Chapter 7 A Conflagration of Dreams

It was fire. A sea of endless, roaring, phosphorescent gold.

Lillian stood behind the sliver of a closet door, the wood grain biting into her palms as she stared at the woman she knew best. Her mother was bound to a stake in the center of the square, a frail figure against the unholy purity of the Church's Holy Fire. The flames didn't burn red; they were a blinding, incandescent white that licked at her mother's hem like greedy tongues.

There was no screaming. There was only the silent, agonizing command moving on her mother's lips: Hide, Lillian. Don't come out. Don't let them see your eyes.

The crowd cheered, their praise for the Lord rising like a sickening incense. In the front row, the Inquisitors stood in their black robes, crosses held high, their faces as cold and indifferent as wrought iron. Suddenly, one of them turned his head. He had eyes like the deep, frigid sea. Indigo. Predatory.

Linus Kerr.

He walked toward her hiding place, the Cold-Iron chain in his hand rattling with a rhythmic, deathly clink. "Found you, little witch," he whispered, a smirk ghosting his lips. He raised a burning torch and thrust it directly into her world-

"NO-!"

Lillian bolted upright, a piercing, shattered scream tearing through the deathly quiet of the Tower of Silence. She gasped for air, her lungs feeling as though they were filled with ash. She was drenched in a cold sweat, yet her blood felt like molten lead. The psychological ghost-pain had triggered a catastrophic physiological overload. Her skin was scorching, the phantom heat of the dream igniting her resonance until she felt as if she were literally incinerating from the inside out.

In the darkness, the Cold-Iron chain thrashed frantically, striking the mahogany bedpost with a series of rhythmic, terrifying clanks. Lillian couldn't distinguish reality from the pyre. She felt the collar tightening, choking her; the air reeked of scorched flesh. She clawed at her neck, her fingernails drawing blood as she tried to pull out the torch that wasn't there.

"Let me go... please, don't burn me..."

BANG.

The bedroom door was thrown open. A dark silhouette surged into the room like a gust of winter wind.

Linus Kerr hadn't been sleeping. As a man haunted by a decade of dogma and bloodshed, the night was merely a different form of battlefield. When he heard the scream, he burst in to find a vision of pure, vibrating chaos. Lillian was huddled in the corner of the bed, her hands flailing at the air as if pushing away an invisible demon. She was self-destructing.

"Lillian!"

Linus lunged across the space. He seized both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them against the mattress with an iron grip.

"Let go! Get away!" Lillian shrieked. Her eyes, usually masked by a facade of clinical calm, were wide with primal terror, her pupils blown and unfocused. "Don't burn me... Mother... don't let them..."

Linus went rigid. The pyre. The childhood trauma. He understood instantly. For a witch, there was no horror more profound than the Holy Fire, and he-the Grand Inquisitor-was the living embodiment of that nightmare.

Lillian continued to thrash, her scorching body as slick as a fish as she tried to buck him off. Her knee slammed into his abdomen with enough force to wind a lesser man.

"Damn it."

Linus hissed the words through his teeth. He couldn't let her keep spiraling; the heat of the overload was beginning to damage her. He didn't hesitate. He used his entire weight to suppress her, nailing her into the plush mattress. His thighs locked hers in place; his hand held her wrists high above her head.

Absolute, crushing suppression.

His glacial chest pressed flat against her heaving, burning curves, forcing the air out of her lungs and replaced it with his frost.

"Look at me!" Linus roared against her ear, his voice a commanding rumble that brooked no defiance. "There is no fire! Lillian, look at me! You are in the Tower! There is no fire here!"

Perhaps it was the familiar, life-saving scent of his cedarwood. Perhaps it was the way his low voice pierced through the fog of the dream. Lillian's struggles gradually weakened. Her breath came in ragged, sobbing hitches as her pupils slowly focused, reflecting the hard, indigo face of the man looming over her.

No torch. Only Linus Kerr, his eyes looking impossibly deep in the moonlight.

"Lin... Linus?" her voice was a shattered thing.

"It's me."

Linus didn't pull away. He remained in that breathlessly intimate, dangerous position. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest like a trapped bird.

"Cold..." she whispered, her mind still hazy. "So cold..."

Linus let out a heavy breath. He released one of her wrists but didn't leave. Instead, he pressed his bare, icy palm against her forehead. Biting, glorious ice. Just like that night in the rain. Lillian chased the sensation instinctively, nuzzling her cheek into his palm, her tears wetting the spaces between his fingers.

"Don't go..." She reached out and grabbed the lapel of his silk robe, her knuckles white. "Don't leave me alone in the fire."

Linus froze. Reason told him he should walk away. He was an Inquisitor, not a nursemaid, and certainly not a pillow meant to soothe a heretic's nightmares. But seeing her like this-so fragile she looked as if she might break, watching the woman who usually stood with her thorns out now clinging to him like a hatchling...

Something hardened in his heart cracked.

"I'm not going anywhere." His voice was so raspy he barely recognized it.

Linus shifted, lying on his side and pulling her-duvet and all-into the iron circle of his arms. "Sleep."

He rested a hand on her back, patting her with a slow, clumsy rhythm. His freezing body temperature flowed into her steadily, neutralizing the roaring heat in her veins. Lillian curled into him, her nose pressed against the cold skin of his chest.

A few minutes later, her breathing became long and steady. Linus, however, was now wide awake. The body in his arms was soft, scorching, and smelled faintly of bitter herbs and a sweetness unique to her. To a man who had practiced asceticism for twenty-eight years, this was its own form of torture.

Then, Lillian shifted in her sleep. One of her legs hooked naturally over his waist, and her hand slid beneath the hem of his robe, seeking the coldest patch of skin against his abdominal muscles.

Linus sucked in a sharp breath, every muscle in his body turning to granite.

"...Fuck."

He gritted the curse into the darkness. It was going to be a very, very long night.