Chapter 16. Everwood XI

Chapter 16. Everwood XI

"Get to the Cellar. Theres too much smoke. Ill be right behind you," I commanded. The infernal pulled herself up, leaning heavily on her stave. I watched Barion closely, preparing to intervene if he pursued her. He didnt seem interested. He simply waited, content to let the forest burn down around us.

"I thought you were iron, boy. I planned to mold you into steel," Barion said, a strange sadness in his voice. "But I was wrong. You were already steel. And I was a fool to not see it."

"I owe much to your teachings, Sir Barion." I held my sword upward in a mock salute, covering one eye. "But I am no longer yours to mold." I summoned the spark and set the rose oil on my sword aflame.

"Even to the end, you intrigue me."

He circled me. I was expecting another surprise attack from his rapier, my nerves balanced on the edge of a knife. What emerged from over his shoulder looked more like a scorpions stinger, angry and red, the tip dripping with dark ichor. It moved almost too quickly for me to track. A single blink and I would have missed it.

The stinger plunged forward.

Somehow, I managed to sidestep, batting it away with my flaming sword. It caught fire for a moment, but Barion quickly smothered it in darkness, leaving it unmolested.

He hissed in pain. The fire did hurt him, then. But Barion was much smarter than the demon. He pushed me backwards, strike after strike, each intended to kill. I dodged, throwing myself to the side, only to come up to another, swinging over my head. I back-pedaled, the heat of the burning forest growing hotter and hotter.

Barion leapt forward, his stinger plunging directly at my forehead. I ducked under it only to find myself face to face with him, his arm pulled back. There was no time. His rapier plunged through my gut. He cackled in triumph.

But this was hardly the first time Id been stabbed. My wounded arm screamed as I grabbed his sword hand, trapping his arm. With a burst of strength, I swung my sword into the dark mass where his face should have been. The shadows retreated and Barions head was exposed. He screeched, throwing me backwards. His jaw hung off on the left side by a gruesome thread, fire scorching his face before the shadows rushed in to quash it.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

He growled inhumanly, and his attacks grew much faster. But he didnt try the rapier again, content to pick away at me from a distance.

Finally, I was pushed back to the forests edge. The flames licked at my back, setting my robes on fire.

Barion didnt gloat. His stinger pulled back, preparing the killing blow.

"I yield!" I yelled, dropping my sword to the side.

Barion paused mid-strike, confused.

That was all the time I needed. The bright purple light around us suddenly died as I pulled in the flame. All of the flame. The fire I hated so much. I breathed it in and pulled and pulled until the fire was more of me than anything else. It leaked out the pores of my hands, my eyes, my very soul. If only for that moment, I did not hate the flame. It was capable of great cruelty, yes.

But it was more than that.

The fire was a part of me, and without it, I would have been lost long ago. So I accepted the flame, and the flame accepted me. Something rumbled, like a giant stone shifting deep within my soul.

I held my hand out, first, second, and third finger extended, then spoke the word that was now etched in the darkest depths of my being.

"Burn."

"Lucius," Maya scolded. "Dont be rude. Cairn isnt a noble, hes an apothecarys apprentice. He doesnt have a house name."

"With posture like that and shoes like those?" Lucius looked me up and down skeptically. "Royal apothecary, more like."

Little bastard was going to out me. Before Maya could think too long on that, I clapped my hands together. "Whos hungry?"

There was a chorus of cheers in response. As we emerged from the cellar, there was a gust of smoke that sent some of the children to coughing. Maya instructed them to put their shirts over their mouths, and we escorted them to the house. Maya paused at the door, looking at the corpse of the demon still lying in the center of the clearing. I remembered what she said about regeneration.

"Should we take care of it now?" I asked, hoping she would say no. As Id been too nervous to eat this morning, my stomach rumbled with every thought of food. But the discomfort of going hungry for a little while longer paled in comparison to the idea of having to fight that nightmare again.

"We should." Maya walked towards it slowly, lost in thought. "Cairn?"

"Yes?"

"If you think what you did in the cellar went unnoticed, it did not."

"Would it hurt you to miss a thing or two every once in a while, Maya?" I asked, grimacing.

"It would, actually." Maya said. "During my time with master-" she stopped, correcting herself. "With Barion. You knew him for little more than a week and probably already noticed he was prone to mood swings."

"Thats putting it mildly."

"Indeed. I had to be attuned to his every whim and emotion, or things would go poorly for me." Maya indicated the house. "And worse for them. So I became adept at reading human emotions."

"Whatever he was, Barion wasnt human." I said testily. We had just won a great victory. Why couldnt she let it go?

"Perhaps. My point is, I wonder what it is you hide. Especially now, after everything. If it is that you are not truly an apothecary, I do not carethough that would make me wonder how you learned the trade so thoroughly. If it is that you are a noble, that might even make me respect you more." Maya smiled. "A human noble, treating an infernal like a personeven an equal. It is the stuff of fae tales."

I ached at that because I knew that she wasnt lying. But the one thing she couldnt imagine was the truth: that my father was the king, and the sole engineer of so much pain and suffering for her peopleher entire race. Still, I needed to tell her. I had faced down a demon and a monster, but somehow the prospect of speaking those words seemed so much more daunting in comparison.

I readied myself. "Maya, I-"

She grabbed my arm suddenly.

"Cairn."

"What?" I asked, off-balance.

Her eyes narrowed, staring at the body of the demon "It is still alive."