She smiled like the sunrise, radiant and warm and breathtakingly beautiful. Every time she saw him again, and again, and again, even she knew he loved to see it, how it made her fiery eyes glitter with warmth and delight. Tamed her raging wildfire into a lightly crackling hearth on a bad day.

Alina loved him. Truly and sincerely. The yuan-ti was kind and caring and found a way to trap her in his arms without making her feel afraid or caged. And she loved him for that.

Tonight was a time she found herself still awake, not yet weary enough to trance. But he was out cold long ago, half curled around the warm spot she'd inhabited not moments ago. She had sat up, wanting to stretch her arms a bit. But she couldn't lay back down just yet – no, she wanted to admire him. He was charming. And asleep, he looked so sweet. Softer, more sincere. How he looked when she looked away, she knew it deep down.

She'd reach over and tuck one of his loose curls behind an ear, humming a gentle tune under her breath. It was quiet, but it seemed to stir him just enough to prompt him into snaking an arm around her waist in a loose embrace and coax a groggy voice to mumble up through the pillows, "What're you doin' up there?"

Alina's smile grew, sincere and warm without a trace of the malice that would one day stain her expression foreverm "Admiring the view, love."

"Oh?" A snakelike eye would open halfway, amber and piercing and all the more alluring, and he had a tired, amused smile of his own, "Why not get a better angle, hm?"

Alina felt her heart flutter, though it was the thousandth time she'd be holding him it always filled her heart with the glee of a young girl's first love. She'd slink back down, content to fit into his taller frame like a puzzle piece and steal a short but lingering kiss to his lips. He'd smile about it, returning it only to follow it with a kiss to her forehead. The second she flustered and buried her face in his chest, she'd feel him press his face into her flamelike hair. So warm on his cool skin. Perhaps it was simply in her nature to draw snakes to her. He was no exception.

It was in this warmth, this feeling of being at home and safe in someone's arms, that she heard him speak a short phrase. And this short phrase, well. It would lead to things unintended. He'd blearily mumble, "I love you," into her warm skin, easily beginning to drift back into sleep.

But he'd be wide awake when she goes completely red. Blushing like a teenager and, all in all, dangerous to add more heat to an already warm elven body. She could scarcely get the words out in return before she felt her hair lifting as if carried by an unseen wind. Or heat. And it was scarcely a moment before she realised her flames had run away from her. That she was consuming everything she touched once again. Not again.

Not again.

Even though she wanted to throw herself back, she was unable to move a muscle. Unable to pull away, unable to even begin to try to spare her beloved from the pain and unable to do anything to quiet the screams of agony from him. She was no longer a gentle and warm hearth. She was a wildfire, destroying everything in her path, and she wept behind the flames in her paralysed state.

Alina Cross mourned every second the flames raged, for she could do nothing but watch the last person she cared for die at her own hands, /again./

The worst part would be that even when he was nothing but charred bones, the fire continued for nearly two days. She didn't know how far they'd spread, and part of her wished nothing more than to die. To permanently extinguish her own flames, but even she did not have the magic to force something so nature-altering.

Alina Cross refused to be reborn once more.

While some tiny instinct of hers pulled, begged that if she built her cinnamon nest, if she allowed the fire to cleanse her soul and heart, she could move on, she could earn amnesty in her world's court and be better… she wanted to shove it down. A part of her wanted to suffer, wanted to suffocate herself in her heartache that felt like a knife so deep in her chest that it reminded her to be bitter. That people always fucked up, and that she was dangerous even when she didn't want to be.

The Ringmaster – for what was left of her circus after the fire would now know the truest fear of her title – would gather his bones after so much grief. Would steel herself in spite of the ashes and tear streaks that stained her cheeks, to wash his bones in the nearest river and bury them with a solemn prayer, (something she would never have dared to do before or since) pleading that he finds himself in the cycle of rebirth, or at least happier in his afterlife.

Those that remained saw Alina's fire turn red with hatred, fed with blood. Jem cowered once more on their cage, Orcreesha avoided eye contact and kept her head down low, Dove shrank away from those fire-hot hands, and Talisman watched from a distance as her hair carried itself like fire wherever she went.

Alina Cross was broken, and she chose to remain broken rather than seek out repair.

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