Marjorie Liu - Within the Flames

You could have the world, whispered the dragon. The world is in your blood.

No, thought Lyssa. . but for a moment, she couldn’t remember why she was doing this. Only that it felt so good, so wonderful, she couldn’t imagine living without it.

Suddenly, she could hear her own heartbeat, thundering, and the hard beat steadied her focus.

Where are you? Where the hell are you hiding, Georgene?

It was no good focusing on the Cruor Venator , so Lyssa concentrated on Mandy instead. She had touched the woman earlier — connected to her mind — and she focused on those memories, letting herself sink into flashes of Flo and obsidian, and screams.

Where? Lyssa asked again. Where were you?

As if in response, she glimpsed sunlight, blue sky. . a river and the glitter of glass. .

. . flowing into a room made of stone, where women slumped in chains, faces sunken and slack.

Horrific. Stunning. Part of Lyssa felt removed, as though she were watching some movie. . but another part of her was there, viscerally, feeling every moment as if it were her flesh, her wrists heavy with bands of iron.

The women had been drugged. Lyssa saw Flo amongst them, then Mandy — who was tied to a stone slab. A beautiful black-haired woman stood beside her, dressed in stylish jeans and nothing else. The obsidian blade in her hand sliced through Mandy’s chest.

A woman with a muscular, slithering voice said, “ Little lives, little pleasures. You must learn not to be choosy, Betty. When the world as we know it ends, you will then be forced to take what is at hand. ”

Lyssa knew that voice — and it cut her cold, straight into the heart. She choked, trying to claw free of that suffocating presence, feeling as though she were trapped in a garbage bag that was being sucked down her throat.

Until, suddenly, she burst free — able to breathe — and found herself elsewhere, in another world. In a different time.

She sat in snow, and it was night. The moon hung bright in the sky. A thick forest surrounded her.

A girl who wore her face ran between the trees.

Lyssa saw her, and a split second later was running at her side, behind her, all around her — flying over the snow like a ghost, her heart pounding in her chest. She could see the girl’s tears, glittering on her cheeks like diamonds.

Behind her there was no forest, only darkness.

She smelled blood.

You run, whispered a sibilant voice. But you do not run from those who would harm you.

You run from yourself.

The forest disappeared, and so did the girl. Lyssa floated, struck with terror as she scrabbled at the darkness. .

. . clawing at the floor, in a cold apartment where broken glass glittered on the floor like small stars.

She panted, blinking hard and shielding her eyes from the dim light flooding the room from the window. A low voice said her name, but it barely registered until she heard it again, louder, and felt a tug.

“Eddie,” Lyssa croaked, and found him holding both her hands tight within his own. She felt very far away as she looked at his skin against her scales, his fingers wrapped around her fingers, claws gleaming near his nails. Human, alien. . but for a moment, their hands together looked natural, right. And it felt like that, too.

“Lyssa,” he said, and just like that, everything crashed. Her body ached, and her muscles were almost too weak to hold her upright.

But that was nothing compared to the hole in her heart, and the emptiness. It was not just the vision she’d had that made her feel so drained and gray. That was bad enough, on its own.

This other sensation of barrenness was the product of magic itself. A placeholder for that sunlit rush of power that had pumped through her for a glorious few seconds. It was like being a bird and having her wings chopped off in the middle of flight, or losing her legs when the only way to survive was to keep running. She had experienced something essential and wonderful, and freeing —and now it was gone, in the most absolute way possible.

This was the reason she hated magic. This was the reason she never touched it.

Because it would be too easy to never stop. Too easy to do terrible things in order to keep the power burning — and never suffer this crushing loss.

Lyssa choked down a sob. Eddie slid his hands — awkward and careful — over her back. Humiliation wracked her, but she didn’t pull away. Just leaned in even closer, her face buried against his chest.

“Shhh,” he murmured, and rested his hand against her neck — warming her cold muscles and skin. “I’ve got you.”

She could barely look at him. “Thank you.”

“What happened?”

“Power is a drug,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “That’s what happened.”

“You’re not crying because of power.”

A tense, bitter smile touched her mouth. “No.”

Eddie wiped away her tears and kissed her cheek. A small, lingering gesture that was sweet and gentle.

“What do you need?” he whispered, and there was such compassion in that one question.

I need a home, she wanted to tell him. I need to know that I don’t have to run anymore.

I need you. Whoever you are, I need you.

You’re in my blood.

“Just be here,” she told him.

“I am,” he said. “I’m here.”

Lyssa shivered, hunching deep inside the charred leather jacket. “I had a. . vision. I didn’t see much that would help us find anyone, but there was a room. Women there, drugged and bound. What I was seeing was in the past. It was awful.”

Eddie was quiet a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“It had to be done.”

“You look so pale,” he said, then, after a moment’s hesitation: “This may not be the best timing, given what you just saw. . but when was the last time you ate?”

“I. .” Lyssa hesitated. “I don’t know.”

He grimaced and gently untangled himself from her. “Wait here.”

She sat back on the floor, watching him walk to the kitchen. The apartment felt too quiet and lonely without him near, and even the sounds of his rummaging through the refrigerator sounded muted.

Time helped, though. She was able push away the bad memories, focusing instead on thoughts of her paintings, sunlight, Jimmy.

Eddie.

He returned less than a minute later with a jug of milk, an aluminum tray of chocolate cupcakes, and some paper cups.

“I hope you like sugar,” Eddie said. “This is all I found that’s easy.”

“Rawr,” she replied, and he laughed softly.

They poured the milk and sat on the floor, side by side, making a mess of the cupcakes and licking frosting off their fingers. She hadn’t done anything in years that could remotely be called companionable, but this. . felt good. The silence between them as they ate was comfortable and safe — exactly what she needed.

Lyssa let herself imagine doing this over other meals, or — hell — a weekend on the couch, in front of a television. Like normal people lived.

And she could totally see it. It didn’t make her want to run. Just the opposite.

“This reminds me of when I was little,” she found herself telling him; and then, with that much already said, she added, “My dad was the cook in the family, but my mom could handle box mixes. So we always kept a lot around, just in case.”

“Sounds like my mom.” Eddie smiled, but his gaze was distant. “We had this thing. Every Friday and Saturday, we’d choose a movie. My sister would get one day, I would have the other. And my mom would bake us something from a box.” He glanced at her, and his smile deepened. “It was a big deal.”