Ward guessed her to be in her thirties, but it was hard to tell: the skin of her face was curiously smooth and unblemished, like that of a doll. She was beautiful, but it was a severe beauty: her lips were full and dark, her nose aquiline, her cheekbones high and prominent, her jaw strong and square. He looked into her eyes and the room about him grew incorporeal. The woman's face seemed to fade, except for her eyes, in which, deep down and at some great distance, a terrible fire burned. And as if from the edge of his vision he perceived a shape behind her, something with great leathery wings that arched out to brush the walls and ceiling.

His head reeled. A wave of nausea lurched in his stomach and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. With a great effort he tore his eyes away from the woman's. He looked down at his feet instead, breathing hard as his vision swung back into focus and the sweat dried on his face and the sick feeling in his stomach abated.

He didn't realise that Carmen had stepped up beside him. He only noticed her when she began to burn.

It started with an unpleasant smell it took him a moment to recognise. Burning hair. He turned to see a wisp of hair above her ear curl in upon itself and crinkle into a tiny black fuse. A small plume of smoke rose from the charred end.

"Ward -"

She instinctively covered her face with her hands, and he watched in horror as the skin as the backs of her hands turned first pink, then red. The fine, downy hairs on her forearems curled up into tiny question mark shapes. Her clothes, damp from their journey through the dungeons, were steaming.

She cried out.

He didn't stop to wonder what was happening, or why. He only knew that she was burning and he was not. "Get behind me!" he cried. He put his body between Carmen and the woman in the chair. He could see where her eyebrows had literally melted off her face. Tiny white blisters had risen on her nose.

"Carmen?"

"Better," she gasped. Her eyes were wide and white with fear. "A few more seconds and I – it was like standing too close to a bonfire. It's her, isn't it?"

"Is it gone?"

"I can still feel it. Coming through you. But it's not as bad. How can you stand it?"

He glanced back at the woman. She was watching them indifferently. "I don't know," he said. "You need to get out of here. Step back slowly. I'll stay with you."

He kept her covered as she backed up to the leaden door.

"Better?" he said, when they stopped before it.

"No. Maybe a little. I don't know."

"You can't pass through here."

"If you kept me covered – "

"No. You'll end up like them." He gestured at the floor.

"I don't understand why you -"

"Me either. Go. Take the barker – I'm no good with it anyway."

"Come with me."

"No."

"Ward, you'll die down here." Ward realised she was crying.

"I'll find the dice. They'll get me out."

"You're an idiot," she said, and suddenly threw her arms around him, burying her tear-streaked face in his shoulder. Then she pulled away and crawled back through the door. She stood up on the other side of it, turned around, crouched to look back through at him.

"Close it," he said. "Turn the wheel."

She just looked at him.

"Do it," he said.

With a soft sob she pushed the door closed. There was a pause, then he heard the wheel slowly turn on the other side. It came to a stop. Locked. Whether she remained at the door or left the chamber he couldn't tell, for he heard nothing more.

When he turned back the woman was still watching him. He looked into her eyes again, catching a glimpse of the shadow behind her, his stomach rolling over queasily, and tore his eyes away. The feeling was more like seasickness than anything else. He had learned from the sailors on his two short voyages that seasickness was caused by an illusion, and he wondered if something similar was happening here. Perhaps his brain could not at the same time comprehend the static woman and the thing behind her.

He cast his eyes down at the floor and took a step forward. Another. Bones crumbled like spun sugar beneath his shoes. Another step, and still nothing happened. Did he feel warmer? He wasn't sure.

He was halfway across the room when he chanced a look up. She was still watching him steadily. Now he could see her lips opening and closing slightly as she breathed, and the white half moons at the base of each of her fingernails, and the fine dark hairs on her forearms, and the tiny holes in each ear from which earrings must once have hung, and a white scar low on her belly, just above her crossed hands. She could no longer be mistaken for a doll. He understood now why she was naked at least: if the fire had not burned her clothes to ash, her long years of internment would have seen them rot and fall away from her body. For somehow he knew she had been down here a long time. An age.

He was almost close enough to reach out and touch her when she spoke.

So you finally meet the woman of your dreams, only to discover she's a fire demon from another dimension.