Chapter 24: The fire that cleanses
Samarra pov
I am on fire.
Heat pours through me in violent waves, thick and molten, like lava forced through veins too small to contain it. Every pulse is too much. Too bright. Too alive.
Everything inside me burns.
I try to scream but the sound never leaves me.
The fire does not feel foreign.
It feels ancient.
Familiar in a way that makes my bones ache.
Something is inside me.
Something powerful.
It rushes from my heart down my arms, floods my lungs, coils around my spine. My fingers twitch somewhere far away, but I cannot feel them properly. I cannot move. I cannot open my eyes.
I am locked inside my own body while it burns.
And then—
there.
Behind the right side of my ribs, something pulses.
A place the fire does not reach.
It is cold there.
Cold and thick and wrong.
The heat surges around it, but never through it, like water forced to bend around stone buried deep in a riverbed.
It presses inward.
Heavy.
Festering.
Something dark clings there, rooted into bone. A shadow that refuses to dissolve.
The lava rushes harder, trying to burn it out.
The darkness answers.
It spreads in thin, creeping tendrils beneath my skin.
Not killing me.
Claiming space.
Somewhere far away, voices echo.
Muffled. Distorted. Like I am underwater and they are speaking from the shore.
“…too much blood…”
“…stabilizing…”
“…you were distracted…”
Catherine.
Sharp. Controlled. Angry.
Another voice answers.
Lower.
Rougher.
Derrick.
Even like this, I know him.
I try to move toward that sound but my body will not obey.
The fire surges again, bright enough to blind me from the inside.
It hurts.
It hurts so much I want to break apart just to escape it.
The cold thing behind my ribs pulses once.
Satisfied at not giving up its place.
The voices fade.
Time stretches.
I drift.
When I surface again, the air feels different.
Colder. Thinner.
The house is quiet, but there is a weight beside me.
A familiar scent, honey and heat and home.
He is there.
Even without opening my eyes, I know Derrick is right beside me. His presence is something I have known too long, too deeply. It pulls at me, anchors me, holds me here when everything else is trying to drag me under.
The fire in my veins has slowed.
Not gone, but not as harsh as before.
His fingers brush mine.
Careful. Hesitant. Like I am something fragile.
Like I might shatter.
His breath shakes.
And then—
“Come back to me, baby.”
The words do not echo.
They sink straight through me. I've never heard Derrick call me baby before. It's always mouse or Sam.
“I don’t know how to exist in this world without you.”
Something inside me cracks.
The sound of him breaking is worse than the fire.
I try to reach for him. Inside my body I strain, pushing against whatever is holding me down, but my fingers won't move, my eyes won't open.
The darkness behind my ribs pulses again.
Jealous.
Possessive.
The fire surges in response.
My chest aches. My lungs feel like they are trying to breath underwater.
I want to answer him.
I want to tell him I am here. That I am trying to get back to him. That I didn't mean to leave. That I don't hate him.
But the darkness drags at me, thick and heavy, like it is rooting me in place.
His forehead presses against my hand.
“I need you to choose this,” he whispers. “Choose me.”
The fire flares.
Brighter.
Hotter.
The cold resists.
The two forces collide inside me, heat and shadow, neither yielding.
I am caught between them.
Between staying and slipping.
Between him—
and something else that wants me just as badly.
“Please,” he whispers.
“I love you.”
And for the first time—
the heat reaches just a little closer to the cold.
Not enough to destroy it.
But enough to make it recoil just slightly.
I hold onto that. Derrick loved me. He's not mad. He's not disappointed.
The burn dulls slightly and sink again.
The fire does not consume me.
It tears me open.
—
I am kneeling in sand.
The heat is blistering. The air is dry enough to scrape my lungs raw. My skirt is stained dark with blood.
My hands are slick with it.
A man lies before me. Armor torn. Chest split open. His breathing is shallow, uneven.
His blue eyes find mine. Pain lives in them.
But so does something softer.
“You should not be here,” he rasps, coughing up blood.
My voice answers him.
But it's not quite mine.
But it comes from me.
“I am exactly where I am meant to be.”
My hands glow.
Warm light spills from my palms as I press them to his wound. Flesh knits slowly beneath my touch.
He does not look away.
Not once.
As if I am the only thing holding him here.
As if he already knows me.
The world fractures.
—
Night.
He stands outside a tent.
