The Blaze Ignites

by Nichelle Rae

  A thought came to me and I ran faster. Run. Run. Run! Run away so fast, you can run away from her and separate yourself. She can exist and save them and you can go home. Run! Run! Run!

  I ran for a long, long time, as fast as I possibly could. The walls and décor were a blur. I could barely feel the carpet and stone under my feet. I just ran. I screamed at myself to go faster. Run away from her. Separate yourself! Run!

  Over an hour went by, and finally I couldn’t run anymore. I was still stuck here like this, two people in one mind. I hadn’t outrun her like I’d foolishly hoped. I collapsed to my hands and knees against a wall of some hallway, and screamed in agony until the sobs came. I clutched my stomach, which burned intensely, and finally collapsed completely, falling onto my shoulder on the red-carpeted floor. I curled up on my side, wishing that this wasn’t happening to me, wishing a lot of things, but I knew wishes were stupid.

  “Azrel!” I heard Ortheldo’s voice echo down a hallway. I closed up tighter and hoped the mountain would swallow me up before he found me. “Azrel,” he said in relief when he turned the corner. I really didn’t want him near me right now, but he ran up and kneeled next to me, panting and dripping with sweat. He gently brushed some of my own soaking wet hair out of my face. “Azrel, what’s wrong?”

  “Leave me alone.” I sobbed.

  “Why? Tell me what’s wrong. Please?”

  “Why should I!” I screamed unexpectedly at him and sat up glaring at him. “Don’t pretend you care about me now!”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, shocked at my reaction.

  I sunk back to the floor and wrapped my arms around my head again. “You all left me alone.”

  “Addredoc explained that to you. We thought it was Beldorn.”

  “Not just that!” I cried. “All of you left me alone to fend for myself against Fali and his hundred and fifty creeps. You didn’t tell me I was going to be attacked; you just left them to it.”

  “Azrel, we really didn’t see the choice we had. Acalith and everyone explained the orders to us and said it was to save your life. How could you expect Rabryn and me to do anything else, in that case, but follow direction?”

  My face scrunched and I tried to hold in a sob but it squeaked out anyway. “Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t. Everyone is worried about you. I had to damn near wrestle Rabryn to the floor so he would stay where he was and calm down. He was ready to knock some heads off, including mine.”

  I pressed my arms around my head tighter. I didn’t want to hear this. I just wanted to be left alone. I felt like such a burden to myself. Ortheldo rested his hand on my arm and gently began to lower it from around my face. I didn’t bother fighting it and just stared at the opposite wall.

  “Azrel,” he said softly, “tell me what’s wrong.”

  I let out a breath of defeat. “The White Warrior and I are two separate people, Ortheldo, so what is the purpose of my existence? Nothing. It’s her that the world needs, not me.”

  “I could name a couple of people who need you. And the White Warrior is one of them.”

  “Spare me,” I scoffed, refusing to look at him.

  “You think I’m joking?”

  “I know you’re not, which makes what you’re saying even more ridiculous.”

  “She does. That’s why she set up that defense for you.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” I cried sitting up again. I looked him in the eyes for the first time, those pretty periwinkle eyes. “If she wasn’t so busy saving my pathetic hide she might actually get some useful things done!” I looked at him, desperate for him to hear me, to understand. “She is everything I am, Ortheldo, except she has the advantage of useful magic. And not just any magic, but white fire! She has the Light Gods’ power on Earth! Goodness itself! What do I need to be here for?”

  “Azrel you –”

  “Can’t you understand?” I cried, stopping myself before I could literally pull at my hair. “I have no purpose, no use! I have nothing! She has everything she needs except me out of her way! I can’t help Casdanarus! She can!” My tone came out more pleading then I had intended. I hoped he could understand what I was saying—understand the magnitude of what a problem my own existence was, to understand anything! His eyes were blank, though. He was only trying to think of ways to comfort me. He wasn’t hearing my words.

