Free Exile by Rebecca Lim

harder?’ I cry, distressed at the implication in his words. ‘You can’t know what it’s been like for me!’
    ‘Or me,’ Luc growls. ‘When you . . . left me, it ruined everything .’
    I shiver, wanting the dream to be over, desperate to wake myself up. I try to pull myself out of his arms but Luc’s grip is suddenly like iron.
    I begin to struggle and twist in earnest. ‘I don’t respond well to threats,’ I growl. ‘You, of all people, should know that about me.’
    Luc shakes me roughly. ‘Where are you?’ he cries, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘Answer me!’
    He shakes me again and the feeling in my heart turns to . . . anger.
    A surge of fury breaks in me, higher than any wave. And my left hand begins to burn .
    I draw breath sharply, contemplating the pale corona engulfing my hand, beginning to creep silently up my wrist, white, like ghost flame. How can something so beautiful be so . . . corrosive?p>
    Luc’s eyes gleam with an answering fire as he contemplates my evanescent skin. ‘That’s the key,’ he hisses.
    ‘Key?’ I gasp, unable now to flex the fingers of my left hand. The agony is leaching into my voice. Can he hear it? The flame is like a living thing. I see it throw out questing tendrils, as if it is sentient and seeking new sources of fuel.
    ‘Fear and anger,’ he replies. ‘Fear and anger allow you to access your true nature, those powers that are yours by right. Fear and anger are a window upon your soul; shall lead you back to me. Fear and anger,’ he laughs, almost to himself. ‘It’s only fitting.’
    I cannot look away from the steady conflagration of my flesh. My forearm is now wholly incandescent. It feels as if nothing will ever rival this pain .
    ‘What of love?’ I remind him sharply, my voice rising as the flame also rises. ‘It’s a currency I would rather deal in.’
    Luc seems so different now, from when I first knew him. Mocking, self-confident. The look that drew me to him in the first place, all those long years ago — of love, and longing — is missing, as if it was never there.
    ‘Love!’ His voice is disdainful. ‘Love is what got us into this mess in the first place. The time for love will come again, but now is the time for war . If you won’t look for me, then find that mortal boy, Ryan, return to the place where he lives, and I will come for you. But do it quickly — I have waited long enough.’
    ‘When you’re like this,’ I whisper, ‘I don’t even know you.’
    In answer, Luc shakes me again. ‘Stupid creature! Without him there will never again be an us . You will always and forever be just a lost girl. Ryan is only the first step of many that must be taken. Don’t you understand? Find him .’
    With a growl of frustration fierce enough to shake ancient bedrock, he suddenly streaks skyward with me in his arms, held fast, a living projectile.
    And I remember . . . my terrible fear of heights —
    — the surface of the earth falling away from us at a speed that must surely be against the laws of nature; the vault of heaven looming until we break into the cold embrace of the eternal night sky, continue streaming away into absolute space, the airless, aching void. How is it we are able?
    In dreams, anything is possible.
    Yet it all feels so real that I cannot draw breath; terror is interfering with my musculature, my physiognomy.
    Luc steers us madly, deliberately, at a piece of space junk the size of a small mountain — a rain of certain death were it to fall upon the earth — and smashes through it, laughing wildly. Though I cower and turn my face away within the circle of his embrace, the debris seems not to touch us.
    This may be a dream, but dreams bring the truth to the surface, don’t they? And I know now that I cannot bear any distance away from the solid surface of the world. And yet we spiral deeper through the uncaring universe than anyone has ever been, and I wonder why I — why Luc, the one who loves me — would inflict