25. Blaze

Ididn't need Alfie's description of the hag to know that was who I was looking at. Every part of her radiated evil and I wanted to shrink down and hide.

Okay, I did shrink down and hide. Couldn't even stop myself. I'd never been brave. I hated feeling exposed and threatened, and it made me want to run and hide.

As I became flame and hid as close as I could to the root of a tree, I realised that I hadn't had to do that in a long time. Hadn't felt threatened in a long time.

I had been safe here, inside this territory. I'd mostly stopped checking the borders to make sure nobody could get in after me. And I'd not felt anxious about anyone from the castle finding me in months.

Perhaps that was because Alfie hadn't told on me and nobody else came down to the woods, but really I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt frightened. Sometimes, when I was alone, I felt that way again. The memory of being hunted teased at my memory, especially when I was flame and couldn't filter my thoughts as well. I felt more. It was instinctive. And if I was afraid, I was afraid.

Only, I had been less and less afraid since I'd met my Alfie.

With a burst of courage I didn't know I possessed, I began to creep forward. The hag was getting lost in the gloom of the night and I didn't want to let her out of my sight. I wanted to know what she was up to.

I followed her to the boundary and watched. Well, she was at the boundary, and I was back at the woods, afraid to step out into the open. It was getting dark and I knew that my flame form would draw attention, even if I were small. I lingered on the edges, debating.

I couldn't bring myself to go after her. I was too afraid.

Even though I knew it made me a coward, I stayed in the woods and waited. The hag became lost in the shadows and I couldn't tell where she was or what she was doing. She could be doing anything and I wouldn't know.

I glanced around me and changed into my human form, shivering in my big coat that Alfie had given me. It wasn't really that cold, but I suddenly felt exposed and as though a hag would appear behind me at any moment with a spell to capture me.

At least if I stayed quiet, she wouldn't know I was here. There was no reason for her to suspect anyone else was inside the territory at all, since nobody but Alfie could give me away and I knew he wouldn't do that.

Movement to my right made me jump and I hunched down, trying to blend with the shadows. How good was a hag's eyesight anyway? Surely not as good as a shifter's? I should be hidden here, in the darkness.

The first I knew of the attack was the pain.

Instinctively, I burned into my flame form, fierce and hot. I rose higher and burned brighter. In my own light, I could see the hag, her long hair dripping slime and her dark cloak hunched around her.

"Got you," she said, and I felt the pinching around my wick, the only part of me that stayed solid while I was flame. It felt as though I were being cut in two by a pincer, and I flailed with the agony of it. I burned hotter, and smelled the scorching grass beneath me as my flames burned it, but no matter how hot I became, the grip around my wick didn't alter.

It didn't take long for me to grow weak. I had burned fierce and bright, but I couldn't maintain that forever, not without fuel. My light began to dim and I shrank down to my usual size, flickering and afraid.

The hag leered at me. Alfie had told me that he felt strange when she smiled at him, felt scared of what she would do, but I hadn't appreciated how creepy it was until that smile was directed at me. I saw her broken teeth and green flecks on her lips, and I wanted to cry.

"I knew I felt something last night. I knew something was nearby."

She stepped away from me and the brief moment of hope I had that she would leave me here vanished when I felt my body being dragged after her. She had pinched my wick, and was dragging me, and there was nothing I could do but follow. I was trapped.

"The dragons don't even know you're here, do they? That will serve me well, I think. If nobody knows you're here, nobody will miss you."

She was muttering to herself more than me, but I heard every word. The night around us was still, as though the entire territory had stopped breathing while the hag roamed the night. The wind was still and the trees were silent and there wasn't a sound of any creature at all, except the hag's footsteps and the gentle pop and crackle of my flame.

She dragged me around the side of the castle and I realised she was going to take me through the back door, to wherever she wanted me, and nobody would know where I was. Nobody would see us. I'd be completely at her mercy and nobody would know.

The hag dragged me into the castle for the first time and I realised she'd covered the barbed-wire spells in slime, dulling their senses. Lord Somerville wouldn't know that I'd passed through, and he wouldn't know that the hag had been coming and going at night, either.

I had never been so afraid.

That is until I heard the first shout, and then I somehow managed to feel more fear than I thought I could contain inside me. I was utterly, utterly terrified.

Because that shout came from Alfie.