  I rested against the wall, raised my knees and stared at them. In that moment, I gave up. I gave up trying to make him understand. I gave up everything right then and there. I had no more fight left in me. I was done. What was the use?

  I numbly reached into my pocket and pulled out the necklace chain and held it out to him. “The maps are in my room. Have someone take you there,” I said still looking at my knees. “You and the others find the owner. I have no purpose to be with you any longer. If you need the White Warrior, she’ll have no trouble visiting you in that ‘other world.’”

  After a moment he spoke. “Azrel, I’m not. . .”

  “Just go!” I screamed, on the verge of strangling him, and threw the necklace at his chest. I had to grip my head before I gripped his throat. I hated him right now. I hated him for not understanding, hated him for not listening to what I was saying.

  He looked at me for a moment, then finally picked up the necklace from the floor and stood. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he spoke. “Do you know what I think? I think neither you nor the White Warrior can exist without the other. Without a body to fight with, the White Warrior is just an idle force of magic and has to have others do what she needs; and without your magic, you can’t fully be whole.”

  “If you say so,” I replied, uninterested.

  “You know what else I think?”

  “Pray tell.”

  “I think I expected more from you, Azrel.” I moved my eyes to him to see his brows drawn and a frown of disappointment on his face. “I think your father expected more, too. I never imagined, while growing up with you, that you would let yourself become this weak, selfish, sobbing person.” I looked at the opposite wall again. “The Azrel I grew up with loved life, loved her hours of training and studying, and was determined to be the best warrior she could be. The Azrel I knew loved her father and everything that went with him, even his past.” He may as well have twisted a knife in my stomach. “Even though she believed her father fled a world-altering battle, she respected him. She loved him. Your father is probably turning in his grave right now because you’ve let yourself succumb to this.” He threw both his hands in my direction, palms up, looking at me in almost disgust. “His daughter, his warrior, his beloved who he trusted to carry on his mission, who he trusted to bring honor to his long stained name,” Ortheldo shook his head. “Disappointed doesn’t even scratch the surface of how he probably feels watching you from the Sky now.”

  I didn’t even care to argue with him. I lay myself back down on the floor. “Thank you. You can leave now.” I heard him turn and start down the hall.

  He was right. I wasn’t the same Azrel he grew up with. The Pitt had destroyed the person I once was. The abuse, the “jokes” they’d played, the hatred and mocking. I could have fought them, prevented those abusive instances, but I’d been forced to keep the secret of what I was. In doing so, I’d been forced to endure the cruelty. Through seven years of that abuse I’d never shed a tear because I couldn’t. Oh, but the day she went too far and hit my brother was the last day I’d been willing to stand it. Harm to my brother was the one thing I wouldn’t—and couldn’t—take, so I’d stopped it. Too bad it had taken seven years. Those years had been enough to bury the Azrel that Ortheldo had known.

  “So why not dig her up?” another voice said.

  I looked down the hall to see Addredoc approaching. I looked back towards the opposite wall. “Because she was buried for so long that she suffocated to death. There’s no point.”

  I heard his footsteps close the distance between us. “I don’t believe that.”


  I rolled my eyes. “Believe or don’t believe what you want. I really don’t care.”

  “Well,” he said and sat on the floor in front of me with his knees up, his ankles crossed, and his elbows casually resting on them, “I just don’t believe a warrior would have such a death.”

  I glanced at him and then at the wall again. “How did you find me?”

  “Like the Deralilya, I feel your presence at all times. It’s what comes with the territory of being in her command.”

  “Did she order you to come to me?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t need to be here.”

  “I thought you might need a friend.”

  “I don’t need a friend. I need to be left alone.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  My teeth clenched. “You used your magic to read my thoughts about the warrior inside me being buried, and I’m sure you weren’t far off when Ortheldo and I were sharing words.” He smiled. “So, since you already know what’s wrong, can you leave me alone now or can’t you read my mind anymore?”

