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“Son of a bitch,man!” Slátra hissed right at the same time as a crash on the stove. A large burst of light that only flames could create filled the shadowed room at the same time Slátra yelled. Most of the shadows in the room were gone, with only a few corners tinted dark. Hluti’s amber eyes flared, tight lines by his eyes and his lips thinning.

I turned back toward Slátra as Rune straightened and kept himself between me and the flames from the skillet. My heart was in my throat, and my stomach dropped as I watched them grow higher and spread. The smoke detectors went off. The shrill ring echoed and made me want to claw at my ears because of the way my eardrums were throbbing.

Rune grabbed my upper arm, dragging me by his side as we headed out of the kitchen.

“I wanted a chicken, you asshole!” Slátra yelled as he traded spots with Hlíf, sticking his hand in the flames to grab a breast. He hissed and clicked his tongue through the pain as he snatched up a burned piece. His green eyes showing the reflection of the fire met mine, and he waved his chicken before he bit into it. “Should have seen yourself jump ten feet out of your skin,” he said with a laugh and followed behind.

Before I rounded the corner from the kitchen, I caught Hluti’s usual scowl slip as he watched Slátra reach into the flames. He stood frozen in his spot, staring at the fire growing out of control with a look of fear. The way he stared at it made it seem like he was experiencing the most unbearable pain of his whole life. Hlíf took a step toward Hluti with an outstretched hand and concern on his usually stoic face.

The flames reflected in Hluti’s amber eyes held a story of something that had happened to him long ago. He blinked, glancing at me, but we didn’t meet eyes before I was dragged out of the room.

As I passed by another shrill smoke detector, the others combined with it until it felt like broken glass in my eardrums. My heart thumped harder against my chest and my gut twisted into knots as I kept seeing the look on Hluti’s face as he stared at the fire. Even as Rune dragged me down the few stairs after he scooped up my bag and out the front door, I still couldn’t shake away the image.

Something happened to him, and it involved a fire.

ChapterEight

As we stood outside in the storm watching the fire, I was soaked to the bone, my hair plastered to the sides of my face. Thankfully, it had stopped hailing before we ran out here. Strangely, the orange glow of the flames rose higher into a halo as my friend’s house burned. The flash of lightning illuminating the night every few seconds was a stark contrast to the inky night with the glow of the fire. Thunder clapped every minute that rolled into another one.

I blinked furiously to clear my vision as the wind blew the raindrops into my eyes. I barely noticed Hluti and Hlíf strolling out of the house. Hluti’s head was ducked, which wasn’t normal for him. He was a proud man and never showed any weakness. Hlíf kept close to him, his hand on his friend’s shoulder, reminding me of what Rune did for me by touching me to keep me here in the present, and not lost in my thoughts. Not going numb like I was now.

My eyes strayed from them back to the flames that burned away years of memories. All the wonderful things that happened in that house.

And the awful, painful things.

The long nights of drinking and drunk dialing ex-boyfriends. The movie and game nights with friends. Birthdays and holidays.

That house was her late parents’.

So many generations . . . so many memories.

And because of me and my choices, it was gone. All wiped out.

Rune grabbed my hand, entwining our fingers and bringing me out of my grim thoughts. Warmth flooded through me and brought with it the string of emotions that were dulled until now. The sorrow hit the hardest as I watched the flames licking along the outside of the house. Even over the storm, I still made out the roar of the fire and the crackle of the embers as they popped.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat as I turned to Rune. His eyes were shadowed in the night, but the orange glow of the flames and the lightning highlighted the blues of his iris. The way he gazed at me held comfort and an eerily deeper understanding, like he knew on a personal level what it was like to watch lifetimes of memories burn to ash.

A pyre burning higher than anything I’d seen, with a woman in the middle lying on a pile of wood like a bed, played in my mind’s eyes like a memory. Burning flowers and bottles of mead surrounded her.

I’d never seen this before. It wasn’t my memory.

I drew my eyebrows together as I blinked faster, wanting to blame the rain for needing to.

Rune had been around for a very long time, what with him being a god and all. But it all connected back to me. To us and being soulmates. And to us as we made memories together in this lifetime.

Did I remember one of his mem—

“Is there a store you prefer to go to?” Rune asked, bringing me out of my racing thoughts.

I stared blankly as I thought of the best place to go in the middle of the night. Or at the butt-crack of dawn. However you looked at it.

“I guess the only place that will be open is Walmart,” I said as I raised my eyes back to his.

He squeezed my hand as he inclined his head. The glow from the flames reflected in his eyes, giving them the same eerie look as inside the house. That and the way Estrid’s green eyes danced with the embers in the fireplace in my dream. It sent a shiver down my spine.

They really were celestial beings and not human, like what I was used to seeing on a daily basis. Did that mean there were other supernatural people mingling with the rest of us humans?

I pondered that for a moment, trying to remember people I’d come across that gave me the same shivers and thoughts about their eyes not looking right. But I couldn’t remember much. I struggled with remembering what I ate for breakfast, so there was no way I would remember every person I’d met that stood out to me.