The Girl with the Fire Heart

“Brielle was helping your father at the farm,” he starts again. And that’s when Valentina knows. She knew this morning, too, didn’t she? It was why she had thought of her friends this morning.

Valentina closes her eyes. The ringing in her ears stops, forcing her to hear every detail of what Damon is telling her.

“She’d gone into the fields to pull the weeds out of the ground. According to your father, he instructed her to leave the weeds as the weather wouldn’t hold up long enough for her to complete the job. She assured him she would be fine and was out the door before he had a chance to stop her. She never saw them coming. There were men out in the fields that had been watching your father's home and had incorrectly assumed that Brielle was you,” Damon stops speaking.

Valentina can practically feel his sorrow for her. She tightens her fist around the doorknob. Behind her closed eyelids she can feel tears building slowly and steadily and she pleads with her tear ducts to quit while they’re ahead. Damon starts speaking again, softer this time.

“She was ambushed. Some men came rushing from the woods and attacked her. They shot arrows and threw stones at her before beating her unconscious. Your father heard the commotion and chased after the men but the damage had been done,” as he speaks, his voice gets lower and lower, like he can’t stand the thought of loudly causing Valentina any pain.

“When?” Valentina asks. Her voice cracks at the tail end of her single worded question.

Damon sucks in a breath. Valentina asks her question again, this time with more force.

“When, Damon?” she demands.

“This morning,” he tells her, his voice thick with emotion.

Valentina’s head drops and one tear falls. She feels the water behind her eyes pressing harder into her eyelids and fights to keep the rest of her tears at bay. She fights to keep the sobs locked away, unwilling to make any of this real with her grief.

Valentina senses Damon reaching for her but she takes a step away, knowing if he touches her, she will unravel before his very eyes and she has done that once already. That was one too many. Damon follows her, taking another step towards her.

“Say the words, Damon. Tell me plainly,” Valentina says, her voice betraying her faux confidence.

“She’s dead, Valentina. She died this morning. She managed to tell your father that she was sorry and that she hoped you would agree to marrying me. Your father told her you had, and then she died. She died knowing you would be taken care of Valentina. So, please, let me take care of you,” Damon pleads.

Without warning, Valentina feels Damon’s hand wrap around her wrist, turning her to him. And then the tears begin to fall. Before she knows it, the sobs break free and she is gasping for air, feeling every inch of grief spread through her body and into her mind leaving no internal place untouched.

Valentina has known grief. She and grief agreed a long time ago that he would not come to see her until it was time for her own death. Somehow, grief has bested her because here she stands, wrapped in Damon’s arms with grief's touch infecting every part of her. Her legs shake beneath her and silently, Damon falls to the floor with her, letting her cry for her friend.

She doesn’t know when it happens, but at some point, the tears stop flowing and her sobs quiet down into sniffles. She doesn’t move from her spot on the floor, well really her spot in Damon’s lap. He scooped her into him when he shifted to sit on the floor with her. Her head rests in the crook of his neck, tilted just enough that she can feel his lips brushing against her forehead in silent comfort.

A thought enters her mind.

“Do you know who did it?” she asks, her voice just barely above a whisper.

Damon’s body tenses underneath her. She lifts her head and looks into his eyes.

“You do, don’t you?” she asks.

He tears his eyes away from her and stares straight ahead. She sees his jaw is clenched and she knows he doesn’t want to tell her. Valentina can feel it in him. Her element blazes in her necklace and she knows if she doesn’t ask, she will spend the rest of her life wishing she had. Valentina rests her head on Damon’s shoulder, closing her eyes once more and opens her mouth to ask the dreaded question.

“Who killed her?”

Valentina waits for his reply. She waits long enough that she isn’t sure he is going to answer her. But then he does.

“The men were employed by Elliot, and those very men have been dealt with,” Damon says, his voice cold and filled with warning. Valentina’s blood runs cold at the revelation.

She won’t ask what ‘dealt with’ means, she doesn’t have to. She knows the men who killed her friend are dead. Suddenly, her mind is flooded with memories from years past. She thinks of all that time she spent with Elliot and Brielle in the fields. She remembers the way he would drag her off to the side whenever her friends got too close. He never seemed to have a problem with Callie. Valentina had just assumed it was because Brielle was harder on him, not wanting him to take advantage of Valentina.

Brielle was always the one who was there for her. She had been the first friend Valentina had ever made. Brielle was there when Valentina had fallen off a horse for the first time. Brielle was there when Valentina’s heart had been broken by the boy with the birch wood heart. Brielle had been there when Jonah, Valentina’s father, had slipped in the rain when they were coming back from the markets one day and they had laughed at the way he fell. Brielle was there when Yasmin, Valentina’s mother, taught the girls how to cook and prepare meals. They had spent countless hours giggling at the way Yasmin pronounced some of the vegetables they grew in the garden. Brielle had been the one to rip up the invitation from Elliot’s wedding.

Brielle had been there when Elliot had gone and this is how he repays Valentina? This is how he chooses to apologize? By killing her best friend? He will pay. He will pay for what he has done.

Valentina’s fire begins to burn wilder and wilder. She has no control and she doesn’t care. She climbs off of Damon’s lap, rising to her feet. She turns to look down at Damon and she isn’t sure why, but something about seeing him there, looking up at her with unbridled fury makes her flames die just a little bit.

She will make Elliot pay, but she won’t make him pay at the expense of the man before her. Damon pushes himself onto his feet, standing inches in front of Valentina. Because Damon is so much taller than her, she’s forced to tilt her head up to maintain eye contact and she knows she wants him to see how serious she is about what she says next.

“I am going to kill Elliot. I will make him suffer for what he has done. I am going to make him suffer far worse than Brielle, and you better not stop me,” she says, her voice laced with such venom she would have flinched if she were anyone else.