right next to me." A knot of dread tightened behind Claire's breastbone.
"A girl?" He nodded, only the slightest movement of his head. His mouth was drawn tight, his face rigid with regret. "She only could have been about ten or twelve years old, out in the field that morning calling for a missing cat. She came upon me struggling in the dirt and asked what she could do to help me. Because of the injury to my throat, I had no voice. I couldn't have warned her away, even if I had any idea of what would happen to her if she got too close to me while my body was still deadly with heat." Claire closed her eyes, understanding now. She placed her hand against his cheek, having no words to express the pain she knew he must have felt for what he'd done to the child. Pain it was clear that he felt even now, all this time later. "I crawled away from the field like an animal, which is what I felt I was.
Worse than an animal, to have destroyed someone so innocent and pure. I found shelter in a cave so I could heal. Once I was recovered, I fled. I couldn't stay... not after what I'd done. And in the time since, even though many years passed without the fires returning, I still lived with the fear that I might hurt the people I cared about the most." His fingers were light in her hair, tender as they brushed her brow. "Leaving you had never been in my plans. After I came back and heard you'd been mated to Roth, I stayed in Berlin and told myself you were better off with him. That way I could be sure you would always be safe from the death inside me." "I've seen your power, Andre. I've seen what it can do. But it hasn't hurt me---you haven't hurt me." "Not yet," he replied, his tone dark. "But now it's stronger than it ever was before.
It was reckless of me to summon the fires the night my Darkhaven was attacked. It's more deadly than before, and each time the fury comes alive in me, it burns hotter than the last time." Claire saw his torment, but instead of rousing her sympathy, it stirred a biting anger. "Is your vengeance worth all of that? Is anything worth killing yourself in order to have it? That's what you're doing, Andre. You're killing yourself with this awful power of yours, and you know it." He scoffed sharply, a wordless denial. "I'm doing what needs to be done. I don't care what happens to me in the end." "I do," she said.
"Damn it, I care what happens to you. I'm looking at you now and I see a man who is destroying himself with fury. How many more times can you come out of the flames without losing yourself to them? How long before the fire consumes your humanity?" He stared at her for a long moment, his square jaw held tight. He shook his head. "What would you have me do?" "Stop," she said. "Stop all of this, before you no longer have the ability to end it." The logic was so clear to her. He had an obvious choice here: Let go of his rage and live, or continue his pursuit of vengeance and perish--either by the power that she could see was destroying him, or by the war he was purposely stoking with Wilhelm Roth. "There is no stopping it, Claire. I've come too far to turn back now and you know it. I've pushed Roth too far these past few nights and weeks that I've been hunting him down." He exhaled a clipped sigh and his mouth curved into a humorless smile. "Ironic, isn't it? That what drove me away from you then is now the thing that's brought us back together, such as it is. But what you said earlier is right. You do deserve peace now... and I should leave you to it." He moved close and pressed his lips against her forehead, then dropped a tender kiss on her mouth. He drew back, then turned and started to walk away. Claire watched him start up the lawn. Her heart broke a little with every step he took. She couldn't let him go--not like this. Not when every fiber of her being was crying out for him to stay.