Three days passed since Oralia first awoke in an unfamiliar cottage. Three. Blasted. Days. And still, the unsteady tremble in her hands persisted. Thanks to the uncontrollable tremors, even the most mundane of activities had become a challenge. Eating, in particular, topped the list. The few times she managed to get a spoon to her mouth without spilling its contents down the front of her tunic were for naught, as the food came back up almost as quickly as it went down.

And, as if body trembles and the constant, pendulous swing between ravenous and nauseous wasn’t enough, her sleep was plagued by unrelenting nightmares as well. Each time Oralia closed her eyes, the fire elemental’s death replayed over and over. No amount of meditation or concentrated thought helped. Her dreams ended the same regardless–trapped within a ring of red and orange crackling flames, choking on stomach acid as the putrid stench of singed hair and flesh slowly filled her blistered lungs.

Worst of all was the toll her recent inflictions had taken on her temper. Her former sense of patience was gone. Oralia found herself short, snippy, and acting so utterly out of character, she feared her mind was ripping apart at the seams. Her team graciously took it all in stride. Too graciously, which revulsed her even more. The lack of back-talk, the pitiful glances any time her hands spasmed beyond her control, the way everyone suddenly volunteered for extra work outside of the cottage–it was belittling in the worst of ways.

Briony’s homestead was situated several miles outside of the village of Lonebrook, hidden so deep within the trees, the realm soldiers had yet to find her. Briony insisted Oralia’s team would be safe so long as no one did anything to draw unwanted attention. In spite of the warning, Rali, the unofficial face of unwanted attention, convinced Briony to take her closer to town. They were there now, with Dewpetal in tow, scouting the outskirts of Lonebrook for whatever it was Rali was looking for.

Mul and Lingon were quick to follow Rali’s lead and slipped away soon after, promising on each other’s lives that they would stay out of trouble. For reasons unknown, their errand involved taking Kalihn with them. Kalihn normally avoided the brothers like the plague. Evidently she wanted to avoid the cottage even more, as she readily accepted their invitation to leave without any of her usual bellyaching.

“Moonflower,” Sascha’s voice disrupted Oralia’s internal stewing, “is something upsetting you?”

Oralia ceased drumming her fingers absentmindedly against the linen tablecloth. She was seated at the table tucked into the corner of the balmy kitchen. Sascha was across from her, laboring away on another broth. This one smelled faintly of ginger, garlic, and green onion. “Not at all. Why do you ask?”

“You’re grumbling under your breath over there like a badger in heat.”

What a horrifically descriptive comparison. At least he had the decency to call her a badger and not a sow, she supposed.

Sascha had his back to her, scraping a handful of finely minced herbs from the cutting board into the cauldron hanging over the fire. He normally hummed while he worked, but today his carefree noises were strangely absent. “Are you sure there isn’t something eating at you?”

“A dark entity.”

Oralia heard the exasperated click of his tusks from all the way across the room. Had her answer been overly-literal? Of course. But honestly, Sascha should have known better. Ridiculous questions deserved equally ridiculous answers.

Sascha kept his eyes on his work as he used a broad, wooden spoon to stir the pot’s simmering contents. “Anything else?”

“Nothing at all.” As if on cue, her left hand spasmed, causing her fingers to curl painfully in on themselves. Oralia slammed the flat of her palm against the table and held it there. She gave her right hand the side-eye, warning it to stay in line else it would suffer the same fate as the left. “Do not even think about it,” she cautioned. “I am not above drawing blood.”

Her gaze returned to Sascha and she discovered he was staring over his shoulder at her with both eyebrows raised high on his forehead and mouth held slightly agape.

“What?” Oralia demanded.

“You’re the one threatening your own appendages, Moonflower. You tell me.”

Oralia released her hand from the table and curled it into a tightly clenched fist. “I have, admittedly, not been feeling like myself lately.”

“I noticed,” Sascha assured her. “Which is why I bribed the others to make themselves scarce for the evening. It’s time to stop tiptoeing around the issue and address it head on.”

Dear gods help her. She’d been a little crankier than usual, yes. But surely not anything intervention-worthy! Also, why hadn’t any of the others warned her? At least given her a head start. Useless legs be damned, Oralia would have made it work. She sank lower onto the wooden bench as she studied the exit from the corner of her eye, all the while wondering if it was too late to slip out the back door and catch up to Rali and Briony. She could drag herself the whole way if need be.

Sascha turned to face her, wiping his gargantuan hands on his flower print apron as he did. His expression fell the moment he saw her face. “Why do you look like a child about to be reprimanded?”

“Because I feel like I am about to be reprimanded.”

“I mean, if that’s what you want.” Sascha narrowed one eye as he wagged his spoon at her playfully. “Eat all of your dinner or it’s straight to bed.”

