Isla
Fire forgets nothing. It never does.
It does not forgive. It does not blink. And it does not beg.
It has been three days since Rael broke the veil and brought me back to life.
The day they bound him, the fire in me screamed so loud I thought the sky might tear.
It was dusk in the Temple of Flame. The sky wore a red robe, soaked in warning, and the village below pulsed with drums. I had been locked in the cleansing chamber for three days—bare feet pressed to obsidian stone, hands bleeding where I had scratched at the runes on the wall. I had screamed his name until my throat was raw and my body trembled from the truth they called sin.
Rael had broken the veil.
And I had let him.
He had come to me in the night—not as the guardian assigned to watch, but as a man who bled warmth i
