That’s when I learn just how crazy the man I’ve fallen in love with is. Because instead of beating a fast retreat, he just grins at me—a flash of brilliant white teeth in a soot-streaked face. “You’re not giving up that easily, are you?” he yells over the voracious roar of the fire.
“You’ll die!” I scream at him, trying to hold him back as he takes his first steps down the inferno-like hallway.
“Have some faith!”
He throws one hand out to the side, the other above his head, and starts walking steadily down the corridor. I follow tentatively, expecting the flames to leap onto us at any moment. But I’ve underestimated Declan. From the moment he walks into this fiery hell, he is in control.
Fire is all around us, and though I feel the heat from it closing in on me, never does one spark from it so much as brush up against me. Declan holds it back—with magic or with the sheer power of his will, I’m not sure. Either way, it doesn’t touch us. Even the smoke seems to retreat. It sounds ridiculous, and maybe fear is making me hallucinate, but I swear, it’s easier to breathe here than it was on the other side of the stairs.
I start to relax, start to believe that we have a chance to get Rachael out of this alive. At least until we turn the corner toward her personal hallway and I get a glimpse of what hell must really look like. The entire hallway is engulfed in fire, so much so that nothing—not the walls, not the carpet, not the art—nothing, is distinguishable from the flames raging completely out of control.
Declan curses viciously. Turns to me and says, “Go back. Now.”
I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. Terror is a wild animal inside me—terror for my sister, terror for Declan, terror for my entire family. Because if the fire is this rapacious up here, I can only imagine how little time it will take for it to engulf the entire house.
“Did you hear me, Xandra?” he demands. “Move it!”
“Only if you come with me.” I grab his arm, start to tug him back even as I send a silent apology to Rachael. I love my sister, would die to protect her, but I can’t ask Declan to do the same.
He has other ideas, however. With another muttered curse, he shakes me off. Sends me stumbling several steps away from him. Then, without a backward glance, he turns and hurls himself straight into the fire.
I cry out as it swallows him whole, an insatiable, insensate beast that he has no hope of battling. That strange tingling starts deep inside me again—my magic welling up in a panicked burst. The only problem is, I don’t know what to do with it. How to wield it to help Declan or my sister.
Even knowing it’s probably suicide, I plunge into the fire after Declan. I can’t—I won’t—let him face this alone like he’s faced so many other things in his life.
I expect the worst, expect the fire to tear through my flesh and burn me alive. But amazingly, it doesn’t. Heat—stifling, overwhelming, omnipresent—surrounds me, but the flames never touch me even as they surround me on all sides.
It doesn’t make sense, at least not until I see Declan up ahead of me. The fire has attacked him, surrounding him completely as it licks at his hair, his clothes, his skin. I nearly scream at the nightmare of it, but then I get closer and realize that it’s not burning him. That, in fact, he’s letting the fire do that to him.
I’m terrified and in awe all at the same time. Sure, I’ve seen Declan play with fire before—just the other day, in his house—but every other time he’s done this, it has been fire of his own making. Fire created and sustained through one’s own magic is easy to manipulate. But this fire is different. This is the result of a bomb, of malicious intent and probably black magic; it should be completely uncontrollable. No matter how strong a call a witch or warlock has to an element, he or she can only influence, only really control, the manifestation of that element if she or he created it. At least, that’s what I’ve always been taught and it’s what I’ve always seen. Until now.
Because now, right in front of me, Declan has seized control of the flame and he isn’t letting go. He hasn’t extinguished it yet—I don’t even know if he can. But he’s definitely controlling it, stopping it from getting to me or down the hall to Rachael.
I’ve caught up to him now, and though the heat is nearly unbearable, I don’t move. I just stare, hypnotized as he manipulates the fire like it’s nothing more dangerous than a soft spring rain.
He holds his arms out in front of his body and the flames shoot up and out, into a fiery arc that meets directly above his head. And then he slowly, arduously, begins fighting the power of the fire.