Lux [h.s]

ten

"What the hell did you do?!" Cora shouted.

How could he do it? How could he set a home on fire and stand there, watching it burn, not feeling any remorse?

"I didn't do anything." He diverted his gaze from the fire and calmed down the mare with a soothing stroke and whispered words.

Cora scoffed. "You asked for an address and I gave it to you, and now that house is going up in flames!" She clenched her fists. She wanted to scream, she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

Harry gave her a hard look. "It isn't my fault," he said, sharply but lowly. "I didn't do it."

Cora hesitated. "You didn't set it on fire?" She wanted to believe him, she wanted to find the lie in his voice. But there was none she could hear, nothing but tamed anger that would not break free.

"I didn't."

She glanced back at Beilyn. Wind spread through the trees and streets below, making the fire rise higher towards the stars. It would not stop. She felt lost. She wanted to exonerate him, she wanted to find fault in him, she wanted both and neither because she wanted to think he wasn't behind it, but needed to find a culprit. Fires didn't rise that high on accident—someone had started it. But what if Harry wasn't to blame? What if she was being like every other human out there and pinning what was only a terrible, but very human, event on the only fay around? She refused to be like them. It was wrong.

She frowned. "Do you promise?"

Harry seemed to relax. "I promise."

Cora searched his eyes for a shadow, but found none. "Okay." She was nodding, now, the fire in her heart put out. "I believe you." He would not lie to her. He'd never lied to her.

The reassurance was short-lived, though, because the fire was still raging beneath them and she could still feel its heat through the cold of the autumnal night. Cora still felt responsible, though she could not tell why. It was the address she'd found, Harry had been there. It was a miracle he hadn't been swept away by the flames as well.

She remembered the voices, the gasping woman on the ground, her scream when the building collapsed. "Who lived there?" she whispered. "What did you want from them?" Was it the woman, or whoever was trapped inside?

Harry's gaze fell to the grass at their feet. "It was an old friend," he shared through clenched teeth. He let out a long breath, that didn't ease the tension in his muscles.

"An old friend?" Cora mused, side-glancing at him. "You don't seem to be old enough to be classifying people as old friends, you know?"

"We crossed paths more than a decade ago. I'll call it an old friend."

"How old were you then?"

"That's none of your concern." Harry turned around and ran his fingers through the mare's black mane, dismissing the conversation. "I can't bring you back to the city tonight, it wouldn't be safe."

Cora crossed her arms when a new breeze scattered the red flowers in her hair. "Are we sleeping here?" Under the stars, in front of the very greenwood she was terrified of?

"Not here." He took off his coat and put it on her shoulders. She hadn't even realised she was shivering. He clasped his hands on her arms and swiftly turned her around. "There."

Cora looked down. Her back to the flaming house, she could now see the light of a fire in a large clearing nestled in the hills, in the depths of the greenwood. The wagons she'd seen time and time again were parked in a circle, and Cora's eye could catch the flutter of movement down below.