Through the Fire (Daughter of Fire, #1)(7)



My gaze met his and with the memories of that day of my discovery fresh in my mind, a swirl of questions raced through me. There was one that burned through me brighter than any other. “Do you know who killed my mother?”

He winced at my words and shook his head sadly.

“It was the Rain though, wasn’t it?”

He looked down at his feet. “It’s possible. If she was . . . like you, then she was dangerous.”

“Why? What made her dangerous?” I growled. “Was it because she could do this too?”

I pulled the card that he’d written the address of the warehouse on and held it between my fingers, forcing heat into it. Pins and needles pricked my fingers as the fire within me built until it was almost painful. I focused the heat into the card forcing it to smolder and burn. Curls of smoke rose from between my fingers, and he stood mesmerized by the flames as they consumed the card.

Once the fire I’d set licked at my fingers, threatening to burn me, I dropped the flaming card to the ground and stamped it out under my shoe.

As if releasing the card broke some spell over Clay, he recoiled from the sight of me. The small action was enough of a reminder of his reaction to the heat in my body two years earlier. My mouth curled into a sneer.

“You’re a killer, from a line of killers,” I said. “Nothing will change that. Obviously, I made a mistake coming here today.”

His frown deepened as his gaze snapped back to mine.

Without waiting for him to say anything else, I turned to leave.

“Don’t leave.” He rushed to my side and grabbed my wrist before I could go.

My heart skipped. Despite the years, I was able to repay some of the pain he’d inflicted on me back onto him.

I met his sorrow-filled gaze, and guilt weighed down my limbs. I didn’t want to feel guilty; he didn’t deserve my remorse. I was only giving him back a fraction of the agony I’d endured at his hand. I didn’t seem to be able to control any of the reactions I had around him though.

Instead of allowing my guilt to overtake me, I reminded myself of the reasons I was right to hate him.

It didn’t stop my traitorous body longing to have him pressed against me again.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “The work we do . . . that I did. It’s about the lives we are able to save, not the creatures we kill. That’s why we do it.”

I flinched at the word “creature.” Is that what I am to him? “How can you justify murder? Who gave you that right?”

He failed to understand the rhetorical nature of my question, or he understood and answered it anyway. “It started with Noah’s flood. Warriors with special training were given forty days and forty nights to wash away all the evil from Earth the way the rain rinses clean the forest. That was the legend of the Rain—the beginning of our time. Since then we’ve been around to destroy the stray creatures that have wandered back out of the darkness.”

There’s that word again. “I am not a creature,” I hissed, unable to continue to listen to his excuses and justifications.

His expression softened. “I’m sorry, Evie.”

“Sorry for what exactly?”

His gaze was downcast again, and his palm found the back of his neck. “I told you. For what happened that day. For who I am.”

I was dangerously close to giving in to the part of me that longed for nothing more than to forgive him for everything he was apologizing for, but I couldn’t. What would he have done if I hadn’t left Ohio?

Before I had a chance to say anything more, Clay spoke again. “I know you might not believe me, but I never told my family about you.”

It was almost as if he’d issued the words as a magic wand to fix everything that had happened between us. As if he could erase his cruel words and my broken heart with one good deed.

How dare he show up after two years and act like he didn’t shatter my teenage heart just because he didn’t tell his family about me! “Why not?”

My question seemed to put him off-guard. “Because they would have killed you if I did.”

The casual way he spoke of my death made it easy to set my jaw and will away all emotions beside the healthy dose of fear that was a constant undercurrent running through my body. “Don’t I deserve to die just because of what I am?” I jeered.

His brow knitted together, and his mouth mashed into a hard line that turned down at the corners. “No . . . I . . .” He sighed. “I don’t want that.”

“Who cares what you want? What gives you the right to pick and choose who gets to live? Why do I get that honor but my mother didn’t?” I asked, my voice rising by almost an octave as I was filled to the brim with thoughts of my mother, of my father’s grief, of everything that the Rain had cost my family. So much had been lost because of Clay’s beliefs and the organization he was raised in. How was I supposed to be okay with any of that? My body quivered even as it heated as the thoughts rushed through me. “She didn’t get to live even though she never hurt anyone!”

As if he’d been barely suppressing his emotions for our whole conversation so far, my ire sparked its counterpart in him, and he exploded. “I don’t think that I have any right! I was raised to believe that everything other deserves to die. There is part of me that still thinks that I made the biggest mistake of my life in not killing you on sight!”

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