Heart of the Flame by Lara Adrián

happened to you as well--was a cowardly act of brutality. I want to make sure the man who did this, and all those in league with him, never get the chance to hurt anyone again. He is evil, Haven. It's important that he be stopped, in any way possible."
    "I do not see how I can help in that. It is as I told you, the attack is a blur in my mind. The details are..." She shrugged, but inside she was assailed with violent flashes of memory.
    Sounds clashed with images, all of it hurtling dreamlike through her mind. She felt hands close around her throat. She shook her head, dispelling the vision before it could take root.
    "I'm sorry, but the details of that night are lost to me."
    She could not tell if he believed her. He watched her intently, saying nothing, then, finally: "I will not demand your cooperation in this, Haven. I know what it is to be a prisoner in truth, for I spent half a year in a madman's dungeon. He devised many creative ways of coercing information out of me--at times, I thought he might eventually be successful. When the torture was at its worst, I might have told him any lie to make it cease. I'm not going to do that to you. I don't want falsehoods from you, Haven. I cannot afford them."
    There was an earnestness in his voice that took her aback. Had he come in raging and bellowing or with fists at the ready, she would have been more prepared. She would have been further convinced that the voice inside that warned of danger was correct. She found she did not know quite what to make of him.
    "You were at Greycliff the night my friends were killed. The stab wound in your shoulder, the bruises that still linger at your neck from where your attacker strangled you--do you realize how close you came to dying yourself?"
    "Yes," she murmured. "And I am grateful to you for helping me like you did."
    "Then help me stop these beasts. There is an evil at work here that you would not wish to understand. Help me thwart it. Will you do that, Haven?"
    "I have already told you as much as I know."
    "You have yet to tell me what you were doing there that night. What brought you to the keep?"
    "Lady Greycliff had sent for me."
    A slice of memory opened in her mind. Haven saw the day clearly at first, she at work in her cottage preparing herbs, mixing dried sage and pennyroyal and sewing the blend into a small brewing packet. "I had been to see her often in the days before. She was...not well, and had requested an herbal of me."
    He gave an understanding nod. "Elspeth often suffered headaches. There was little to help her when they were at their worst."
    "Yes," Haven agreed. She saw no point in mentioning that it was melancholy, more than headache, that ailed the fragile lady in what would be her final hours. "I delivered what she wanted, and found her in quite a state. Her husband was away--gone for a sennight on estate matters to one of their holdings near Penzance. The lady herself was to have joined him but she was too ill to make the journey. I arrived at the keep and gave her my herbal, then sat with her a while--easily hours, until I saw she was improved."
    "So then the raid on the keep occurred while you were there with her?"
    She shrugged, not certain of the details. "No. That is, I don't think so. I remember it was dark. Perhaps I went back to check on her? I do not recall the precise timing. Things become...hazy."
    "What about Greycliff himself? Rand must have been there, too. Had he returned from his trip while you were there?"
    "I don't know."
    It was the truth; Haven could not recall specific facts from that fated night. Once darkness fell, once the flames and ash had begun to close in around her, she could make sense of little. She knew only the violence of the night's events, and the understanding that an entire family had been lost amid the carnage.
    Just thinking on it, she could nearly feel the punishing vise of fingers at her throat, choking her whilst the smoke burned her eyes and seared her lungs.
    In her