1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Grehafen

Evonalé recoils from the man who shoves his way into her office, control slipping for long enough that her fire sets his sleeve on fire a moment before Kitra gets him to drop his knife.

Evonalé yanks the fire away from her husband's friend, too late to save the other woman from burns, and Kitra lets out a stream of what sounds like invectives in her native tongue. Directed at the attacker, Evonalé hopes, but that burning just earned her some, herself.

With the hand not holding her cup, Jenna plucks a small jar from a pocket, opens it, and holds it up for Kitra even as the Plainskin woman and the attacker smash into the door.

Kitra yelps.

Jenna just sips her tea, ignoring the violence mere arms' lengths away—

Wait. Magic catches Evonalé's attention, magic that stretches out in threads from Jenna, that wraps around the attacker like a mother's embrace... Except something feels very wrong about that magic, almost a reek of death.

The man calls curses on half-demon warlocks as something shifts in the air, the scent of death strengthens, and a face that haunts Evonalé's nightmares steps out a faery portal.

Years ago, Evonalé inadvertently killed her father by grabbing the elves' Crystal, making clear to the magic that he'd stolen the Bynd that tied to the elves' Crystal. The last she'd seen Drake had been as he attacked her, trying to grab that Crystal back.

Aidan had stopped him.

Aidan had killed him.

Drake is dead.

He is also indisputably here.

Evonalé snatches her magic, struggling to breathe.

"Oh for the love of— He's not—"

Jenna's cross tone grabs Evonalé's attention somewhere between her fire setting Drake alight and her mind processing Jenna's "That's just his body. Drake passed on years ago."

But those words don't make sense.

The aflame Drake—not-Drake?—barrels into the attacker, shoving him out of their way—and spreading the fire to a tapestry, though usually it would be doused by now.

Evonalé stares blankly at the now-orange flame, her bones feeling like ice. Jenna yanks her arm and grabs Kitra and pulls.

They're outside before Evonalé realizes why the fire isn't going out. Why it's growing.

Aidan isn't dousing it.

Aidan isn't here.

Evonalé gasps. "I need to stop it!"

Jenna tugs her back before can take any more than a half-step towards the smoke, the heat that are growing with the sounds of coughing and cursing and fleeing. "You can suffocate! If you can stop it, you can do it from here. Or you can let it burn and help me keep your friend alive."

What?

Evonalé blinks a few more times, then directs her attention down to Kitra, who's so pale she doesn't look Plainskin and has dark blood and white bone sticking from one arm.

"Hold her shoulders down. If she has any chance of keeping that arm—never mind her life—we have to get that bone clean and back where it belongs. Now."

Evonalé forces herself to keep her feet, forces herself not to fall on Kitra and injure her further, but how on earth is she supposed to hold the larger woman down?

She looks between the castle and her husband's cousin's wife. Buildings and belongings can be replaced. Limbs and people can't.

She takes a deep breath. "Okay. How?"