i was the match and you were the rock [KINDLING]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

Cress has killed before. It wasn’t her choice to kill her future Self in order to free herself from the dark god’s chamber and not a day goes by that Cress doesn’t vividly remember the hot, metallic taste of her own blood in her mouth. She will never forget how it felt to pierce the heart of her future Self and tear the dying organ from the woman’s breast, dropping it on the ground for the god to devour. She had been freed then, and he had fulfilled his twisted desires—he had turned them all into killers. It is something she will relive until the day she dies.

Cress tries not to, but she catches her mother’s eye just as Kindling mentions her temper, and the golden girl snorts. “If I lived in fear of my own temper I would never leave the confines of my mind,” she snaps, lips pulled back over her teeth. She opens her jaws again and a tongue of flame springs from deep within her throat, soaring past Kindling to strike a tree behind her. A threat, maybe. More fire crackles at the back of her mouth, and she knows that this time her aim will be true; she will show her mother what it is like to have a face full of flames.

The fire bursts forth just as she catches the expression on Kindling’s face and though she tries to stop the flames, it is too late. She snaps shut her mouth and uses the one power she knows she can manipulate in every way she asks—her healing. She sends a barrier to block the flames and what engulfs Kindling instead is a warm, healing breeze. If any of the flames had touched her the marks were instantly healed; she feels the energy leave her as she protects her dam from the worst of the flames.

“You want me to kill you,” she says incredulously as Kindling takes several steps forward, bridging the gap between mother and daughter. She is still angry—she still wants to inflict the same amount of pain upon Kindling that Kindling has forced upon her—but she cannot bring herself to step back. The mere thought of her mother being so close makes her feel ill—so much has changed in so little time—and she almost doesn’t hear what Kindling says next.

Her voice has softened and Cress can sense the real emotion in it, but she doesn’t trust her. The words—“I can’t be your mother, Cress”—burn worse than any fire in her heart and for a split second she cannot breathe, cannot think. The flames in the back of her throat are extinguished as she swallows, the fire dying as quickly as it had come, and she stares at her pathetic excuse of a mother, wondering what is going to come next.

“Why?” she rasps, hardly noticing that she had let her fire burn her after all, nearly destroying her vocal chords. She can fix those later—this, though? She’s not so sure about. “You want me to kill you, you want me to be your ally. You want to have an impact on my life but in the same breath you tell me that you cannot be my mother. Why, Kindling?”

If Kindling does not wish to be her dam then Cress has no reason to call her Mother ever again, even mockingly. All she wants to know is why.

“Why did you leave me, if you thought I would be strong? Why can’t you be my mother now?” Why can’t she teach Cress, as a mother would, how to be strong and intelligent and powerful?

“Give me one good answer as to why I shouldn’t burn you as my dragon did to me.”

cress

oxytocin x kindling