Tempered by the Will

32 - Burning

Vica would swear up and down that she had been planning to keep her distance, because of course that had been the smart thing to do. The only sensible thing to do, rather. Even if she could help, the closer she came, the weaker her magic, and her magic was the only thing she could possibly use to her advantage. What, was she going to leap in and shield Constantine with her body? She couldn't see what sort of weapons they had, but a blade would go straight through her chest, out her back, and impale him as well. She would fare little better with a spear or bow and arrow or whatever else they might have. In the end, she would end up being nothing more than a burden, which was even worse than being simply useless.

But as she strained her eyes through the darkness, trying to pick out even the slightest clues as to who these three strange men were, she caught sight of a raised hand glowing a bright white. What was that? For a moment, she wondered if one of them was a mage; that luminous aura reminded her of magic. But that couldn't be right. Constantine's anti-magic would snuff out any mage so close.

Unless they weren't human, she thought, and her heart began to pound a little more anxiously. He had always made it out of sticky situations before. The Yrol when they had been pursued by a band of rogue archers, as well as the trappers who had come to ambush the cave when they were caring for the hatchling after that. And then it had been Yezia, Yowan, and the giant Alai who had come to attack him so that they could take her away from him. He'd been fairly banged up, but he'd lived.

So he'd make it through this, too, surely? The cold, instinctual dread swirling inside her was nothing but baseless fear. Obviously. She was frightened for no reason, and he was going to make it out of this just fine. He'd been riddled with a quiver of arrows before and hadn't broken a sweat, so these three men, including the one with the mysterious glowing hand, would be nothing to him.

Except it wasn't his hand that was glowing. It was something the man was holding. And as she drew closer and closer and closer, wiggling through the long grass on her belly the way she would sneak up on a deer, she saw that it was a skinny little object, whatever it was. Small, as long as the man's palm and only as side as a finger or two.

Magic. It had to be. But magic - trapped in a vial? She knew things like sealed hexes existed, and she knew the Order used such things. Hadn't Killian accused her of using one back in Winding Oaks? But what was so special about that one that Constantine was standing stock-still, neither retreating nor attacking? It was obvious that none of them were friendly. Order grunts, probably, maybe trying to get him to stand down so that things didn't escalate.

Or not. She wouldn't have been able to explain it, but it was something about the way Constantine held himself that made her realize things were far more serious than she knew. The assassin who was usually so skilled at hiding his true thoughts and feelings when he wanted to - she could read something in his stance under the scant moonlight that made her wary.

Especially when the men's voices rose, and the one with the glowing white thing in his hand began jabbing his finger over Constantine's shoulder.

At her.

Oh, they knew she was there. Well, then, the game was up. She had no choice but to show herself now, and she did exactly that. She made sure to move slowly, carefully, while keeping her eyes fixed on them all, but it was futile to hope that her discovery would do anything but aggravate the situation even more.

But still, something told her she couldn't run away. Constantine was alone, and despite knowing that he was infinitely more capable of wiggling his way out of trouble than she was, instinct told her to keep going. Keep going.

"I said send her off! Or we all burn."

"f*****g hell, I said I'll handle it -!"

It happened in a flash. She didn't know if the man threw it or simply dropped it, but the vial was falling, falling, falling from his hand, and Constantine was whirling around and coming for her, yellow eyes flashing so bright that she knew instantly that she was seeing fear in them for the first time. He had never been afraid before. Or had he? She wondered, but at the brink of a memory that she almost remembered, she knew she couldn't waste time dwelling on the past.

She reached out her hands, clawing at her magic despite it being half-stifled thanks to her proximity to Constantine. Every inch that he came closer, she would weaken, so she had to be fast. She had to be instantaneous. She had to hurry and do the only thing she could think of.

