Flames of Fury

Magnolia

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

It’s the beeping that stirs me, but I can’t manage to lift my leaden eyelids to look around at my whereabouts.

My eyes aren’t the only things that feel weighed down, my entire body feels heavy. I try to lift an arm but that proves impossible. I don’t feel anything restraining me, but still my arm remains immobile. I try for something smaller, a finger maybe.

I manage to lift my pointer finger off the bed, though it’s a great effort. My head lolls from side to side, too heavy to lift fully off of whatever it is I’m lying on.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Gods I wish that fucking noise would stop.

I hear footsteps approaching, the beeping gets faster. Two sets of footsteps. The beeping is even faster still.

“What’s wrong? Why is her heart beating that fast?” A male voice speaks, but not one that warms my heart.

No.

This voice is frigid, like acid to the senses.

It’s his voice.

The beeping screams through the room, my chest heaving as I struggle to breathe. He’s immobilized me. If I can’t move, I can’t summon my fire, I can’t burn his pale ass to the ground — I can’t escape.

“Sir, I think it would be best if you left. I need to give her something to relax, to bring down her heart rate. But this is a good sign, it means she’s starting to wake up.” A female voice says calmly, but sternly.

Don’t you fucking touch me. I try to lift an arm, a finger, anything, in self defense but my body continues to disobey me. I toss my head from side to side, silently screaming “No!”

A cold rush of fluid runs through my veins, it seeps up my hand into my arm.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The beeping slows, my breathing slows.

“Call me the second she’s conscious.” Ian growls at the woman.

“Yes, King Illian.” She responds.

And then the darkness comes for me again.

***

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I stir to consciousness again. It’s not the beeping that wakes me this time, though I’m acutely aware of the incessant noise.

“That’s it, love, come on. Wake up.” Her voice coos over me.

Slowly, my eyelids flutter open. I expect to be assaulted by fluorescent lights but I find the opposite to be true, the lights have been dimmed allowing me to gently reacclimate to the waking world.

“Good morning, Queen Magnolia. My name is Ember and I’m one of the doctors here. How are you feeling?”

For as much as Ian is cold and corrosive, Ember is warm and soothing. Her voice alone fills me with energy to the point where I can slowly sit up in what appears to be a hospital bed.

Ember moves to help me sit up but I swat her away, I can manage on my own. She’s younger than I expected, probably about my age. She’s a little shorter than me, slender, but little to no discernible muscle tone. But what’s truly stunning about her is her hair. It’s a fiery red-orange color, clearly her namesake since it looks like burning embers when the light catches her hair as she moves.

“Where is here?” I ask her.

Her smile slips by a fraction. “You’re in the infirmary of Drow Hollow. I’ve been monitoring your vitals since you arrived. You’ve been unconscious for three days but you are unharmed.” She makes it a point to stress the word, a vain attempt at reassuring me that nothing has happened to my unconscious body without my consent.

Unharmed? Unharmed?

They drugged me, knocked me out, to the degree that I was unconscious for three days and she calls that unharmed?

I’m going to find Ian, torch his fucking face off and then make sure he made good on his promise to release my family. Then I’ll cave in this Gods forsaken pit and be done with it once and for all.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. I’m a little dizzy as I go to stand, likely a result of being knocked out for three days.

Ember puts her hands on my shoulders to steady me, warmth radiating from where her hands make contact with my skin. The dizziness fades immediately and I’m able to hold my own balance.

“Queen Magnolia, please stay in bed. You need to rest.” She lowers her voice and whispers to me conspiratorially, “I was supposed to tell him the moment you woke up but I thought you’d appreciate a little privacy while you acclimated.”

Her words seem sincere, I don’t detect any deception in her eyes. But that doesn’t make it okay to keep me here against my will.

“I’d appreciate being let the fuck go. I’d appreciate Ian dropping his sick obsession with me and my family. I’d appreciate him burning to a crisp and rotting in the deepest parts of Hell for all eternity.” I’m shouting by the end of my rant, my chest heaves to the rhythm of my breathing.

Her expression doesn’t change, she’s not angered or insulted in the least by my overt threats to her king.

She makes no sound, not a whisper, not a breath, but I can read the words on her lips as clearly as if she had voiced them. “Me. Too.”

