A Chill in the Flame, page 12
Harland would mention nothing more of his suspicions.
Ophir dropped into a living comatose state. Whatever pieces of her that were still capable of feeling were surprised every day that the sun continued to rise and birds continued to sing. Beautiful blue skies mocked her. The happy faces of laughing children were an affront too grotesque to face, so she refrained from leaving the castle. She would spend autumn, winter, and spring in her room, draining the winery of its reds and whites regardless of their year or finery. She didn’t want music. She didn’t want companionship. She didn’t want anything except for Caris to be alive. She wanted to be gone in her sister’s place.
Fifteen
“Your plan is shit, Dwyn. You’ll just, what, be silent until the end of time so I can learn nothing more from you?”
Tyr had haunted her room for days. He knew that she wanted to salvage whatever remained of Harland’s good graces, but the guard needed her to be forthcoming, and that was a risk she was unwilling to take while Tyr haunted her doorstep. So, Harland would interrogate her, she’d remain silent, save for her unhelpful shrugs and apologetic expressions, and the dance would go on.
Alone once more, she said to Tyr, “My plan is to let you starve to death. You’ll need to leave eventually for food. You know what I had for dinner? The princess and I ate the loveliest hot breads with roasted garlic, fresh butter, and melted cheese—”
He relaxed against the wall. “I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work. I can wait.”
She arched a brow. “So can I. I’ve lived a very long life, dog. Ophir isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I. But you certainly can. You could leave for Sulgrave today and be back in your bed with your precious clan by the end of the month.”
“It’s an awfully long trip to have ventured to the southern kingdoms for nothing.”
“And why did you come? Loyalty? Maybe you’re more of a dog than I realized. Anwir really knows how to recruit his men.”
He bristled at the mention of the clan leader. “You know nothing of why I’m here.”
“Don’t I?” She jerked up the hem of her nightdress, revealing far too much thigh and hip. His gaze flitted to her goddess-awful tattoo.
“Tell me why you’ve truly come, and I’ll leave.”
“I’ve told you.” She glowered.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he glared back.
“What will it matter? You know you’re wasting your efforts. Berinth will beat us both to it. Then you’ll have starved to death for nothing. Or again, you could run away. Go home. Ophir and I will be nothing but a memory. Think of it like a long, miserable weekend—a speck of dust in your life.”
He hadn’t bothered to conceal himself but had positioned himself so that if someone opened the door, he could shift back into the spaces between things, rendering himself invisible until he was safe once more. He rested the back of his head against the wall and closed his eyes. Tyr hadn’t slept or eaten in several days. He hoped someone was taking good care of Knight, or there’d be hell to pay as soon as he left the castle. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Mmm, it would appear so. Because this isn’t about me at all, is it? How flattering.” Dwyn continued about her night as if she spoke to a ghost in the room. He glared as she washed her face, brushed her hair, stripped from her clothes, and crawled beneath the sheets, ignoring his presence entirely.
He’d been silent as she’d hummed obnoxiously to herself for nearly an hour. Finally, he said, “I’ve been patient, Dwyn. You know you’re safe with me. Not because I want you alive—goddess knows I want you dead just as badly as you wish you could kill me. But I can’t kill you for the same reason you haven’t acted on anything with Ophir, right? We have no idea what Berinth accomplished. As long as another child of royal blood is alive…”
“Excellent thought. Why don’t you focus on Berinth and leave Ophir to me? I promise you, she’s in great hands.”
He regretted his attempt at reasoning with her. “You have a better chance of killing me than getting me to leave.”
“Die, then.”
Dwyn closed her eyes and tucked an arm beneath her pillow, snuggling beneath the sheets. The move was rife with both disregard and disrespect.
“You haven’t asked why I don’t make a move with the princess.”
She smacked her lips against her sleep, unbothered. “I assume it’s because we both know you couldn’t compete with me in matters of the heart even if you tried.”
“You can’t do anything,” he said. “Your unwillingness to share has tied your hands. You’re as stuck as I am.”
“You’re talking while I’m trying to sleep.”
“I don’t need the princess,” he said. She cracked an eye open at this. “Ophir doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.”
Dwyn sat up. “You’re right. She doesn’t. So stop stalking her.”
“I’m here because you’re here, witch. If what you want is anything like what Berinth wanted with Caris, then she’s not safe with you. I’m not here to hurt her.”
Dwyn considered the information. “You’d leave me alone—me and Ophir, that is—if you learn to do what I can already do?”
Tyr waited expectantly. Perhaps, just once, Dwyn could be reasonable.
She lifted her index and middle fingers to her lips. “It’s the little jewel at the apex of her sex. I find the most success with a combination of suction and gentle licks. When she starts to—”
There went his last thread of hope. “I know how to make a woman come.”
Dwyn shrugged. “Such a tragedy you had the chance to take advice from an expert and you shot it down. As for the other thing? This isn’t a race where winners can tie for victory,” she said, head resting comfortably on her pillow. “You know that as much as I do. Only one of us will come out on top of this. And you’re only following me because you know I’m leagues ahead of the rest of you. Berinth is your only real competition, and you’re letting him get away. It’s sweet to have such a fan, Tyr. Truly charming that you’re so fixated on me.” She finished their conversation in no uncertain terms, yawning to underline her boredom. She would not be answering any more of Tyr’s questions.