  “I’d rather talk to you.”

  “Gods!” I shouted slapping my palm onto the floor and sat up in a huff. “About what?!”

  “About digging up the warrior you once were.”

  I rested my back and head against the wall behind me. “She’s dead, I told you. She started dying the day she lost her father, and then the people of The Pitt killed her completely.”

  “Why did she start dying the day she lost her father?”

  “Why do you think?” I snapped. “He was her everything! He was her mentor, her trainer, her parent, her only source of love and reason for living.”

  “Wasn’t Ortheldo a reason for living?”

  I stopped breathing for a moment.

  “Wasn’t he a good friend to you? Or was he hateful and spiteful like the rest of the world was towards your father?”

  “No, he wasn’t,” I admitted. “But our friendship bond wasn’t as strong as the one between my father and me.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “What about her? She’s dead too.”

  He was quiet a moment, staring at me evenly with brown eyes that penetrated me deeply without doing anything. “What about Rabryn?” he asked, tilting his head to the side and looking at me more thoughtfully.

  My heart stopped and then it fluttered alive when I thought about Rabryn and my first time ever meeting him. I thought about how I felt when Beldorn told me I had a little brother.

  “Didn’t he love you and care about you? Didn’t he fight at your side the entire time you were in The Pitt? Didn’t he sacrifice much to do so?”

  I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling …was it shame? I swallowed again. “He loved me, but he couldn’t always keep the abuse I endured at bay. In fact I urged him to stay out of it.” I shrugged. “Granted, he rarely listened to me on the matter, but the abuse was…” I just shook my head. He wouldn’t understand no matter how I might put it. “It smothered her.”

  “It may have smothered her, but it didn’t kill her.”

  I turned my eyes to him and held my breath, realizing he was going somewhere with this. There was nothing more annoying than a wise wizard with an opinion.

  “I think Rabryn’s constant love for you and his defense on your behalf breathed some life into that buried warrior.”

  “You think wrong,” I said in a shaky voice, avoiding his eyes, trying not to buy into this.

  “I also think Rabryn would be upset if he knew that all he sacrificed for you was for nothing.”

  “I don’t think so. He knows how I was treated.”

  “As do I.” I wondered what he meant for a moment, and then I recalled Acalith saying the White Warrior had shown her and the others my past. The thought that they knew about my abuse made me bow my head in shame. “Which makes me wonder,” he continued, “why didn’t you kill yourself?” I snapped my eyes up to him. “Not that I’m implying you should have, but that’s a lot of cruelty to endure.”

  “Because I had a mission to carry out,” I replied. I held my breath at my own words, realizing all at once that this was where he was going.

  His gentle smile confirmed it. “So why don’t you carry out that mission?”

  I let my breath out through my nose and looked away from him. I wasn’t sure I had any fight left in me. Not with the knowledge that I and my magic were two separate people.

  I felt his gentle fingertips on my cheek. I couldn’t resist the soft touch as he turned my face back to him. The look in his eyes made me forget how to breathe for a second. His penetrating brown eyes looked at me with such…passion, and such longing. How strange that he would look at me in such a way.

  “Whether you want to admit it or not,” he said softly, “your mission to bring honor back to your father’s name has also breathed life into that buried warrior.” He shook his head and smiled gently. “She’s not dead.”

  I searched his eyes, as if the very hope for me to move on was hidden somewhere in them. “Why don’t you believe she could die from being smothered?”

  “I said I doubt a warrior would have such a death.”

  “Why?”

  “How many warriors, in your extensive history lessons, did you read about who died by suffocation of others’ hatred?”

  I remained silent and thoughtful, but bitter. I may as well be the first.

  “A warrior dies when he or she is run through by a blade,” Addredoc continued, “or impaled by an arrow during combat. Warriors aren’t supposed to die by any other means outside of war. That’s why they’re called warriors.”

