Chapter 14: The Fire That Burns
The door to the dorm room didn’t so much open as it was annihilated.
Lysander burst through, the wooden frame groaning in protest. The cozy, sunlit nook felt suddenly claustrophobic, the flickering enchanted mirrors catching the wildfire in his lavender eyes. The scent of lavender and parchment was scorched away by the hot, metallic smell of ozone and kindling.
“What did you see?”
His voice was low, a crackling ember of a thing. He stood in the middle of the room, hands clenched at his sides, tendrils of heat wavering the air around his knuckles.
Rowan was seated by the window, a shadow against the ivy-draped light. He’d been waiting. A porcelain doll on the shelf beside him seemed to tilt its head, reflecting a sliver of his still expression. He closed the book in his lap slowly. “Lysander.”
“Don’t ‘Lysander’ me.” He took a step forward. The lace-trimmed quilt on the bed nearest to him began to singe at the edges, a brown curl spreading silently. “In the hall. You reacted. You saw something when I… when I touched her. You know why she screamed. Tell me.”
Rowan placed the book on the windowsill. His movements were deliberate, a counterpoint to the tremor running through Lysander’s frame. “It’s not my truth to tell.”
“Bullshit!” The word exploded, and with it, a lick of actual flame arced from Lysander’s shoulder, searing a black mark on the ceiling. He didn’t even flinch. “You’re hiding it. You’ve been hiding something about her since you gave her that stupid charm. You’ve been watching her like she’s a puzzle you need to solve. So solve it for me. What is wrong with her back?”
“It’s not about something being wrong with her,” Rowan said, his voice cooling the room by degrees. His own shadows deepened in the corners, a reflexive defense against the heat.
“Then what? Because I just made my friend, the quietest, most scared person I’ve ever met, cry out in a crowded hall and run away looking like I’d stabbed her. And I. Don’t. Know. Why.” With each word, his temperature spiked. A half-melted candle on a shelf slumped, liquid wax pouring over the edge. “All I did was touch her. So either I’m a monster, or there’s something you’re not saying. And I know I’m not a monster.”
The quiet stretched, filled only with the faint sizzle of the scorching quilt. Rowan looked at the black mark on the ceiling, then at Lysander’s tormented face. The truth was a stone in his gut. He had poked into a dark place, uninvited. He’d done it to help, but the road was paved with that.
“I looked into her past,” Rowan admitted, the words quiet but clear.
For a second, there was no sound. No reaction. Just the dead air before the explosion.
Then Lysander’s fire didn’t just flare. It erupted.
A column of raw, roaring heat burst from him, uncontrolled, a geyser of pure emotional feedback. It hit the ceiling with a thunderous whoomp, painting a sprawling, charred sunburst across the plaster. Tiny embers rained down, hissing as they died on the rug. The enchanted mirrors fogged over with soot.
“You did WHAT?” Lysander’s voice was a scream now, stripped of all its usual warm humor. “You looked into her life? You snooped? You stole her history like it was a library book she’d checked out?”
“It’s not like that.”
“HOW IS IT NOT LIKE THAT?” He was shouting, advancing. The room was an oven. The embroidered shawl on the chair began to smoke. “That’s her private, fucking pain, Rowan! That’s hers! You don’t get to just… just shadow-peek at it because you’re curious! Because you want to play the mysterious protector? Who gave you the right?”
Rowan stood up, finally, a dark shape rising. “The right? She’s in agony every single day. She carries it in her posture, in every flinch. Someone left a charm for her because they saw it. I saw it. I wanted to know what could fix it.”
“It’s not yours to fix!” Lysander raked a hand through his hair, leaving a faint smolder in the blond strands. “Gods, Rowan, have you ever just asked someone what they need? Or is that too simple for the great brooding problem-solver? You just take? You invade? What, did you rifle through her memories? Watch her cry in the dark? Get a front-row seat to the worst moments of her life?” His face was a mask of furious betrayal. “That’s vile. That’s a violation. I don’t care why you did it. It’s vile.”
Each word was a spark, landing on the tinder of Rowan’s own guilt. He felt his control slip, his own shadows rising off the floor like black water. “And your alternative is what? Watch her fracture piece by piece? Pretend not to see the way she walks like her spine is made of glass? You want to be kind, Lysander, but sometimes kindness is useless. Sometimes it takes knowing the monster to fight it.”
“So you become a different kind of monster to do it?” Lysander laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “You’re no better than the people who hurt her. You took something she didn’t offer. You think your motive is a magic shield? It’s not. It’s just another cage.”
The words landed, precise and brutal. Rowan’s jaw tightened. The shadows stilled.
Lysander was breathing hard, the fire around him guttering down to a shimmering haze. The damage was done—the ceiling a ruined map of his fury, the room smelling of a forge. He looked at Rowan, really looked at him, and the anger in his eyes began to morph into something more complicated, more sickening.
He was shouting at his boyfriend. His partner. The person he loved more than sunlight.
And he was shouting, with all this rage, on behalf of another girl.
A girl he couldn’t stop thinking about. A girl whose pain felt like a hook in his own chest.
The realization doused the last of his flames. The heat vanished, leaving a sudden, chilling vacuum. The singed quilt stopped smoldering.
His shoulders slumped. The fury drained out of him, leaving behind a hollow, confused exhaustion. He looked at the blackened ceiling, at Rowan’s closed-off expression, and then down at his own hands—the hands that had caused the first pain.
“Shit,” he whispered, the word ragged. “Rowan. I…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t know how. The moral high ground was ashes. He was a fire that had burned its own home.
He turned and walked out, leaving the door hanging open on its damaged hinges, stepping over the threshold into the cool, quiet hall. Leaving Rowan alone in the scorched, silent ruin of their room, surrounded by the smell of smoke and the weight of things neither of them knew how to say.