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“The eight of us were at our own table, tucked away in a private corner,” he says. “The music was loud, the drinks were terrible, and I’m sitting there with a full sword harness under my jacket, thinking I might actually be having a good time despite all of it.”
“Were you?” I ask. “Having a good time?”
“I don’t remember.” He shrugs, and that shrug is somehow the weakest thing I’ve seen Kieran Cross ever do. “They brought out a big sign that said happy birthday on it, and there were all these sparklers attached to it. Liora decided the sparklers weren’t enough, so she added to them with her fire.”
I can picture it. A table in a dark nightclub, and a witch making the sparklers burn brighter, hotter, more beautiful than any human sparkler could. It’s something Oliver would do.
Except Oliver can’t do anything anymore, because he’s dead.
“The others joined in,” Kieran continues. “We were all showing off for each other, sending little flames dancing across the table and up toward the ceiling. Liora was shaping hers into butterflies. Someone else was making fire rings. One of my friends set his drink on fire and drank it while it was still burning, which was stupid and exactly the kind of thing you do when you’re twenty-two and think your magic makes you invincible. Any supernatural within a mile could have sensed what we were.”
My stomach drops. Because I have a terrible feeling about where this is going. Eight young witches broadcasting their magic like a signal flare in a dark room, drunk and careless, and I want to reach back through six years and tell them to stop.
“Then it all went out,” he says simply. “Every flame, every butterfly, every stupid burning drink. All of it was gone, like a switch being flipped. And in the dark, where our fire used to be, six vampires were standing in front of our table.”
“That was the night it happened,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “The vampire ambush. They had magic-dampening artifacts, and that was why your fire went out.”
That was the night every other witch there died but you.
His hand reaches for the hilt of his dagger again, but of course, it’s not there.
“We didn’t know magic-dampening artifacts existed,” he says. “The knowledge got lost to time, I guess.”
I bite back pointing out that knowledge is power, because reminders about the importance of history that can be found in books are the last thing he needs to hear right now.
“Liora was the most powerful fire witch I’d ever met,” he continues, and it’s like he’s somewhere else instead of here with me. “She could shape flames into weapons and fight with them as well as I fight with steel. But she couldn’t use her magic that night, she didn’t have any steel, and she was the first to die.”
He’s alarmingly calm as he talks, given that his thermal output is approaching dangerous levels. But his eyes are green and clear, his fists are at his sides, and he’s keeping it together the way he keeps everything together—through the iron will that’s held him upright since he was twenty-two and covered in blood in a nightclub where he was celebrating his birthday.
“It took less than a minute.” His pace slows to almost nothing. “From the moment the dampening hit to the moment I was the only one standing, it took less than a minute for six vampires to kill eight witches. Because without their magic, they were humans. Strong humans, fast humans, but still humans. Vampires are faster, and stronger, and they knew that without fire, a group of young, drunk witches was a group of prey.”
“You were drunk?” I ask, and I want to hit myself, because out of everything he just told me, that’s what I focused on?
“No,” he says sharply. “I had one glass of champagne, but that was all. And it was the last sip of alcohol I ever had.”
A thermal signature moves at the edge of my range, and I track it on instinct, but it fades back into the trees.
Kieran either doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t care. He’s just staring ahead as if he’s somewhere else, which is surprising, given that we’re unarmed in a forest that can kill us.
It’s like Kieran without his blades is Kieran without his language. He speaks in steel the way I speak in thermal data, and right now, he’s lost for words.
“Liora went down, and…” His thermal output spikes so hard I’m surprised he didn’t burn me again. “I stopped thinking. I only remember Liora falling, and then I was standing at our table with six dead vampires, seven dead friends, and a room full of humans who were oblivious that anything had happened at all.”
Of course they were. They always are. Most human brains can’t grapple with the existence of supernaturals, so in extreme instances like Kieran just described, they just… see other things instead. They could have thought everyone at that table was filming a movie, or that a bar fight got out of hand. The human brain is remarkably creative when it needs to explain a vampire massacre happening ten feet from the dance floor.
Without thinking, I reach for Kieran’s hand.
His fist uncurls under my fingers, and his palm is hotter than usual, his fingers closing around mine. We walk like that for a while, the silver path stretching ahead, the forest warm and alive around us.
I don’t ask about Liora. I don’t ask what she was to him, or if he loved her, or any of the questions that are lined up behind my teeth like data points waiting to be processed. Because he just told me that seven of his friends died at his birthday party while he stood two feet away with a full arsenal and couldn’t save them. The questions can wait.
For now, we walk.
The path curves ahead, the silver light brightens, and the forest opens into a stretch where the canopy is thinner. My magic scans on instinct, tracking ambient signatures, and everything is calm and warm.
Kieran stops walking.
I turn to face him, and his eyes are fixed on me in a way that makes every number in my head dissolve. Because his hand is still in mine, and his thermal output is running high, but the pattern has shifted. The grief concentration in his chest and shoulders is easing, and the heat is redistributing toward his face, his neck, and the hand that’s holding mine.
