Chapter Ten — Fever of Smoke and Silver
1028 Words
The poison had left my blood, but not my bones.
It lingered like an echo, curling through my limbs in waves of heat and shiver. My skin burned one moment, froze the next. Every breath rattled with the heaviness of fever, as though my body resented being alive at all.
Sleep dragged me under again and again, but it was never the deep, merciful kind. My dreams were filled with smoke.
In them, I stood once more in the courtyard of Ravaryn’s fortress. Snow lay heavy on the stones, but it did not silence the shouts. Soldiers ringed the square, eyes bright with cruel hunger. And in the center, on his knees, was the witch doctor.
His robes were torn, his crystal shattered in the snow like broken stars. His hands were bound, but his head was high, his expression calm.
Malrik stood above him, eyes wide and fevered. “You spoke with my enemies,” he accused, spittle flying from his lips. “You spun your prophecies for them, not me. Traitor.”
The witch said nothing. He only turned his head slightly, and somehow, in the chaos, his eyes found mine.
I wasn’t supposed to be there—I had been dragged, forced to watch, powerless. But he looked at me as though it mattered. As though my being there meant something.
And he smiled.
Not mockery. Not defiance. Something quieter. Acceptance.
Then steel flashed. His blood painted the snow black. The soldiers cheered, and I screamed until my throat bled.
The vision burned me awake.
I gasped, drenched in sweat, the sheets clinging damp to my skin. My heart raced as though I had run for miles, but the only sound in the chamber was the low crackle of the fire.
My body trembled, and I pressed a shaking hand to my lips.
He had died for nothing in that life—killed by Malrik’s endless suspicion, branded a traitor when he had been the only one loyal in truth. If the tyrant had smelled the faintest whiff of rebellion, he tore down everyone in reach, guilty or not.
The witch had been guilty of nothing more than knowing too much.
I had watched it happen once. I would not again.
This second life was not only mine to change. His fate had to be rewritten too.
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The chamber door creaked softly, pulling me from the spiral of my thoughts. I forced my eyes open.
He was there.
The witch.
His dark robes whispered as he entered, the faint glimmer of his crystal tucked under one arm. His presence filled the room not with noise but with weight, as though he carried a dozen secrets in his shadow. His eyes, black as polished stone, fell to me.
“You’re awake,” he murmured, voice smooth and low.
My throat ached. “Why… are you here?”
He moved closer, placing the crystal on the table by my bed. It pulsed faintly, threads of smoke curling within, as though it had a heartbeat of its own.
“Lord Kael summoned me,” the witch said. “He wished me to check on you personally.”
That jolted through me. Kael.
In my last life, it had been Malrik. Malrik, greedy for prophecy, sending the witch to pry at me while I was weak. Malrik, who saw allies only as tools, and when he feared their sharpness, broke them.
But now… Kael.
Something tight inside me uncoiled at that truth, though I crushed the feeling before it could take shape.
The witch sat on the edge of the bed, dipping a cloth into cool water, wringing it out with practiced hands. He pressed it gently to my brow. His touch was steady, impersonal, but his gaze lingered too long.
And then it slipped.
“Selena,” he murmured.
The cloth nearly slid from his hand. My heart lurched.
I froze.
“What… did you call me?” My voice was hoarse, but it cut the air like a blade.
His eyes widened just slightly, but then shuttered again. He set the cloth down, smoothing his expression. “Forgive me. A slip of the tongue.”
But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.
Selena.
That name belonged to my mother’s voice, soft in the night when she thought no one listened. It was a name I carried only as a child, buried with her when she died. No one here knew it. Not even my father.
No one.
Unless he remembered too.
Unless he had walked through fire and death and carried his past life into this one, as I had.
I searched his face, but the mask had returned. Calm, unreadable, shadowed.
My pulse thundered. Could it be? Could he too be reborn?
I should have asked him. The words trembled at the edge of my lips. Do you remember? Do you carry it too?
But the walls had ears. Malrik’s suspicion seeped into every stone. Even if he wasn’t listening, I couldn’t risk the wrong word at the wrong time.
So I swallowed my questions, burying them deep.
“You shouldn’t call me that,” I whispered instead, my voice trembling. “Not here.”
His eyes softened, just for a heartbeat, something fragile slipping past the mask.
“Then forgive me,” he said quietly. “But some names are too hard to forget.”
The fever heat no longer felt like poison—it felt like fire curling under my skin. My chest ached with something sharp, restless, dangerous.
I turned my head slightly, breaking the look between us. “Rest,” I murmured, though I wasn’t sure whether I spoke to myself or to him. “Just… rest.”
The cloth cooled my brow, the crystal pulsed faintly at my side, and in the silence that followed, one truth pressed into me heavier than the fever:
If he truly carried the same curse I did—rebirth, memory, a second chance—then the witch doctor was more than an ally.
He was a secret fate had returned to me.
And secrets, I knew too well, could be salvation.
Or ruin.
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- Writer
