I burn, she thought. I’m burning. With the realization came that fear born of trauma, as she was forced, for a moment of frozen panic, to relive the worst night of her life. She’d been just a child then, forced to leave her mother’s side to save herself, only to watch her own father abandon them both. And then she was pinned by a fiery projectile, unable to breathe, her own scream sounding foreign in her ears.

Frantic now, she dropped to the ground and rolled about, determined to suffocate the fires that assailed her. Fires that refused to be doused, until, breathless, she stopped. She lifted an arm, horrified by the flames attached to it. That horror slowly drifted into something else, because it didn’t hurt. Her arm, in fact, was whole, unmarred by that which should have been melting the skin from her bones, crackling her flesh as it had all those years ago. For several long moments, she was mesmerized, hypnotized by the dancing, painless flames.

Some instinct snapped her out of her trance, and she dug for her pantleg, drawing it upward to reveal not a false leg constructed of metal and wood, but something alive and real and hers.

I am whole again, she thought. But how?

All at once, she felt that pain again, relentless pain as she bit down on the ale-soaked rag, her arms held firm by strong hands at each side. The sound of the surgeon’s saw biting into her leg was a thing of nightmares. Only losing consciousness had spared her from the rest. Except it didn’t end there. How could it? Because of her father’s choice, she’d lost a part of her that night. A part she’d fought tooth and nail for years to reclaim, driven by revenge.

A voice appeared from the nothingness, quiet and hushed, and yet as stalwart and certain a sound as she’d ever heard. You can burn it all to the ground, if you wish.

“Who are you?” she asked, casting her eyes about to locate the source of the voice. She was alone.

I am me. And I am you. Together we are more. Together we are fire. Together we are rage.

“I don’t understand.”

You will.

“Show yourself.” When the voice didn’t reply, she repeated herself, louder. “Show yourself! Show yourself, godsdammit!” And yet Bryony knew her demand was pointless, the presence having retreated somewhere she couldn’t follow.

She sat seething on the ground, that rage the voice had so aptly identified her only companion, the flames persisting for a long time, an inferno of roiling heat, their tendrils ravenous, searching for a target on which to release their fury.

But then, measure by measure, they faded. And in their wake: silence, numbness, failure. She felt empty, like she’d been hollowed out. What was she without that anger, that fire, that rage? Did she even exist?