With a strangled shout that burst through clenched teeth, she heaved her hands upward as if hurling something into the sky. She had no idea what she was doing, had no clue if she had gone crazy in desperation and was doing something utterly useless and idiotic. But she had to try, no matter what -

Inches from the ground, the vial suddenly changed course and bounced upward instead as if it were dropping the wrong way, into the sky. It happened so quickly that Vica didn't even realize how far upward she had catapulted it with her magic. All she knew was that it was shooting up, up, up into the dark night as she stared at the glowing white vial, following its new trajectory -

And then Constantine crashed into her like a battering ram, ripping her away from the sight. He knocked the wind out of her in one loud yelp-scream, and the next thing she knew, she was off her feet and hanging over his shoulder like a rag doll. The three men who had been gathered around him (and now she saw that they were dressed in trapper's leathers, why? What was that all about) were trying to give chase, but for some reason, they looked terrified to death -

And then it happened: an explosion so strong that she thought she could feel it shatter her bones, a fiery maelstrom that scorched her face and the one hand she had managed to hook over Constantine's shoulder. A deafening boom that promptly made her unable to hear anything else while a piercing pain erupted in her ears and made her cry out. Heat, pain, destruction - all radiating from the point far above their heads where the vial had exploded in a shower of near-invisible glass.

It sent Constantine bowling over, too. She didn't know how many times they tumbled and rolled and crashed into the ground, but then again, she wasn't aware of much at all by the time they came to a stop. She was bleeding. Her mouth, her nose. She couldn't see. Or could she? The orange and red and smoky gray, was that real or was she hallucinating from the impact?

Fire, she realized. Fire everywhere, eating up the tall grass and catching onto the trees. She thought she saw something moving in the branches, long-limbed and slender and weeping, but she could hardly breathe much less crawl over to extinguish the burning wood nymphs who were dying right before her very eyes.

And Constantine. He was lying on top of her, heavy body nearly strangling what little breath she'd managed to hold onto, and it wasn't until she managed to pry her head out from under his chin and look over his shoulder that she realized he was on fire. His cloak had burned through completely; it was the thin scaled armor that he wore underneath that smoked and smoldered.

Thank the gods. They had all been planning on stepping foot in House Murena's territory uninvited earlier tonight; it made sense that he would have borrowed something more protective than his usual getup from Felix before they left. He'd been dressed for a fight, and if he hadn't, she could imagine he would be bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to roasted ham shanks right now.

If only she could think. Move. Breathe, even.

"Constantine," she croaked, but she could hardly hear herself. Her voice sounded like a rough murmur in her blown-out ears, nothing more. And her throat hurt horribly too, but she tried again, this time inching her hand over to his face to see if he was breathing. "Constantine..."

He'd shielded her from the blast, both the impact and the flames. And he had moved fast, so fast, blindingly so when he picked her up and sprinted as far as he could before the vial exploded in mid-air. If not for that, they would surely both be dead. From the too-close distance she had been standing at, her magic would have been utterly useless at shielding them from almost certain death.

What had happened to the trappers, she wondered. And the nymphs, the trees were burning. Everything was wrong, terrible, dying -

"Constantine, you son of a b***h," she hacked, nearly sobbing in pain. Her ribs, were they broken? They had to be. This hurt so much worse than when she had fallen from that high tree branch when she was young, and that had been bad. But if she was in this horrid of a condition, how much worse was he? "You're on fire, you need to..."

She couldn't even finish the sentence. Forget her throat; moving her jaw to speak was sending shooting, searing pain into her ears that drilled straight through her head. But fine, she didn't have to speak. Help me, she begged some unknown power who might be standing by to offer a hand. Help me get up. We're still alive.

But of course there was no one to help. With Constantine unconscious, maybe not even breathing - it was too hard to tell from the warm, billowing heat that swirled around them from the growing flames - it was up to her to figure this out. It was up to her to save them.

But her body, it wouldn't listen, and she realized suddenly that there was something pooling in her throat and seeping into her lungs. Blood, she realized when the tangy burn of it scorched her throat. Blood, she was going to choke on it if she couldn't get up and cough it out. Lying face-up, she was sure to drown in it, and her last memory would be of Constantine's weight lying heavy across her body.

"Damn you," she wheezed. "If you're going to kill me, at least live, you son of a b***h -"

But there was no response. His hair tickled her raw face, and the last thing she remembered before true darkness fell was feeling the flames licking closer and closer...