While he had meant it as teasing, she was seriously considering the straight to bed option.

Sascha withdrew a set of wooden bowls from the cupboard and held the pair in one hand whilst ladling hot soup with the other. He delivered both bowls of steaming broth to the table without spilling a drop. He offered Oralia a gentle smile, under the false assumption that a little reassurance would be enough to keep her from bolting the moment he sat down.

“It’s just me, Moonflower. I won’t say a word if you drop the soup. There’s always plenty more.” A look, caught somewhere between genuine concern and playfulness, pulled at the corners of Sascha’s eyes as he eased onto the bench beside her. “I could try spoon feeding you again if you wanted. You might get more in your mouth if you refrained from biting me this time.”

She refused to let his charm soothe her fraying nerves. “Stop trying to flirt with me. You said there was an issue to be addressed. Seven realms, get it over with before I die of suspense.”

Oh gods. Too harsh, Oralia realized as the smile slipped from Sascha’s mouth and transformed into a pained grimace. Moisture started to collect around the edges of his sorrowful eyes. Oralia reached for his hand, the words already curling over her tongue, when he beat her to it.

“I’m sorry,” Sascha said.

“No, do not be.” She winced. “That was uncalled for.”

He flipped his hand over and clasped hers with a gentle squeeze. “I sent the others away because I have some groveling to do. The soup is my very pathetic attempt at an apology. The start of one, anyway.”

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And here Oralia thought she could not possibly have been anymore confused. She should have been the one begging for forgiveness, not him. “I do not follow.”

“I was reckless and put you in danger,” he started. “I was the one who sent Kalihn with you to fetch water the day of the attack. She was annoying me. I thought it would be more fun if she annoyed you instead. My carelessness nearly got you killed.”

Oralia waited for more. When Sascha’s agonizing admission stopped there, she was forced to ask, “Is that all?”

“I understand if you want space. I can sleep in another room, or outside if you would prefer–”

“No need. You are forgiven.”

He blinked several times, struggling to come to terms with her response. “Just like that?”

There wasn’t anything to forgive as far as Oralia was concerned. She’d merely said it to stop him from making a fool of himself. Oralia reached for her bowl and raised it to her mouth, fighting to control the unsteady tremble in her hands. The broth was light and savory, with a pleasant kick of heat at the end. “Ellisar used to try to kill me all the time. Kept me on my toes. She came to the eventual conclusion that I am simply too stubborn to die.”

Come to think of it, Ellisar might have actually said stupid, not stubborn.

“Oralia, please,” Sascha said. “You’ve been in a silent rage for the last three days. Will you stop pretending that everything is okay between us? You’re allowed to be mad at me.”

Half of that statement was true. Not the critical part, through. Oralia set the bowl back onto the table, fighting the sudden urge to roll her eyes. “Sascha, I am not mad at you.”

“You threatened to disembowel Lingon earlier.”

“Because he was chewing with his mouth open like a damn horse!” Oralia said. Unfortunately, Sascha’s resulting stretch of silence left her with no other choice but to explain herself. “I am mad at my circumstances. Not you.”

“Well you should be mad at me.”

“Should I be?” Oralia repeated, feeling the floodgates of rampaging emotions begin to open. No, no, no, not now. Not here. Hold it together!

Unfortunately, like the rest of her confounded body, her tongue rebelled, spilling every volatile emotion churning within her tightening chest. “My own body is betraying me. And you think I should hold you accountable for that? Should I blame you for the nightmares as well? Why stop there? I could blame you for the way I wake up each morning weaker than the last. Or how my strength does not recover the way it used to? Is that what you want to hear, love? That this is all your fault somehow?”

“You almost died.”

“I almost die all of the time!”

He wrapped one burly arm behind her back and tugged her closer. The tightness felt good, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Regrettably, instead of simply accepting her forgiveness and fetching her another bowl of soup, the big lug kept trying to assuage his guilt. “How can you say that? How can you dismiss it so casually like it’s nothing?”

“Because the alternative is not any better. I will let you handle the dwelling for both of us.”

Unfortunately, he did just that. “This is twice now I thought I had lost you.”

Twice that Sascha knew of. Oralia decided against bringing up all the other near-death experiences she hadn’t bothered to tell him about.

Sascha buried his face into her neck. His hot breath tickled her skin as he spoke. “I’m not sure anyone else would have survived what you did.”

Oralia hadn’t spoken in depth about what had transpired with the witch. Other than a short, not-entirely-accurate description, she avoided even thinking about it. Not that that was successful considering she still saw Grettie’s face each time she closed her eyes. She tried to play it off as a joke but her words rang hollow instead. “As I said, too stubborn to die.”