“Why don’t you go after Berinth?”
“Because I don’t need him, or what he has. And, just so you know,” Dwyn muttered from where she’d rolled away, her voice muffled from her pillow, “you’re a bastard.”
Tyr allowed himself to drift into a brief and fitful sleep from where he’d sat with his back rigid against the stone wall. It was not restful, but it was certainly better than nothing. He shifted into his gift as dawn broke, unseeable to the eyes of all within the castle. He eased the door to the Sulgrave girl’s room open slowly and slid out, shutting it softly behind him without making a sound. His ability to elude sight didn’t prevent others from hearing him, but if one was careful and light on one’s feet, they could go undetected for ages. Tyr had long since suspected that ghost stories and hauntings could be rightly attributed to fae with his gifts. The voyeurism allowed with invisibility didn’t outright prevent perception from the other senses. His gift was considered dark and wicked in more ways than one.
Sixteen
Then
Sensitive.
That’s what they’d called him.
It was harder to criticize a man for caring for strays and mending broken wings if he could slit your throat in the night or bring you down before you could blink.
Tyr had been raised in the church but had left his parents behind in their blind worship after his second decade of life. He had never been interested in the trades. He hadn’t wanted to be a tailor or guard or butcher. His fists needed more. The scales demanded balance if he were to possess a bleeding heart. He craved the symmetry that only battle would bring to his life.
The All Mother seemed like a creature of love and benevolence, but she also provided opportunities for expressions of righteous violence. Though his parents had encouraged him to use his strength and skills in service of the cloth and become a Red, he’d scarcely finished initiation as the sword arm of the church before he’d realized his abilities would be just as villainous in the hands of a religious leader who led without checks and balances as he might from any dictator. The All Mother may or may not have been real—at least, magic, good, and evil certainly seemed real—but the church’s teachings had been so filtered through the agendas of man and fae that the cold had been the lens he needed to examine his skepticism.
He’d considered it. His parents had wanted him to devote himself to the church.
Consideration had been a luxury afforded him before Svea.
He’d walked straight to the church with mud on his hands, knees, and under his fingernails from her burial. He’d banged on the door until someone had answered. They’d taken him in and set him to training. Soon, he’d have access to the groundwater of magic that allowed the faithful to call on borrowed abilities. The strongest Reds were godlike with their manipulation of the elements and forces. He’d never let himself be weak again. He’d never let any pain come to someone or something he loved, because he could do little more than slip into the unseen space between things.
Tyr had taken the oath for the Reds, but he’d made little effort to conceal his beliefs, or lack thereof. No one would speak to him about his blasphemous theories, though he knew he couldn’t be alone in his theological questioning. What if the All Mother had been a deified fae? What if she’d possessed an omnipotence they were failing to understand, worshipping rather than truly studying? If the strongest among them could call to any ability they wanted, what made them think that godhood wasn’t something that could be achieved?
They didn’t like the nature of his questions.
He was meant to be dedicated for service, not for gain.
Tyr’s void of faith had taken root as something different—rather than an absence, he felt a craving. There was knowledge. There was potential. There was…something. They’d trained him, but his overseers had made no attempt to conceal their concerns. Perhaps not all fae were meant to access the groundwater. At least, not in the name of the All Mother.
He’d still been a Red when he’d met Dwyn, though he hadn’t known her name or how the wicked witch of the sea would change the course of his life. Presently, they were both under the roof of Castle Aubade. Part of him would love to just kill her and get it over with, even if he couldn’t. It would solve so many problems if he snapped her neck and sent her to whatever twisted afterlife she would surely belong in. Instead, he was resigned to observe. He was forced to watch, hoping she’d slip up, hoping she’d reveal an inkling or glimpse into her abilities. She’d already achieved far more than he and the others hoped possible for themselves. It was challenging to fathom how much more someone like her might achieve with her sights set on the southern princess. If she made a move on Ophir, he’d have to intervene, even if it meant losing his shot at the sort of power only the Reds and one blasted siren possessed.
Now that this witch he’d hunted for nearly fifty years was with the princess…maybe she was right. Maybe there was more than one way to secure a royal heart.
***
The first time he’d locked eyes with the witch was seared into his brain.
Sulgrave was situated in the northernmost mountains of the continent. Its seven territories, ruled by Comtes, sprawled among the mountains, ending at the Frozen Straits. The Reds hadn’t liked him, and he understood why. His demand for knowledge had become a thirst. They didn’t need him anywhere near the important stations of the church. It was perhaps the politest way the organization could more or less excommunicate him without dishonoring his family.
His parents were pious people, after all. They didn’t deserve the shame a heretic would bring to their good standing in the church.
