Astrid’s POV

Fire has a sound but people only speak about how it looks, the way it devours but no one ever speaks about the sound it made when it decides you are next, the low and hungry roar like laughter dragged through smoke.

I wake up sometimes with my throat tight and dry, lungs burning with a memory that refuses to stay buried, not because I was burned in it but maybe because I survived and that, perhaps, was the cruelest part.

I was standing at the gate of the council hall when the ...