The Fire That Would Not Die
The pits of Ashmere breathed like something alive, exhaling sulfur and heat through cracks in the black stone, and Arin stood at their center with her fists already burning.
Not literally—not yet—but she could feel the fire crouched beneath her skin, coiled and hungry, waiting for the moment she stopped holding it back. She had come here before dawn, when the training grounds were empty save for the wind moaning through the volcanic rifts, because she could not bear to practice with an audience anymore. Not since Old Ren.
She closed her eyes and saw him again: his silver beard singed at the edges, his hands raised not in defense but in that maddening, gentle way he had of trying to calm her, as if fire were a spooked horse rather than a living thing that answered to grief and fury both. She saw the moment her control had shattered, the flame leaping from her palms in a wave she could not call back, and she saw—she always saw—the look on his face in the half-second before the world turned to light and roaring heat. Not fear. Sorrow. As though he'd known, somehow, that this was how it would end, and had already forgiven her before the flames even touched him.
"Enough," she…
