My Soul To Keep

I was four years old the first time I touched a dying man and he got up again.

My mother made me promise never to let anyone see. She was right about that. She was right about most things, and then she died, and the last thing she ever told me was a name I'd never heard.

There's a fire in me. It's been there since before I was born, and it isn't mine, and it's killing me---three hundred years late and nineteen days fast.

Only the Barons can teach me to control it. Fallen gods. The kind that eat girls like me to make the hunger stop.

So I walked into Hell's Gate on my own feet and offered them a trade.

The cold one claimed me. Called me 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥. Never my name.

The beautiful one wept gold and begged me not to let them love me.

The silent one asked me what I wanted, and I didn't have an answer.

And one of them was kind to me. Only one. From the first night.

That's the one I should have been afraid of.