Her admission hits me like a slap to the face, I literally stumble back and end up sitting back down on the bed.

She takes a seat next to me on the bed — taking “bedside manner” a little too literally — and gently sandwiches my hand between hers.

“I can’t explain everything right now, but please trust me.” She implores me.

She doesn’t let her voice rise above a whisper, but somehow even that seems too loud. Her words ring in my ears like an alarm bell.

Trust her? I’m not here to make friends. Not to mention she reports directly to the king himself. I’ve known her for all of 5 seconds and she wants me to trust her?

I snatch my hand out of her hold. “I don’t have time for trust and I don’t plan on sticking around here long enough to figure out if any of you are worth trusting.”

I make my way over to the closet in the corner of the room but am disappointed to find it empty.

“Where are all my clothes?” I don’t bother to ask about the knives, I seriously doubt they’d hand those back over to me.

A whooshing sound penetrates the space and I whip around to face the sliding door that leads into the hall. Instinctively I reach for my blades out of pure muscle memory, but even without my precious blades I can still pluck the hearts out of anyone who crosses me.

A man enters carrying a flat, shiny, black box tied shut with a white, silk ribbon.

“You were supposed to notify the King when she woke up.” He addresses Ember without so much as glancing at me.

“She just woke up, I was helping her to the bathroom. She’s a little unsteady on her feet after being drugged and dragged in here.” She says with all the professionalism in the world.

“I’ll inform him myself.” The man finally turns to me, “clothes are in the box. I’ll be back to collect you once you’re discharged.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I spit.

Pain explodes on the left side of my face. The cracking sound that accompanied his strike was unmistakably my cheekbones shattering. His backhand came at me so fast not even my increased speed could help me dodge it.

“This isn’t the grove, Princess,” he hisses at me. “You’re in Drow Hollow now.”

My claws extend from my hand, razor sharp talons four inches long. I use my speed to throw my fist back at him, impaling my claws into his chest around his heart. I can feel his pulse on the tip of my talon. One knick is all it would take for him to bleed out slowly.

“The only thing that’s going to be hollow is your chest when I relieve it of your heart.”

He doesn’t react at first, but after hearing my threat his previously neutral face begins to reflect his amusement.

With my claws still clutching his heart, he leans forward and rests his cheek on my broken one, his lips a breath away from the shell of my ear.

“I’m going to enjoy watching him break you.” He hisses before he bites at my earlobe.

The sliding door to the room slides open again, but with his face pressed against mine I can’t turn myself to look at who enters.

“Gorm, let’s go, Illian is waiting.” A new voice calls out to Gorm, the mountain of a man who is locked together with me in a power struggle.

Gorm backs away from me, my talons slipping from his chest as my arm falls limply to my side.

He turns on his heel and stalks out of the room. The other man gives me what I think is a sympathetic look. One corner of his mouth twitches up before his lips press into a grim line and he stalks off after Gorm.

Ember walks over to me and slowly lifts her hands to my face. Warmth consumes the waves of pain electrocuting my head and before long, I can sense that the bones that had been shattered have been repaired.

I look up at her for the first time, noticing only now her glowing, golden-honey colored eyes. I know those eyes.

“You’re a healer.”

Every healer I’ve ever known has had those same eyes, the mark of a healer. The simple act of making eye contact with them fills you with a rejuvenating glow.

She nods to me in the affirmative, running her fingers over my face to verify that the bones have indeed been healed.

“Who were those men?”

“Gorm and Griffin. Gorm is the brute you impaled. They’re both Illian’s most trusted advisers, his fixers.”

I mentally add them to the list of people I’m going to enjoy killing before leaving this place. It’s still too soon to tell with Ember, but for now she’s not on my shit list.

I make my way over to the bed where Gorm dropped off the expensive looking box. I tear the lid off the box hoping to find the clothes I came here in. Instead of my clothes, I find a note atop neatly packaged tissue paper. See you soon, my flower.

I roll my eyes and mock vomit at the note. Fucking vile little earthworm. I lift open the tissue paper to expose a sea of black fabric. Lifting it from the box reveals that it is a floor length evening dress, black as Ian’s hair. It’s not exactly war attire but I can torch him in it all the same.

I’m not sure what game he’s playing at, but it’s not one I intend on losing.