Deny Me, Dragon King novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Claimed

The wall of fire reached me and did not touch.

I felt its breath on my face, and the hair on my arms crisped, and I shut my eyes.

Torren's hands tightened on mine.

Nothing burned.

I opened my eyes.

The black wall had stopped a finger's width from my cheek.

Inside it, something gold was moving.

It rose from the pit under our joined hands, clean and bright as sunrise, and pushed.

The oil fire leaned away from me.

It bent, hissed, and rolled the other way.

"The Flame knows its own," the Oracle's cracked voice rang across the court.

The oil fire went where the gold pushed it.

It ran across the black stone, over the rim, up the steps like a thing hunting, and I saw where it was going.

It was going to the woman who had thrown the torch.

Hesper stood in her white robes with her hands half raised.

Her mouth was open.

For the first time since I had met her, the High Seer of the Flame Temple screamed.

The fire took her hem and went up her skirt in one bright rush.

It did not kill her.

It burned the white to rags, and singed her braid to a stub, and ran over her hands in blisters, and then it climbed to her forehead.

The gold mark on her brow came loose.

It lifted off her skin, a small bright flame, and sailed up over the heads of the lords.

It hung for a breath above the pit.

Then it dropped into the white fire where it belonged, and was gone.

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