Scarcely in his twenties and low ranking among the Reds, he’d been given the least desirable outpost along the western shores where the mountains fell into the frozen sea. An arctic village of fewer than three hundred of Sulgrave’s heartiest civilians lived near the sea as the last frontier for the kingdom. The shores weren’t protected by the same seasonal enchantments that guarded their kingdom. While mild weather graced Sulgrave’s residents in the seven territories, a never-ending winter swept the western shores and outlying regions of the northernmost mountain lands. There was a small building that served as the village’s church and as well as the rationale for his presence, but the villagers more or less ignored Tyr, and he kept to himself as much as he could.
He hated every goddess-damned minute.
Tyr had served the sword arm of the All Mother for fewer than five years when he’d come across a damsel in distress, or so he’d thought. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to ever see himself as altruistic, save for the lens society has cast on a man of the cloth. As he looked back on the event now, it would be the first and last time he assumed the victim and the aggressor based on gender alone.
Screams had come from beyond the icy shores.
He’d been certain he’d heard wind playing tricks on him. A sound came again across the ice, and he began to fear that perhaps a villager had fallen into the ice. He’d never been so cold, nor had his faith ever been more fragile. Every moment since his arrival at his post had weakened his resolve. The sun rose and fell for months. In the summer, it stayed with him from morning throughout the night, glowing red even in the midnight hours. He was now in the perpetual twilight before the village plummeted into months-long winter. The sky was a cold gradient of lavenders and indigos, speckled with stars and the silver crescent of the moon. He wrapped the furs of the aboriou hide around him more tightly and ran into the whipping winds in search of the voice’s owner.
The wind chafed his skin and froze his joints as he scanned. He could see nothing from the outpost that had barely been enough for one man and his cot, and he began to climb a snowbank to look down onto the sea.
The sound came again, cutting across the glasslike shards of ice of Sulgrave’s frozen shores. A woman was calling for help. He knew he wasn’t imagining it. Tyr scrambled out of the cumbersome bundles of fur and ran for the shores in his leathers.
He stopped as soon as he saw her.
Her arms were bare. He could see the skin of her neck, of her upper chest, of her fingers without the warmth of cloak or gloves. Her bare feet walked along black sand, moving between broken chunks of glacial melt. She was in a strange, glossy dress that seemed to be made of oil and starlight.
He should have run to her, but everything within him screamed of danger.
He wasn’t the only one to respond to her screams. A man was running to her from the village. His arms appeared to be thick with warmed bundles of cloaks and blankets for the near-naked shipwrecked woman.
Tyr knew he needed to stop the man. He called to him and began running. He angled his body for the villager, putting one foot in front of the other as the icy wind froze his fingers and reddened his nose. He’d run with a tenacity that hadn’t compelled his muscles for months. Tyr’s hand gripped his weapon, his teeth gritting against the frozen winds as he barreled toward them. The villager paid him no mind, eyes fixed solely on the woman. Her cries for help had stopped as the villager reached her.
Tyr skidded to a halt as the two touched.
The woman was close enough that he could see the shape of her eyes, the rouge of her cheeks, the cloud of her hair, and count the fingers that gripped the villager.
She’d been holding the man in an embrace until he fell limply before her. The man who’d come for her had withered, now mummified against the shards of ice and chilled seawater that lapped against her bare feet.
She looked up over the villager’s body as it floated weightlessly against the lapping waves. Her gaze touched Tyr’s.
By the time his wide eyes had absorbed the vision before him, her black hair had whipped around her in a cloud so beautiful and horrific that she may have been one of the terrible old gods made flesh.
He hadn’t advanced. He hadn’t raised his sword.
They did not look away from one another. His lips were still parted in a gasp. Her dark, glossy dress whipped around her in the winds, though her skin seemed unaffected by the sub-zero temperatures. She moved her head curiously. She wasn’t looking at him with predatory hunger, nor with fear. She was merely interested in the man who’d sprinted for the black sand beaches only to skid to a halt so far from where she stood. The woman held such a casual interest, he could see the glimmer from where he stood.
It was the sort of moment that one might excuse as a dream.
With an uncaring coolness, the young woman turned and walked into the frigid sea waters. Her head disappeared beneath the waves as if she’d never existed. If it weren’t for the floating body of the hollow man who bobbed and lapped against each cresting wave, he could have convinced himself that it had been a hallucination. Instead, Tyr knelt next to the wilted man and knew he’d come across a truly dark terror. This was the day Tyr became singularly possessed with the sort of dark magic that would scream for a man’s help only to suck her rescuer of its life force.
He’d heard of the succubae who could kill men, though even women cursed with such a power couldn’t do so with simply a kiss or touch as the witch on the shores had done. He knew of fae who could call to water. A common, helpful gift was the ability to warm oneself. He hadn’t actually met anyone who could breathe water, though the stories of merfolk had filtered through the centuries. What powers was this fae collecting that had allowed her to accumulate more than what came naturally?
He and his fellow Sulgrave fae had grown up around whispers of blood magic, though talk of such things had been forbidden. Access to unnatural powers was a mission in suicide, as it drew on one’s own life force to call to abilities that did not belong to you. The Reds who had served for decades were trained in the ability to access the groundwater of magic that flowed through life, but each time they did, their own blood cooled and struggled within them.