“Will you please take this seriously? Briony says they pulled you out of a fire, Oralia. Most people don’t survive being engulfed in fire.”

She supposed now was not the time to argue semantics and point out that she had been inside the wall of fire, not engulfed by it. Additionally, the flames had already extinguished by the time help arrived. Alas, stating ‘they found me in a smoldering ring of ash next to the burnt corpse of the deranged witch that tried to kill me’ would not have helped her case in the way she wanted.

Against every instinct urging her to turn this into a heated debate, Oralia bit back the poison on her tongue and leaned into him. She reached up and threaded her fingers into the curl of Sascha’s beard, feeling every shake and tremble of his unsteady breath. “I wish I could tell you that this was the last time. That, from here on out, I would avoid every risk to cross my path. But you and I both know that would be a lie.”

Wordlessly, he squeezed her tighter.

“Assisting Lonebrook is going to put me right back in the path of death and danger,” Oralia reminded him.

“You haven’t had your meeting with Novera yet. It’s not too late to back out and give retirement a try.”

A harsh laugh caught within Oralia’s throat. It was woefully inappropriate given the utter lack of humor in her next words. “For you, maybe. As Rali would say, ‘that ship has sailed’. I would not fault you for leaving, however.”

“Why would I leave?”

“Because I have already made up my mind.”

“You act like it’s your job to save everyone. It’s not. You are one person.”

“Believe it or not, but I am capable of being selfish as well. I am not trying to save everyone. I am trying to save myself.” Oralia peeled back her tunic to reveal her collarbones. As over-dramatic as the gesture may have been, she had every right to be as dramatic as she wanted. Her opportunities to embrace the melodramatic were running regretfully short. “The infection has spread, Sascha. Time is not on my side. Any hope for a cure lies in the hands of Novera Belfast. That said, she cannot help me if she is dead.”

At the very least, the reason for her underlying rage was becoming clearer now. Whatever Oralia did, no matter the choice she made, death awaited her at the end of each turn. The question was now whether she chose the short path, and fought, or opted for the slightly longer one, and spent her remaining time sipping soup with Sascha whilst her body slowly wasted away.

There was no choice, as far as Oralia was concerned. Death by the sword was preferable to the agony of being consumed alive by a dark entity. “I can either fight or I can run,” she said. “There is a small chance I survive both the battle and the illness. Running, on the other hand, only postpones the inevitable. A few months, maybe. A year, tops. That is not a life I wish to live.”

Sascha fell painfully silent. Fresh tears welled within his eyes as he slowly came to terms with the gravity of the situation. Oralia’s attention swept back over the rest of the kitchen, unable to hold his gaze any longer. Unlike his hand, which she was currently squeezing to a pulp.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“I knew something was off the moment I regained consciousness,” Oralia admitted. She had had her suspicions since the beginning, of course. But those had been easy to ignore, to shove into the far recesses of her mind in hopes that they would remain just that, unsubstantiated concerns. “I chalked it up to exhaustion initially. But with a new ailment cropping up each day, I fear the incident with the fire elemental has accelerated the severity of my condition.”

Her next words were the most painful to say. “I am sorry, Sascha. I understand if this is too much to ask of you.”

And there it was: the ultimatum she had unknowingly been fighting for the past three days. Perhaps the lashing out had merely been a last-ditch, subconscious effort to drive the others away, Sascha included. After all, just because Oralia had accepted her fate, didn’t mean the others had to follow suit. They could go on to live perfectly happy lives without her.

“Seven realms, woman.” Sascha threw both arms around her and pulled her close, burying his face back into her neck. “Stop being ridiculous. You know what my answer is.”

Tears streamed freely down Oralia’s face. Somewhere along the way she’d forgotten how to breathe. She took in a sudden gasp of air, only now realizing how dry her throat felt.

“Did you think I was going to say something different?” Sascha demanded.

“Yes? I am being rather pigheaded right now.”

“That we can agree on.” Like his voice, Sascha’s arms shuddered with each shaky breath. “Just promise me you’ll be more careful. Let someone else sacrifice themselves in the face of danger every once in a while, yeah?”

A weak smile pulled at Oralia’s mouth. “But I am so good at it.”

“The best,” he agreed. “I believe the run-in with the fire elemental has met your yearly quota, however. And, seeing as I cannot possibly stomach another heart attack, I think it’s best you retire from that aspect of martyrdom.”

Oralia held two fingers into the air. “On my honor, I swear to never go near another fire elemental so long as I live.”

“Good.” Sascha gave her another loving squeeze. “Now, I believe you mentioned something about nightmares? Want to tell me about those?”

“Fuck no. I am nauseous enough as it is, thank you.”