TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xvii. ...

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ECHO CADDEL WAS BURNING.

But then again, so was everything else.

She opened her eyes on a fiery world, the heat of the flames ebbing and oozing into her skin and sticking the flimsy fabric of her shirt to her sweat ridden body as it heaved and writhed against the burning air.

(Shirt. Shirt. She shouldn't have a shirt. She'd gotten rid of it.)

How she'd gotten here, Echo couldn't say. What was before when there was now, when now was so catastrophically hot and the smoke was black and cling to her like a second skin. Echo coughed once. Twice. Something stuck in her throat and tore at the flesh like a knife.

(How had she gotten here?)

The Crow Club was unrecognisable as it was smothered by the flames. The walls, the ceiling, the floors. Even the tables of Three Man Bramble (which at this point were so doused in desperate tears and tactfully spilt drinks that Echo assumed they were fire retardant) were engulfed by red hot hell.

And she was alone. She was never alone - not here. There was always company (wanted or unwanted was a thing of irrelevancy) and rarely did Echo go where her friends did not. But they were nowhere. Not here. The harrowing, blazing emptiness of the Crow Club's floors sent chills down her spine the flames could not quell.

"Jesper?" Echo called. No response. "Inej? Wylan?" When not even that worked, Echo let out a tentative, "Nina?"

(They wouldn't answer, she knew that truely and ignored it all the same.)

But if there was a reply, Echo could not hear it. She could hear nothing above the roaring of the flame.

Run, that was her first thought when all the dread had gone. Echo learnt long ago that panic gave way to nothing but confusion and dulled senses and a slowness that anchored the body into the ground. So she'd fight the hysteria and forget the thousand reason why she hated the flames. A thousand familiar, red-headed reasons to flee.

Run.

The flames moved quickly. She, confined by her own leaden limbs, did not move quicker. They shrouded the only exit, the big wooden doors. The same doors that, only months ago, she'd stood at with Jesper, laughing at the drunkards as they stumbled and endeavouring to stumble the same once the night was over.

Kaz had never been pleased with their antics. At least now, there would be no more of that.

Echo knew the Crow Club like she knew the books - infallibly, committed perfectly to a memory that would never fail her. But everything was different in the flame. Fire changed it. It painted the world in a scarlet and orange hue and skewed the proportions and left the redhead stumbled round in a circle she had walked a dozen times and had somehow failed to notice.

Fire was closing in and Echo could only breathe through her blackening lungs for so long. She couldn't be lost. Not here. Not in her home.

(Here. Here. Where was here? Not where she had been. Not where she should have been going.)

The redhead took a step backwards and stumbled over air.