  He glanced at my lips for a moment and then looked deeply into my eyes again. He looked at me with such longing that I felt drawn into him. His thumb began to softly caress my cheek and he moved his face closer to mine. I couldn’t believe he might kiss me.

  “You’re still a warrior,” he said softly, almost whispered. His warm breath was on my face and his brows furrowed as he looked at me, almost begging me to believe him. “The warrior inside of you isn’t dead. She just needs to be dug up from the mess of your past.” He moved his face a little closer to mine, looking unsure of the gesture. “She just needs to come above all that. Not necessarily let it go yet, but rise above it for now.” He swallowed. “You need to realize you are a warrior, a very powerful warrior, and she will live again.”

  He glanced at my lips a second time. He wanted to kiss me, but something was stopping him. Fear of rejection? Fear of being disrespectful? I wasn’t sure…and I really didn’t care. I leaned forward and locked my lips with his. Goodness, his mouth was so clean and so soft as he kissed me. I caressed his cheeks with my knuckles, then ran my fingers up through his soft black hair, clutching it gently at the back. I parted his lips with my tongue to see what he tasted like and I wasn’t disappointed.

  After a long moment he slowly pulled away from me. His breathing was a little heavier and his eyes were wide with shock. “I…I’m sorry.” He breathed, then swallowed heavily. “I’ve wanted to kiss you forever. But now that I have, I feel ashamed and guilty. Have I…done something wrong?”

  I shook my head. I shocked myself when I realized I didn’t want to move away from him. I hardened myself though, and leaned back to sit against the hall wall again. “No, but if you feel guilty, just think of it as a gesture of comfort.”

  He gave me a brief forced smile, but it was gone as soon as he started to stand. He looked down at me when he was on his feet. “I’ll leave you to think about what I said, then make your decision to stay here or not. I wouldn’t contemplate too long, though. Rabryn and Ortheldo are already on their way to the stables.”

  I nodded, though my decision was already made; I was staying here until I found a way to let the White Warrior live and end my own existence. When Addredoc was out of sight, I lay back down on my side in the hallway and thought about how I might do that.

  I must have fallen asleep again because the n
ext thing I knew, I felt a powerful presence all around me. It was so strong that my eyes opened wide and my heart raced. Something or someone was here. I slowly sat up and looked around the hall, but no one was around.

  Addredoc’s words were on my mind as I searched the hallway with my eyes. I kept hearing them over and over again…until I suddenly heard something else, and my heart dropped through my feet when I realized what presence I was sensing.

  Chapter Nine

  Ortheldo

  “Ya!” I yelled at my horse and put her into a full gallop. Rabryn was quickly riding beside me, but I didn’t dare look at him for fear I might take my rage out on him.

  “You’re really going to do it? You’re really going to leave her here?”

  I clenched my jaw. “You bet I am.”

  All I wanted to think about was getting out of there. I didn’t want to think about Azrel, but my mind was on her anyway. She was dead, or at least the Azrel I’d grown up with was. I’d lost her the day she fell into the Ambuel River. Though I’d been in denial for the past nine years, clinging to the hope that I would find her alive again someday, I was now well over it. Only the anger stage of my grief lingered. Rage pounded in my veins so hard I actually had to flex my fingers into and out of fists to relax the tension in them.

  “I told you what she said to me, and Addredoc told you everything else. I have no reason or desire to be near her right now.”

  “I think you’re just pissed about their kiss.”

  I clenched my jaw. “Rabryn, at this point, I don’t care anymore. The Azrel I fell in love with is dead!”

  “I don’t believe that any more than Addredoc does, and neither should you!” he cried. “I agree that it’s only a matter of digging up who she used to be, and I know she can do it!”

  “Yeah? Well either way it’s something she has to do on her own. I’m not going to wait around and lick the wounds of her petty past for her.”

  Suddenly I felt heat at the back of my head. “Petty?” Rabryn screamed.