Cleaner. Whole. Alive.
His golden hair combed neatly, a slight stubble forming at his jaw. But it is unmistakably Derrick.
He holds something behind his back, awkward in a way I have never seen.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I laugh. Softer than I have ever sounded.
“I do not trust soldiers.”
He reveals a handful of white desert flowers.
Impossible things that grow where nothing else can
“I had to fight three men for these.” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You did not.”
“I absolutely did.”
Our fingers brush.
Warmth blooms so suddenly, so deeply, I forget how to breathe.
The world fractures again.
—
Inside a tent.
Candles. Maps. Quiet.
He's kneeling in front of me.
A nervous smile tugging at his lips. His shoulders are set in that way I know they are when he's serious.
“Marry me.”
There's no elaborate speech, or perhaps I've missed it and only dropped into this critical moment.
My hands tremble from the understanding of what loving him will cost. A soldier during a time of war. It's bound to end in suffering. Yet before I can think better of it-
“Yes,” I whisper.
The moment seals.
Then shatters.
—
The door of the small cabin explodes inward. There is so much screaming. Most of it mine.
Warm, rough hands grab me from my bed. I am dragged across the floor.
Fabric tears as two soldiers grab at me. I try to fight. I scream his name until my throat tears.
“Derrick!”
Then pain rips through me in painful thrusts. My arms are pinned to the floor but I never stop calling to him.
The memory breaks into pieces.
Pain. Laughter. Darkness.
Then—
silence.
The door bursts open again. For a moment fear threatens to take me out, thinking perhaps they have returned
Derrick drops to his knees beside me.
The sound he makes is not human.
He gathers me carefully, like I am already breaking apart.
“Stay with me,” he begs.
I lift my hand, cradling his face.
“Josephine, on a blood moon.” I whisper.
The words feels like a promise.
The world fades.
—
Fire surges.
The darkness recoils.
—
The vision shifts to a cliff.
An angel kneels, wings torn open to bone.
Blood stains the rock beneath.
A child approaches.
Small. Barefoot. Unafraid.
Her hand touches him.
Light blooms from her hands, just like in the vision before
Wings heal, knitting back together like nothing had happened.
His eyes open.
Blue. Filled with fear and hope and love.
Always the same.
—
It shifts again.
A magnolia tree.
Petals falling like snow. A little girl laughs from where she's playing under the tree.
This time—
it is my laugh.
Derrick watches from a stone bench nearby.
He looks completely unchanged. Not a day younger than he is right now.
Catherine stands beside him.
“We cannot keep calling her 'the child'. She needs a name.”
He does not look away from the girl.
“Samara,” he says softly, a faint smiling tugging at her lips. “The one who brings joy.”
"You do not want to name her Jo-" Catherine adds but is interrupted.
"No. She gets to choose her own fate. Not some prophecy."
—
Another shift.
A car door opens.
He lifts a sleeping girl into his arms.
Her head falls against his shoulder.
He does not look at the house.
Only at her.
Like she is home.
—
Another shift.
Derrick is sitting with a younger version of myself underneath the big oak tree.
He's reading a book to me. I can't hear which one but I see him smiling.
Seasons start changing.
I grow. But he remains unchanged.
—
A clearing.
Derrick is trying to teach me to fight or at least defend myself.
“I don’t want control!” she shouts.
Power cracks through the air.
Pain flickers across his face.
“You will need it.”
—
The memories begin to overlap.
Desert.
Fire.
Blood.
Magnolia.
Cliff.
Forest.
Him.
Always him.
The soldier.
The angel.
The same man.
The same eyes.
Watching me.
Loving me.
Losing me.
Finding me again.
I float above it all.
My chest tightens.
Am I dying?
Is this what happens when everything inside you empties before it ends?
The darkness pulses behind my ribs.
No.
It does not want me gone.
It wants me claimed.
The fire answers.
Fights against the darkness trying to spread.
This is not just memory.
This is something choosing, forcing me to become one or the other
The images blur.
I try to wake but nothing happens.
And for one terrifying moment—
I see myself.
My body on the couch.
Pale. Still.
Derrick beside me, holding my hand, wiping tears from my face with hands that are not steady.
He says something I cannot hear.
The fire surges.
The darkness pushes back.
Between them—
a war.
A choice I do not understand.
The memories shatter.
And I fall back into myself.