudden gust of heat-licked wind that pushed me forward -

Pitching me into the shimmering obsidian -

I twisted, trying to find purchase on the stone floor of the room, but it was too late. And I watched as the window into that fortress room winked out, but not before -

Not before I saw a glimpse of a shimmering figure of dancing flames -

The figure raised their hand in farewell. And then -

I was falling.

Falling into that star-flecked sky.

Wind rushed past my ears as I spun in mid-air, desperate to gain my bearings as I continued to fall, slamming through the wind towards somewhere, something -

I fell past shining stars, catching the barest glimpse of snow-capped mountains before the bright lights of a city encapsulated my vision.

I was still falling when my eyes focused on my likely target, a sapphire river snaking through streets crowded with buildings, leading towards a vast expanse of water beyond the city's boundaries.

It's glassy surface likely hiding a powerful current that would sweep me out into that deeper, icier water -

And with the speed at which I was falling, that impact would be -

Devastating.

Even if I were in my fae form, which I was not - it likely meant my demise.

The irony wasn't lost on me, but perhaps it was always my fate for it to end this way. For my life to be taken by the source of the one drop of magic I had seen as my salvation.

Water.

My mother's magic. Gentle, kind, healing.

None of the destructive force of my fire, and yet it would be my downfall.

Even that gentle, revered magic knew I was too dangerous to live.

The river loomed ever closer, my descent picking up speed as I approached.

I chanced one last glance at the starry sky above me, sparing half a thought on the desperate dream of things that could have been. Things that would never be.

And then I smacked into the glassy surface of the river, the pain and force of the impact rattling my bones, roaring through my head in an agonizing wave.

My last thought as I sank below the water, succumbing to the beckoning darkness, was a simple one.

Finally, it's over.