Where The Heart Lives by Marjorie Liu Read Free Book Online

great
distance with no home, no place to rest her head.
    Her home now was humble and
small, but it was hers. Filled with light and color, and glass. Small jars of
paint, and a canvas to stretch her wings upon.
    Others shared her underworld. Men
and women, and children. The dragon protected them, when she could. Some, she
considered friends. But always from a distance, where it was safe. Safe, for
them.
    Safe meant being alone.
    The dragon had been alone a
long time.
    But sometimes, like tonight,
she dreamed of a man.
    And he was made of fire.
     
    ***
     
    More than twenty-five hundred
miles away, Eddie knelt on the polished concrete floor of a glass-walled cage,
trying very hard not to catch on fire.
    The cage was an eight-by-eleven
block of concrete and fire-resistant glass, and the door was made of thick
steel, framed in that same concrete. No furniture. No blankets. The space had
once been part of the dining room, and the double-paned glass wall usually
offered Eddie an unobstructed view of the kitchen. There was, however, a
privacy curtain that he could draw over the exterior of the cage.
    He had used it tonight. There
was a guest upstairs.
    It was over , thought
Eddie, putting his back to the wall as sparks danced off his clothes.   I was
sure it was over.
    He had not lost control in
almost a year.
    He had not needed the cage. 
    Until tonight.
    You know why.
    Eddie closed his eyes, haunted.
Every inch of him, so tender that the softest touch of his clothes hurt as
though he was being dragged naked, on gravel.
    Breathe , he told
himself. Breathe.
    Eddie breathed, but each breath
was hot in his lungs—the same heat burning in his bones, rising through his
skin. Smoke rose off his body, singeing his nostrils. He tried to think of cool
water, ice, this morning’s silver fog around the Golden Gate Bridge. He
imagined the flow of the salt-scented breeze on his face as he’d walked to his
favorite coffee shop…
    Everything, good and normal. Part
of the life he had made for himself.
    But it meant nothing. His mind
kept returning to his mother’s sobs, the broken rasp of her voice -- the sound
of his grandmother in the background, trying to calm her. Trying, and failing—because
she was crying, too.
    Tears sizzled against his
cheeks. Eddie held his stomach, overwhelmed with grief and anger. So much
anger.
    He pushed it down. Then he kept
pushing, and pushing , methodically bottling his emotions: frustration,
unhappiness, regret. He hid them all in a cool dark place inside his heart. He
buried them, far away and deep, until he felt raw, empty.
    Empty, except for the
loneliness. An isolation so profound it bordered on despair.
    Flames erupted against his legs
and hands, flowing up his arms to arc over his shoulders -- down his back like
wings. Eddie tried to stop the fire—struggled with all his strength—but it was
like trying to catch the wind. The flames slipped around him, through him, and
all the control he had so carefully cultivated once again meant nothing.
    He was powerless. Helpless. And
he hated himself for that.
    His spine caught on fire, a
deep burn born in his bones, born deeper, rippling from his heart. Eddie closed
his eyes, listening to the crackle of flames eating through his jeans and
t-shirt, turning them to ash.
    He didn’t make a sound, not
even when the burn of his skin made him feel as though he would split apart. He
pretended not to feel the soaring waves of heat moving around him, wrapping him
in a nest of fire that brushed against the walls of his cage.
    He tried so hard not to think
about his sister’s murderer walking out of prison.
    But in the end, it was easier
just to burn.
     
    ***
     
    When Eddie left the cage, a
woman was waiting for him.
    He happened to know that she
was in her early fifties, though she hardly looked it with her loose red hair,
creamy skin, and long supple body clad in black. A patch covered her right eye,
and the other was golden, pupil slit like a cat. She leaned on