"Let's go." Rowan's words were accompanied by a small tug on my hand that was meant to draw my eyes away from the house.
It failed.
"No, Not yet."
I tried to slip my limp hand from his, but his grip tightened.
"What- No, we don't have the time. We need to return before someone notices us missing. It won't be long if I don't show up for morning training."
My eyes remained unwavering, watching the flames in the windows grow. "No. You wanted to burn it. I'm not leaving until I've seen it be destroyed, until the only thing that's left is... ash," the final word came out as a fragile whisper that had a tear accompanying it
Rowan's grips loosened to let my hand slip free. I let it fall to my side.
"Okay," he conceded after a pause. "Fae fires burn hotter than human flames. It shouldn't be long."
"I know." I could see with my own eyes as the flames broke through the roof. It would be a matter of a few drawn-out minutes before it collapsed, dropping the structure in on itself to bury the bodies in the basement with the house where their horrors took place. With how bright the fire consuming it burned, there wouldn't be much left.
Good.
Rowan's shifted behind me as the silence stretched out between us, the distant sound of flames roaring and wood cracking and popping reaching our ears.
"I should have asked you if there was anything you wanted to grab first-"
"There is nothing in that house that I want." Not now that Ash was no longer there. "I want to see it all be burned to nothing." Including the memories in my head. Unfortunately, my best bet at achieving that was sustaining a serious head injury. Or growing old and senile. If I even made it that far.
Which had another question raising to mind.
"What happens to me if you die?"
"What?" He blurted out, caught off guard.
"You said our souls are tied, that if one dies it takes the other down with it. How?" Would I drop dead, or would it be drawn out and painful?
Understanding crossed his features. "Grief. The remaining half of your soul would lose the will to live. You'd stop eating, drinking, and sleeping until, eventually, your body gave out."
"So, slow and painful," I hummed in disappointment.
"Yes," he confirmed, not sugarcoating it.
A loud groan sounded, sending us both into silence as we watched the house's roof fall in on itself, taking out one of the side walls in the process. The new openings had oxygen rushing in to fuel the flames reaching for the clouded morning sky to burn brighter. They danced against the grey that the sky had lightened to since we had first arrived. With renewed vigor, flames continued to work their way through the wooden supports in record times. The remaining walls didn't take long to fall.
"Rowan?" I called to him when everything had fallen into the basement so only a burning pile of debris remained where a house once stood.
"Hmm?"
I swallowed hard, darting a tongue out to wet my lips. "Don't die."
"I'll try not to." His words seemed to hold an undertone of warmth that had me squirming.
Falling back into silence, Rowan didn't rush me, even as the flames began to die. He let me stand there and watch as flames danced over the ash-filled grave of a life I hated while I stood beside a portal that would take me to a new one I had even less hope of escaping... another life to be lived in constant fear.
