The Girl with the Fire Heart
Chapter 52

The boy takes the final steps to the edge of the stage, and he lifts his hands and places them gently on Valentina’s cheeks. He speaks for the first time this evening.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For your pain.” Valentina feels her flames stutter with the whispered words. She feels her knees buckle but she forces herself to remain standing. The little boy releases her and moves towards Damon next. He whispers briefly to him before moving to the girl and the man with the green eyes, whispering quickly to each of them, never saying more than a few words.

His words latch on to the most hidden parts of her. For so long, she has felt like she could never belong anywhere, that her desperation for acceptance was an illusion she would be forced to endure for the rest of her life. Standing here now, she knows she has been completely and utterly wrong. She feels the weight of the young boy's words even more.

Finally, he steps back. The boy nods at each of them in turn. They each nod back. Then, almost as if the words he had spoken to them were never uttered at all, he turns and runs back to his parents. It’s almost comical to Valentina the way Elliot and Ava pick up their son and scurry out of the room. It’s at that moment that all the remaining guests spring into action and rush out of the room in a stampede, desperate to get away from the chaos of these four rare elements.

The four of them remain where they stand, frozen in time and Valentina's thoughts run rampant, thinking back to the life she had lived mere days before. She used to think she was just some girl with an element she never asked for. She used to think she was the poster child of someone you should fear. She used to think a lot of things about herself, she realizes.

But her fire is not a burden. Her fire has always been a gift. She knows this now more than ever. The perplexing encounter with the young boy plays in her mind on a loop until Valentina remembers that he apologized f0r her pain, not her journey. Again, Valentina feels her knees buckle and for a split second she thinks she just might fall down this time.

That's when Valentina feels the girl beside her grab her hand and turn her so that the two young girls face each other. The girl opens her mouth, closes it and then takes a step closer to Valentina so they are practically chest to chest with one another. They stand this way for a long moment, neither girl speaking. The silence seems to be comforting to them both. Then the girl speaks.

“I wish we would have met under different circumstances and that maybe, if all of this would have turned out differently, we could have done this right,” she stops speaking. Her vague statement makes Valentina momentarily weary and sensing Valentina's discomfort, the girl shuffles backwards.

"I thought we were the only ones," she says, gesturing to the man standing close behind her but not touching her. "I thought we were the only ones that existed. I know the legend. I know there were four elements. I know all of this and yet, I never once considered that you two could be a possibility. Not until this weekend."

She takes a deep breath. Valentina senses she's steeling herself for what she is about to say next. The girl releases one of Valentina's hands, then the other, taking a step back and leaning into the tense man behind her.

"There's no easy way to say this," she starts. She takes another deep breath.

“We are the last lineage of the four rare elements." She lets her statement hang in the air before she continues speaking. "There is an army of men and women from all across the continent that have banded together to see us to our deaths,” she says.

Damon and Valentina look at each other wordlessly, fear and confusion flooding their veins. The man with the green eyes drops his eyes to the floor, his lips turning down into a frown. The man raises his hand and lightly cups the girls waist. The move sparks curiosity in Valentina but she says nothing, too afraid of what else the girl standing before her must say.

The room around them becomes eerily quiet and it’s then that Valentina realizes the four of them are the only people in the room. It feels as if the entire home has gone dead silent. Each of their elements respond to the shift in the atmosphere. Each of their elements seem to be warning them, preparing them for something they cannot readily or easily see is wrong.

“How do you know?” Valentina asks, simply to break the silence. Valentina regrets asking the question as soon as it leaves her lips. Later, when all is said and done, Valentina will remember the way the girl looked, how it will haunt her for the rest of her life.

For the briefest of seconds, the girl looks broken. But in the next moment, her eyes grow cold and determined, her shoulders pushing back and she even stands a little taller too, as if the taller she is, the less any of this will hurt her. Then she says it.

She says, “Because they are here tonight and they are going to hunt us down unless we can get to the Old Realm and find the tombs.”

Her words seem to suck the last bits of hope out of the small group. Each one deflates just a little. The realization that they are in this together and that they are alone in whatever comes next seems to mock them where they stand.

Without warning, the house erupts. The screams of vengeance are deafening, coming from the entrance into the ballroom.

THE END

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