Fire on Fire: A Koralie Story

Chapter Eight: Oralie

3211 words. *Awkwardly posts after months* *awkwardly retreats back into turtle shell* Please vote and comment and enjoy!

Oralie

There was one thing Oralie knew from the haunted look in Kenric's eyes and the trembling in his once-steady hands: he was not the man he used to be.

He looked terrible. His lips were chapped and his skin was too pale, like that of a ghost, and he was so thin that if she compared him to the man he was before, she almost wouldn't recognize him. He trembled when he walked, when he stood, when he tried to sit still. He trembled with the weight of his body, and he trembled when he tried to hold her hand, but he tried anyway. He flinched when someone spoke too harshly, or when anyone looked at him.

He was not the man he used to be, but she still loved him. She was so in love with him. Despite everything, he was still the most handsome man she'd ever met. When she'd found him — alive — she wanted to throw her circlet away and kiss him until she no longer could. She wanted to hold him so close she'd never have to let go.

And she could've sworn, with his emotions flooding under the surface, tangling with her own, she could've sworn he still — he still . . . loved her, too.

It didn't matter right now, not really. What mattered was that he was alive.

He was alive.

He was alive.

Barely. Maybe. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe this was her worst nightmare yet.

He'd been swathed in blankets and his thick black cloak, leaning heavily against the frame of the bed, but when he turned at just the right angle, weak gold light revealed swirling scars on his chest and remnants of burns reaching up to his jaw with greedy fingers, frozen in place on his skin.

She tried to imagine that familiar laugh in his eyes, the intensity of his touch. She tried to imagine those hands cupping three paper chain links, a shy smile on his lips.

But now that he was here, he felt like a ghost. Even her imagination, which had gotten so vivid with her nightmares in the past few years, could not do the impossible.

He barely looked at her, but it was obvious he was aware of her presence. His whole body angled towards her. His fingers twitched on the blanket when she shifted her weight or when one of her ringlets fell forward, like he was attuned to her just as she was to him.

Elwin's voice startled her out of her thoughts. "He's tired, but he refuses to sleep, and I think it's because he wants to be with you."

He stood in the doorway of Kenric's room, light flooding through the small crack of the open door, casting him in deep gold. It'd been twenty minutes or perhaps two hours since Oralie had left his room for his wound to be treated. She'd leaned against the wall, paced across the corridor, sat cross-legged next to Nisha, and stood back up only to do the same thing over and over, not necessarily in that order.

The fourth time she sat down next to Nisha, she'd announced, You look sad, like that was a perfectly appropriate thing to say to a Councillor. The girl searched through her satchel, pulling out various items Oralie didn't know what to make of. A little container of half-eaten food. A pair of fabric gloves. A vial of some liquid, metallic blue and viscous. A pack of chocolate.

"I'm not," Oralie said, perhaps a little too sharply.

Nisha's eyebrows rose, but she said nothing, merely offering her the chocolate she was snacking on. She shrugged when Oralie shook her head and folded her legs beneath her. There was a bit of chocolate smudged on her fingers, and a few too many bracelets on her wrists. She looked glaringly out of place and utterly unperturbed.