Dorian Wraith's Arc

Chapter 1 of 27

Dorian Wraith crouched by a dying fire and watched his own hands like they belonged to someone else. Four nights ago those hands had thrown fire across the bakery counter when two drunks cornered Callie against the flour sacks. He had only wanted them to stop. The bread ovens went up first, then the rafters, then the whole street shouting his name like a curse. Callie had pulled him out the back door before the village could decide what to do with him. They had run into the forest and kept running until their legs failed. Now she slept curled under his coat, and Dorian sat awake because every time he closed his eyes he saw the baker's wife screaming in a burning doorway. He did not know what he was. His mother had never said the word witch. He wanted to live, to protect this girl beside him, to see cities and and things his village only rumored — but first he needed to understand the thing in his hands before it killed someone he loved. A branch cracked. Dorian jerked upright and his palms lit before he told them to. A man stepped into the firelight with his hands raised, shirtless, ivy knotted at his belt, and wings behind him that caught the fire in yellow and blue and pink. "Put it out," the man said calmly. "You'll bring worse than me." Dorian closed his fists. The flame died. Callie sat up and reached for a stick. The stranger ignored the stick. He knelt at the edge of the light and looked at Dorian the way a farrier looks at a hoof. "You're a male witch," he said. "There aren't many. That's why no one told you." Dorian's throat tightened. "I burned a bakery." "You'll burn worse if no one teaches you." The man offered a hand. "My name is Beak. I have a house half a day from here. Food. A bed for the girl. Walls that won't catch." Callie looked at Dorian. Her cheek was scratched and her eyes were steady. Dorian thought of the village behind them and the men who would already be riding. He took the fairy's hand and stood. The choice was made before he finished the motion, and the forest around them felt, for the first time in four days, like somewhere he might be allowed to stay.