Natasha's blade whipped out of her cloak so fast Ivan couldn’t register what had happened until it was already moving towards Brom’s throat.

  The old man was the biggest body in the room, the one whose hands had been under that counter for the last thirty seconds doing god knows what, and Natasha went for him first with the calm, deadly strike.

  Brom's hand came up from under the counter with a short wooden club, and he caught the first strike on it with a crack that split the air and sent splinters spraying across the countertop. The impact drove him back a step, his boots scraping on the floorboards, and for one stupid second Ivan thought, s—

  Natasha's second strike came even faster, swinging just under the club, and the blade opened Brom's forearm from wrist to elbow.

  Ivan heard Brom. A sound like a dog makes when you step on its paw, high and wet. Blood hit the counter in a thick line and Brom's fingers went slack on the club and it clattered to the floor behind him.

  Everything happened so fast after that.

  Rory pressed herself against him, which would have been a great moment in literally any other situation. Ivan grabbed Gwen by the collar of her ratty oversized jacket, and pulled her off her feet. The three of them crashed into a pile of old boots and rusted tools that avalanched off the shelf and onto the floor around them.

  "What the… get off me, you mother fu—" Gwen thrashed under his arm.

  "Shut up," Ivan hissed, and clamped his hand over her mouth.

  From the other side of the shelf came the sound of Brom roaring, it was a full-throated bellow of pain and rage.

  Ivan pulled Rory and Gwen closer behind the shelf. His heart was going so fast it hurt.

  Through the gap between the shelf and the wall, Ivan could see Brom's blood on the counter. A lot of it. Too much.

  The old man's arm was open to the bone.

  Brom wasn't dead yet.

  Ivan crouched behind the shelf with Gwen squirming under his hand and Rory's fingers digging into his coat. Brom hadn’t died simply because he had picked up a stool with his good hand and swung it at Natasha's head with the kind of desperate, ugly strength that comes from knowing you're about to die if you don't.

  Natasha ducked under the stool as it whistled past her ear and smashed into a shelf. Plates exploded. Natasha was already inside Brom's guard, her curved blade coming up like a whip cutting into Brom's side.

  Brom grunted and started to wheeze, his legs buckled, and he caught himself on the counter with his bleeding arm.

  "Stay down," Natasha said. Her voice hadn't changed. Still warm. Still smooth. She said it the way you'd tell a dog to sit.

  Brom grabbed a bottle from behind the counter and hurled it at her face. He missed her head, and the liquid inside splashed across a pile of old cloth on the floor.

  Natasha drove it into the countertop, pinning Brom's hand to the wood. The old man screamed. His good hand scrabbled at the blade, fingers slipping on blood, Natasha yanked it free and stepped back.

  A candle on the shelf nearest the spilled oil tipped. Ivan didn't see what knocked it, but the flame touched the oil-soaked cloth and the fire caught with a soft, hungry sound. Orange light erupted across the floor and climbed the nearest shelf.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Brom swung at Natasha this time in a wild, overhand strike that was slow and sloppy. She avoided it and stepped in, catching his wrist and cutting him again with a short quick slash that opened his shirt and the skin underneath. The old man folded. His knees hit the floorboards, and his forehead hit the counter on the way down, and then he was on the ground behind it, making sounds that Ivan wished he couldn't hear.

  Brom was bleeding from cuts that covered his entire body. The fire was spreading along the base of the wall, eating through dry cloth and old wood, and smoke was starting to fill the ceiling of the shop.

  Natasha wiped her blade on her cloak. She turned toward the shelf where Ivan, Rory, and Gwen were hiding, and Ivan felt like he wanted to vomit.

  And then his eyes found stone resting on the counter undisturbed.

  Brom had put it out at some point during the negotiation, but there it was, sitting on the bloodstained countertop in a small wooden box, red as a hot coal. Rory's stone. Ifrit's stone. The whole reason they were in this shop, in this district, in this stupid, fucked up situation.

  Natasha was between him and the door. But she wasn't between him and the counter.

  Ivan's legs were shaking. His hands were shaking. The smoke was getting thicker and his eyes were starting to burn, and behind him Rory was pressed against the wall.

  Natasha took a step toward the shelf.

  Ivan launched himself out from behind the shelf, sprinted to the counter, and grabbed the stone.

  It was like grabbing a coal out of a campfire, and it burned against his palm and his fingers closed around it in reflex, the pain locking his grip tighter instead of making him let go. His skin sizzled. He could smell it. The smell of his own hand cooking.

  He spun toward Natasha.

  She had stopped. Her blade was at her side, her body facing toward the shelf where Rory and Gwen were still pressed against the wall, her dark eyes found Ivan and the stone in his fist.

  "Hey!" Ivan's voice cracked. He held the stone up, his burned hand screaming, the red light between his fingers making his skin look translucent, and he backed toward the door. "Hey, you want this? You want the fucking stone?"

  "I'm leaving!" Ivan took another step back. His heel caught on something, and he stumbled but didn't fall. "I'm walking out this door with it! You want it, follow me! You want it, come and get it bitch!"

  Natasha's eyes flicked from Ivan to the shelf. To Rory. To the bleeding, gurgling shape of Brom behind the counter. Back to Ivan.

  Ivan's hand found the door handle behind him. He pulled it open. Smoke rushed past him into the street.

  "Come on!" he shouted. "Come on, come on, come—"

  Natasha moved faster than anyone Ivan had ever seen move, faster than the man in the alley, faster than anything that made sense for a human body to do, her blade coming up in a rising cut aimed at Ivan's stomach—

  Ivan threw himself backward through the door and into the street. His back hit cobblestones. The impact knocked the air out of him and the stone almost flew out of his grip but his burned fingers held, locked tight by damaged nerves and sheer animal panic, and he rolled into a sprint as Natasha came through the doorframe after him.

  Behind her, through the open door of the burning shop, Ivan caught one last look at Gwen scrambling out from behind the shelf, Rory dropping to her knees beside Brom's body, her hands pressing against the old man's wounds.

  Then Natasha was in the street, and the door was behind her, and Ivan was on his feet and running for his life.

  His hand was cooked-meat, it was blistering and oozing blood. The stone radiated heat against his ruined skin, hot and alive, and Ivan ran with it clutched to his chest because if he opened his fingers he wasn't sure they'd close again.

  The smoke from the shop was already rising behind him, a dark column against the evening sky, and somewhere back there Rory was trying to keep Brom alive and Gwen was doing whatever Gwen does and Ivan was running down a street in a medieval slum with a magic rock burning a hole through his hand and a killer on his heels.

  Ivan's lungs were already burning. His legs were already heavy. The stone was blistering hot in his fist, and the Fly Catcher kept pace beside his head, its ruby tip scratching golden words into the air that the wind tore apart before Ivan could read them.

  He turned a corner. His shoulder clipped the edge of a building and pain shot down his arm and he kept going, kept running, kept his legs moving because the alternative was stopping and stopping meant dying and dying meant—

  —meant Rory wouldn't get her stone back and would most likely die along with him. It meant Brom would bleed out on his own floor. Meant Gwen would be alone in a burning shop with no one coming to help.

  Ivan ran harder.

  His hand screamed. His lungs screamed. Everything screamed.

  Behind him, Natasha's footsteps kept their steady, patient rhythm on the cobblestones.

  Patreon.

  Discord.