Gaffriel 12

I didn’t know what I expected that night. But I saw Niala come in covered in blood and gore. She moved slowly, bedraggled and hurt in ways I couldn’t stand to see. I waited patiently outside her room for her to come back. I lit up when she did, but she didn’t even see me standing there, so lost in thought. I didn’t try to hide; it just happened.

I’d heard rumors of a celebration, a late-night party for her kill, and something about her new fire. Cautiously, I eavesdropped to hear more because I didn’t want to be away from her when she got her fires. I wanted to be the first to know, to have that with her. So, naturally, I wanted to see. Better late now than never.

Would her fire be red like mine? Would it be ice like Kiromir’s? Would she call lightning’s fire or healing’s flame? Would she gain a mix of the two, the strange hybrids that favored some of our strongest warriors? She didn’t look happy with whatever had happened, even after coming from the shower. Her focus lay elsewhere—distraught.

I waited a few minutes after she went into her room. I knew she liked her privacy, and her body wasn’t mine to look at, but something mesmerized me about her wings. Sometimes, I just wanted to see her. Niala turned so tense and ‘on’ when I came around her since I got my fires. In moments when she dropped her defenses, I liked stealing glimpses. She was just so distant and calm, and I knew who that person was when the shields were lowered. Her different wings mesmerized me. Her different everything captivated me. I always drew a line before peeping, though. Her reaction was all I wanted. I could see all my favorite parts of her without violating her space—her face, her eyes, her beautiful wings. I just liked to scare her, is all.

I made Niala such a huge part of my life, and the sudden loss of her after I got my fires left an angry void in my heart that I couldn’t stand.

I waited a few minutes, listened for her rustling noises to stop. I wanted to wait for her to be decent before I knocked. She shouldn’t be scared today, not today of all days. Her fires would be hair-triggered. I heard the dance of her motion stop as she came to a rest on her bed. I waited patiently before I reached my hand to the door to knock. It swung open on loose, broken hinges, just a crack. But what I saw in that glimpse…

She wasn’t one of us, not a wildling, not one of the flock, and my heart went out. She may have had wings and ikris, but that did not make her one of us. So my hopes of chasing her fires and being with her crashed around me.

Wildlings could fall in love, but if our fires weren’t compatible, we weren’t compatible. If our souls never bonded, we could never be happy together. We could only bind to our own kind. Sure, we could pervert our bodies, ruin them by ‘doing things’ with people we weren’t bonded to. My mother did that, and I never forgave her. But, if Niala and I weren’t the same kind of thing, I knew then we had no chance. She had no fire, a strange aura, a peculiar look, strange wings, and a foreign body. Even still, I’d break my fires to be with her.

I gasped.

A strong arm reached for mine, wrenched it away faster than I could withdraw my own glance. Kiromir could see my horror, my hurt, and he slammed me to the ground and whispered a threat to me.

“She suffers enough with this; don’t you fucking dare make her cry,” Kiromir said with hot breath to my ear. I wrestled against him, but he pinned me and dragged me to her door. My mind tore into a million directions. I saw something I shouldn’t have. In his eyes, I’d been caught peeping again, and Kiromir wasn’t going to let this one pass.

I barely registered Kiromir speaking to her and her scared response. I didn’t even want to look at her, a reminder of something I couldn’t keep. She looked betrayed, afraid, and full of regret. How could I chase after her? How could I be with her if she were something else? I couldn’t keep her captive like that.

I avoided her gaze when Kiromir finally forced me into the room. I didn’t want to look at her, and I almost knew what came next. She had something she wanted to tell me. But I wanted to hear it from Kiromir, not her. I didn’t think I could bear to listen to the tears in her voice or see the sad look in her eyes.

He told me what I already knew and when obsidian flames licked up her arm, I wanted to cry. It swirled, beautiful in its own way, hypnotic and enticing like ferrofluid, swaying around her hand. There were distant galaxies and sparks in the depths of it. She couldn’t control it yet, and she feared it. I didn’t know if it was right, but I had to know…

She apologized; their voices were hollow and distant. My hearing muted like I dove deep underwater, drowning. I had to see more of it. Obsidian emptiness looked back at me. It called me like her voice, a song. I knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as it called to me, that her fire would take mine.

They couldn’t stop me. How could they have known what I would do? I was a fool, and if I stood to be hurt, it’d be her that hurt worse.

I charged my flames, offered them towards her. She kept her hand still, tilted it just a fraction of an inch for me, a timid offer. I don’t know if she wanted my fires, but instinct drove her response. She pushed her hand to mine.

