Planting my hands on the doorframe, I walked through into the living room and found Maddie sitting near a lit fire. The room was warm. This room was never warm.
Maddie’s tiny body was sitting on the floor, back facing me. But when I approached, her head whipped round and her mouth parted.
My stomach tightened. She looked so perfect sitting by the fire. Her black hair was hanging down one side of her body, but in the flames her green eyes were bright.
“Flame…” she whispered and her eyes dropped to looked over my body. My legs felt weak, my body feeling too heavy. I needed to sit down.
Using the wall, I staggered forward, until I sat opposite Maddie and slumped to the floor.
Maddie sat up straight and asked, “Do you feel better?”
My skin felt tight and numb from the cold. And the flames had calmed—I felt better. I nodded my head, and Maddie’s eyes narrowed. “You look cold.” I didn’t respond, and inching closer, her long dress dragging on the floor, she said, “Are you cold, Flame?”
“Yeah.”
“But you must bathe like that to stop the flames in your blood?”
“Yeah.”
Maddie sighed, and rose to her feet. “I have made you soup. You need to eat to regain your strength.”
I watched her go into the kitchen and put soup in a bowl. Then she brought it back to me and placed it by my side. But my arms felt too heavy to move, to pick it up, the warmth from the fire causing my freezing muscles to tingle with pain. Like shards of glass were scraping across my skin.
“Flame?” She sat before me, at my feet and pointed at the bowl. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah,” I rasped and looked to the bowl, but I could barely move my arms. My fingers bent, and then straightened as I tried to move my arms. I stared at my hands wanting them to move, but I was too tired.
Then Maddie, without saying a word, shuffled to my side and lifted the bowl. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me, and then the bowl. Her expression had changed, but I wasn’t sure what was wrong.
“What are you feeling?” I asked. Maddie froze.
Dropping her gaze, she stirred the spoon in the bowl and said, “It feels… it feels nice being this close to you.” Her lip curled at the side and she added, “And you are clean. I can see your skin.” She looked up at me through her long lashes and shrugged. “You are you again. You look… like my Flame.”
My body tensed. “Your Flame?” I asked, making sure I watched her face closely. I didn’t want to ever look away. I wanted to see her say it again.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Like this, without the blood on your skin, you are my Flame, again.” Maddie stirred the spoon again and said, “Can I feed you?”
“Yeah,” I replied and braced for her to move closer.
Maddie shuffled on her knees but she stopped just inches from my legs and said, “I will not touch you. I would never give you cause to distrust me like that.”
I relaxed, and a second later Maddie lifted the spoon to my mouth. The hot soup hit my tongue and I groaned. Viking normally made me my food. I didn’t know how to cook anything. But it never tasted like this.
Maddie was silent as she fed me the soup. My empty stomach suddenly felt full as the hot liquid ran down my throat.
And I watched her. I watched as she was calm at first, but the more I studied her, the more her hand began to shake. When the last of the soup was gone, she dropped the spoon to the bowl, and lowered her head.
I frowned.
Maddie’s small chest lifted with her breathing, but it was getting faster and faster. “Thank you,” I said. Maddie’s head snapped up.
“What for?”
“The soup,” I replied and her head lowered again. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t looking me in the eye.
“Maddie—”
“Do you believe that I am a sinner, Flame? Do you look at me and believe that the devil created me to tempt men?”
Instant anger raged through my veins at her question. My jaw clenched as I shook my head. “Fuck no,” I growled, my hands coming back to life as the flames that ran under my skin began to ignite.
Maddie placed the bowl down on the floor. “All of my life I was cast aside, along with my sisters. I was paraded through the commune as a child and the people were told by the elders that I was evil. That my looks; my hair, my skin, my eyes… my body, were perfectly crafted by the devil to tempt men to do evil things.”
I focused on breathing through my nostrils, to keep calm. But I was losing my shit. I couldn’t get the image of that fucked up commune from my head. Of that cunt Moses holding Maddie’s hand, that little hand that was mine, as people looked at her and hated her.
Maddie’s eyes held mine, and she quietly asked, “Do you think me beautiful, Flame?”
My heart slammed in my chest. “Yeah. The most beautiful,” I answered.
Maddie nodded, blushed, then asked, “Do you think I am evil?”
Unable to contain my anger, my hand fisted and I hit out at the empty bowl. It crashed along the floor and smashed apart.
Maddie stiffened, but inhaling a deep breath, she continued to speak. “Neither do I… now. But for years I believed it to be true, and I would question all of the time why God had singled me out, to spite me. Because I did not feel evil. And my sisters,” Maddie’s voice cracked and her eyes filled with water, “my sisters, to me, were not evil. They were perfect. Yet all of commune despised us. They would spit upon us as we walked by. And they would recite passages of deliverance to us, trying to rid the devil from our souls.”