“I forgive you. I’ve told you a thousand times I forgive you,” Kohrat said to his wife, Belrie. He did not know if he truly meant the words, but he knew he wanted to believe himself. “It’s passed.”

Belrie cried. She cried every second since she had told him. She had barely managed her confession through the continuous sobs. Kohrat brushed his calloused and gnarled fingers under her eyes to wipe the tears off of her soft skin. She flinched as he did but did not open her eyes. While he waited for her to respond, he looked around their dimly lit bedroom at the warped wooden walls that strained under the heavy winds that evening. There was not much in the room to occupy his attention, with their few meager possessions, consisting of a couple of modest vases, a single ornamental plate, and some glassware, all rattling on the flimsy shelf opposite the bed.

“I knew I shouldn’t have. I knew it at the time. How can you forgive me when I knew what I was doing?” Belrie opened her green eyes, which now were blurred by a heavy layer of tears.

“Because I can’t do anything else,” Kohrat said smiling and embracing his wife before pushing away to look into her eyes again. “I could forgive you anything, don’t you know that? You could stab me in the stomach with the meat knife and in my dying breath I’d forgive you.”

Belrie’s mouth contorted into a tortured smile and she slowly opened her arms to return his embrace. They held each other for many moments.

“But, if I stop, if I put an end to this, he won’t forgive me,” her voice carried a horrid chill to it. Kohrat shuddered. He knew she was right.

“Well, I’ve never backed down from a fight before,” he attempted to mask his unease with a gruff overtone. “We’ll talk to him together.”

Belrie’s face lost all color and her sobbing was swept away by overpowering terror. Her remaining tears seemed to stop in place, as though they had been frozen by a sudden winter gust. Even her robust auburn hair lost some of its vibrancy.

“Please, don’t.”

“This is a thing we both must do,” he murmured, reaching his hand out for hers. Indeed, her hands did run cold. “It’ll be unpleasant, I’m sure, but… What else can we do?”

Her mouth quivered and she mumbled nonsense at first. He almost wanted to laugh, but he saw that her trepidations ran deeper than he could understand.

“Maybe one of the others... Ask for their help. Have them talk to him. Petition the Emperor. Anything else!” she screeched.

He could not hold his laughter back. “Me? Ask the Emperor? Or the angels? No, none of them would do a thing about this. None of them would care. I…”

“But if he refuses to stop, they are the only ones who can!” she interrupted, shouting.

Kohrat’s throat tightened and prickled. She was most assuredly correct. All they had the power to do was feebly ask that an angel leave their lives and hope that he would be magnanimous. However, an old destitute peddler from Inthrat and his young childless wife were not likely to achieve an audience with any useful authority that could intercede on their behalf.

“We have no choice,” he resolved. “Come with me.”

Belrie whimpered and weakly followed behind and Kohrat opened the door into the kitchen and dining room. It was comparatively bright as they had left all of the candles lit. The further Kohrat moved toward the living room, the more Belrie’s hand tried to pull him back toward the bedroom. Once he moved into the living room, he immediately saw a shape standing in the weaker candlelight. It was the angel. It was Gorondos.

Kohrat gasped and squeezed Belrie’s quaking hand. Gorondos flicked his arms and the flames of the candles grew stronger, fully illuminating the angel. Even among the angels, Gorondos had a striking appearance. He wore a magnificent shimmering silver robe whose hood only slightly obscured the ashen, yet handsome and chiseled face of the patron angel of all of the world’s flames and volcanic mountains. His eyes glowed orange and flowed continuously like the lava he had crafted.

“You wished to speak to me?” Gorondos asked in a resonant and rumbling voice.

Kohrat felt the urge to retreat from this battle. He had not fully imagined what the presence of an angel would feel like. Nonetheless, he breathed deeply and steeled his will.

“What you have had with my wife… is at an end,” Kohrat managed. “I ask that you respect that.”

Gorondos’s gaze shifted slowly from Kohrat to Belrie and back several times. He never blinked. He never breathed. Belrie’s hand ran both sweaty and cold as it grasped Kohrat’s under the angel’s silent inquisition.

“She chose me,” Gorondos boomed.

“For a time, yes,” Kohrat choked. That fact became more tangible in his mind and he felt the anguish he had held back until that moment. “But no more. We will live with this on our own terms, but you have no part in it.”

Gorondos again moved his viscous orange eyes from Kohrat to Belrie and back several more time before locking his focus on Belrie.

“Is this what you decide?” the angel asked, his tone softening.

Kohrat could hear Belrie swallow hard behind him and for a time he imagined her grip slipping away, but instead she grasped her husband’s hand harder.

“Yes,” she said firmly.

Gorondos visibly flinched and frowned.

“I do not accept this,” he rumbled, his eyes flashing more brilliantly. “I will have you. This mortal, your husband, is not fit to have anything and soon he will have nothing.”

“He has me and he always will have me,” Belrie said defiantly as she walked to stand beside Kohrat, her hand still clasping his.

The angel’s eyes brightened further, but the display did not intimidate Kohrat.

“You’ll live on this world forever. You will see countless mortals come and go and you can have any of them,” Kohrat pleaded. He failed pitifully to mask his fear. “In what you will see, both of our lives are a speck of dust. Let us have this little time in peace.”

Raging fires in Gorondos’s eyes continued to build. They hurt to behold and Kohrat began to feel that he had irretrievably erred.

“I do not want any of them. I want her!” Gorondos yelled as he snuffed out all of the candles in the house. All that now lit the room were the surging lights in his eyes.

Kohrat’s knees wobbled and his stomach bubbled.

“Please, leave us. A thousand years from now you’ll never even remember…” Kohrat weakly blabbered.

“We never forget anything!” Gorondos bellowed so loudly that the house shook. Floor boards warbled and the windows rattled. The angel formed gelatinous orbs of fire in his hands. His burning eyes turned toward Belrie and quivered. “Goodbye,” his powerful voice drooped into a pitiful whimper.

Gorondos hurled the orbs at Kohrat and Belrie. In terrible deafening crackling gusts, the fires burst into a circle surrounding the two. Kohrat pulled Belrie closer while the fires closed in around them, setting their clothes ablaze, then their hair, then their skin. Even in his immense agony, he could feel Belrie squeeze his blistered hands affectionately as the flesh melted away from their bones.