“NO!” Kiromir shouted, and I could hear the horror of it. A strangled noise in his throat went quiet. My fire leaped from my hands. Timidly, she closed that distance. But I sealed the gap and held her tight. Our fingers laced, fires charged, and twinges climbed up my arms from her. But my own fires raged back, warm and teasing. I had more experience; I had the upper hand. My fires grew intense. A girl I’d melded my fires with once said that my fires were calm for someone with true fire, and the warmth of it swam through her skin like a soft touch. What Niala pulled from me was a storm. I wondered if she felt that.

Every girl I’d melded with or tried my fires with had been an experiment leading up to this. I had merely practiced everything I could to be better for her. I’d told a few of the girls that. They all knew I chased Ni like a moth to the flame. People kept telling me that I’d get burned. Maybe I wanted to be burned? We were expected to chase peoples’ fires according to their plans. I had obligations, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t holding out for her in the end.

An equilibrium seemed to form between the two fires as they laced around our hands, and I laughed. My eyes were bright and full of relief. Surprisingly, it felt good. It felt too good, better than any fire I’d ever felt. But, of course, it would have.

Kiromir jerked me by my shoulder, glaring at me with anger and fear. Little red welts were sinking back into my neutral skin tone from the gentle scratches of her fire, with tingling ecstasy. It felt like tiny nails dragging along my flesh. Every hair on my body stood on end. I suddenly realized I had been jerked onto my back, staring up at the ceiling of her damp room. I lifted my hands. Tears welled in my eyes. I grinned wider than I had in the longest time. Relief… Pure relief.

“What the hell?” Kiromir asked, rage in his voice as I laughed.

Niala stared at her hands, stunned. We all exchanged glances, and I wanted to shout it to the skies.

“There’s a chance,” I breathed, grinning wide.

“A chance for what?” Niala asked as she scrambled from the edge of the bed to look down at me.

“Our fires!” I said, laughter full in my chest. Every bit of betrayal I had melted away.

“They’re compatible,” Kiromir said. His voice went flat, and the fight slipped out of him.

“What!?” Niala’s eyes were wide. I made her afraid for me. Her tail laid within my reach, draped off the bed. I wanted to touch it, touch her, hold her, and take every bit of her sadness away.

Kiromir pursed his lips and squinted his eyes shut. Tears were forming. Pain welled so deep within him.

I’d melded our fires, let them chase and hold one another. I probably should have asked. I should have waited, but I couldn’t. I’d taken the choice and hesitation of it away from Niala. Her first kiss of flame, and I, the cad who had taken it. If two souls were compatible, they’d meld and cancel. If not, they’d fight one another. She’d have drawn back a burned hand and I bloody wrists. Niala sat stunned. The way she looked at me, the way she looked at her hands.

She’d arm-wrestled me, and I flamed before. It was an accident and had burnt her hands. That moment made me fear for the longest time that our fires wouldn’t meld. She didn’t have her fires then. She sat unscathed, now. Her sobbing breaths from before morphed into something different and more evenly paced.

“I could have hurt you,” Niala whispered. The horror dawned on her flushed cheeks.

Kiromir looked from me on the ground to Niala. A mix of hurt, relief, and confusion plastered over him all at once. He clearly wanted to drag me off and beat the hellion out of me. Years of getting my butt kicked hadn’t dissuaded me. Years of picking on Niala, chasing after her, finding every excuse to stay near her since we were kids had finally paid off.

“I swear on it, Ni… I’ll do anything for you,” I said. We were compatible, and I knew then what I’d always known, that I would do anything to earn her love and fires. I knew it the day that I met her, saw her steel-blue eyes. I knew the day we first fought. Hells, I knew when she hit that change in life where we cared about our appearances, and suddenly, grooming one another’s wings became a personal thing. Kiromir had kept us apart as much as he could, but nothing would stop me now.

“Ni, I’m going to take Gaff back to my place tonight,” Kiromir said as he came to terms with his anger. His voice went cold and calm in a way that made me flinch. It settled in just how badly I’d screwed up. I shouldn’t have done that in front of him.

He reached down and grabbed me by my arm, lifted, and dragged me away. Niala looked confused like her eyes had opened for the first time. They were set on me. I grinned back at her.

“Worth it,” I mouthed the words to her. Her lips twisted from a grin to a grimace, like she fought laughter and tears. I didn’t care what Kiromir did to me; she smiled.