The first time I saw him, he was dying in a ditch.
Which, frankly, seemed like the most reasonable thing someone could be doing in this gods-cursed kingdom.
The forest stank of iron and singed pine, thick with the kind of silence that usually comes before something explodes. I was ten steps off the main road, chasing a gut feeling I didn't have and ignoring the curfew I didn't care about.
Then I saw him. A boy. Maybe my age. Maybe older. Bleeding so violently the moss was turning black beneath him.
And everything in me said: walk away.
So obviously, I didn't.
Because I'm not heroic. Or kind. Or even curious, really. I just don't feel much of anything. Never have. Which means I make excellent decisions, free from that inconvenient thing called conscience.
"You're ruining the forest," I said flatly, staring down at him.
His eyes opened. Barely. Gold. Glowing. Wild.
Like fire trapped behind glass.
Then—
Boom.
A burst of heat knocked me back. The trees screamed. Flames erupted around us in a perfect ring.
Magic.
Only this wasn't normal magic. It wasn't the polished, repressed kind you get at the Academies. This was raw. Undiluted. A storm with skin.
And he—he was the storm.
I should've run. Screamed. Got help.
Instead, I stepped into the fire.
And it bowed to me.
Snuffed out like a candle.
His breathing evened out instantly, as if I'd pressed pause on whatever hell was devouring him from the inside.
He blinked. Confused. Alive.
"Who the hell are you?" he rasped.
I tilted my head. "That's a long story. But you're bleeding on my boots, so try not to die yet."
He stared at me like I was the impossible one.
But I wasn't the one with wildfire leaking from my veins.
I didn't know it then, but I'd just made the single worst decision of my life.
I touched him.
And the moment I did, I felt something for the first time in seventeen years:
Pain.
Not mine. His.
Grief sharp enough to slice bone. Rage that boiled in my throat.
And beneath it all, a heartbeat.
Not his.
Mine.