Burnt (17 page)

Despite walking back and forth between the compound and his little shack, the sudden storm robbed him of the certainty as to which way he was heading. Frustrated tears sprang to his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. They’d only freeze, anyway. He tossed the blanket across the door aside and pushed forward against the angry wind that filled the inside of his nose and throat with icy needles. He walked all of ten feet before he stumbled and, for a moment, thought he was going face-first into the growing drifts of snow pooling around his bare feet.

A wiry arm wrapped around his shoulders
and righted him. A second later Vaughan’s face was close enough to his own that Kaie could hear half-muttered curses and it nearly conjured up a smile. “Thank you.”

“I won’t let her kill you,” Vaughan replied lowly. He supposed that was all the explanation needed, and he wasn’t about to press his luck. The boy seemed to suffer from none of his own confusion. Apparently, having decided to help, Vaughan was eager to
be done with the whole thing. The kid dragged them both along through the snow with a trajectory so certain Kaie almost believed Vaughan could see.

The storm, in all its sudden anger, could only have come from the gods. It beat at them with
a ferocity of months of winter suppressed for this one moment, rendering their thin clothing less than laughable. It burned through his chest with a frozen fire that threatened to unman him and erase him from the world with the ease of swatting away an ant. In the swirling white world Kaie was forced again to face his own helplessness. If it were not for Vaughan he would be lost utterly.

When the boy stopped his unforgiving pace, Kaie pulled away and stumbled forward, nearly colliding with the well. Vaughan shouted a warning – one that was so muffled he nearly missed it – just in time to stop him from careening down. His breath coming in painful gasps that were fueled only partially by the close-call, he pushed on.

Now that they were close the confusion dropped away like shed clothing. The vision back in the Lemme’s hut burst into his mind’s eye with the same brutality of the first time. Kaie remembered the image of Amorette kneeling by a frozen stream – remembered and gods help him, understood. He locked on to the place in the snow where she would be waiting, an arrow loosed and hurtling toward the target.

As he drew close to the small space of earth nestled between two weeping trees heavy with the wet drifts gathering in their boughs, the snow parted like curtains drawing back. For a time Kaie could do nothing but stare on at the beauty from his vision brought to life.

She knelt, as he knew she would. Her back was to him and her
short, light red hair swirling about her like fire against the stark white world. He tried to approach silently, a part of him terrified of disturbing what seemed almost a sacred moment, but his shivering body was in no mood to cooperate. His chattering teeth gave him away and her head turned just enough for him to see her profile.

Had any lips ever looked so red?

“I knew that you’d hate me,” she said.

His eyes drifted to the snow spread out before her, but the stark red puddles were nowhere to be seen. Letting out a slow, shaking breath of relief, he wrapped his arms around himself and plunged his hands into his armpits for what little warmth they offered. “
You knew that I loved you,” he replied, surprised at how even his voice was for all the chattering. “There was no reason to do that to her.”

“There was every reason!” Amorette screeched in the voice that wasn’t hers. “I did so much, gave up so much. For this. And she was going to ruin it all.
I watched you smile at her every morning! Tell her jokes and stories. Our stories! You wouldn’t even look at me this morning, but that boy says her name and you start smiling and laughing! She was taking you away!”

With effort that cost him dearly, Kaie set aside the rage at what was done to Peren. There would be time for that, s
o much time for that. Right now he needed to get back in to the fire. He could feel the cold deep in his chest, knew the dangers that came with it. He and Amorette were going to freeze to death out here. No matter what she did, he couldn’t bring himself to wish that on her. He loved her still. “I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

“What then? Are you here to spout more garbage about how
lost we both are? Are you going to promise to keep me safe when the people come to drive you out of East Field?”

“It wasn’t garbage,” Kaie insisted.
Guilt twisted in him, more vicious than the cold. She was right. He barely gave thought to protecting her. Instead he slept with her. Even though Ren and Silvy were bound to hear, even though doing so painted a target on her for anyone who wanted to hurt him. But he would do better. So much better. “You’ll be safe. I’ll figure some way.”

“And all I have to do is open my legs whenever you desire it.”

“No! That’s not what this is! You don’t have to do anything you don’t want…I thought you wanted that.”

She laughed again, this time with a harsh pitch that sent off warnings all down his spine. “You have
the cock, don’t you? I remember you sticking one in me. You’re all sweetness and honor now, but I know better. I know how long it takes your kind to turn. Selfish, vicious monsters, all of you. Already, you’re tripping all over yourself to claim me. Like a dog marking his territory. Just like all the others.”

“Gods, Amorette, that’s not what I want!
Last night was a mistake! All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is for you to be happy!”

“You want more than that,
” she hissed. “You’ve wanted more than that for years, don’t try to pretend different. I saw the way you looked at me, even before I understood it. And now that you got a taste, you’re trying to figure out a way to get more. If I don’t let you, you’ll just take it. Until you love someone else more. Then you’ll leave me all alone, used and broken.”

“I wouldn’t!” The tears were coming now, and nothing he could do about it. They froze on his cheeks just as he knew they would, but more kept coming.

“You would,
” she answered flatly. “Just like
him
. Your ‘heart’s brother’ right?”

Kaie’s anger returned, mixed with all the hatred and guilt that bore down on him every day since he failed to take that collar. “Sojun gave up everything for us!”

“For you!” She shook her head. “I asked him, before I let him take me that first time, if he would chose you over me. He promised me he wouldn’t. He swore it. But when the time came, it was you he loved best. Always you.”

Kaie shook,
though he didn’t feel the cold anymore. “You’re wrong.”

She laughed. That awful, wicked laugh. “No I’m not. He loved you best. And then he gave me to you. Like I’m nothing more than a whore, to be passed around whenever it suits you.
But I won’t be your whore, Kaie.”

“You’re not a whore. It
was done to you! The gods know –”

“I don’t love you. From the first time you touched me, I’ve been using you. I hate you. Just looking at you makes me want to be sick. Pretending to want you was the
vilest thing I’ve ever been forced to do. But I had to do it. You had to know!”

He didn’t want to ask. Gods, he didn’t want to. But the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Know what?”

“Enough. I’m done talking to you. Go away.”

“Not without you,” Kaie insisted. “You’ll die out here, with this storm.”

She tilted her head toward him again. There were no tears on her pale cheeks and no emotion he could discern either. “Get out of my sight.”

“No.”

She shrugged. “Fine then.”

One of her hands lifted
and for a second Kaie thought she’d called down some sort of magic. But the flashing light in her palm was no spell, only a mirror catching some glittering light hidden in the snow behind him. Peren’s mirror. “I told her I would let her have you. Before I gave her to Samuel. But only if she bought it. This is what she paid to fuck you, Kaie. This is what your seed is worth. A piece of dirty glass. Now we’re both whores.”

“What are you doing?”

“What I’ve planned.” She cackled. “Now you’ll know what it’s like to be alone! You’ll love four others, but I’m the first! And no matter what those others say or do, you’re going to remember this! You’re always going to know what it feels like when the person you love won’t love you back! When every kiss, every touch was just a lie!”

She took a breath and turned back to the frozen stream. And then, at the sound of the glass breaking, Kaie understood. He knew where the red on the field of white would come from. “NO!”

But it was too late.

Even as he darted forward, the Amorette dug the glass deep into the skin of one wrist, then the other, splitting open the flesh with the same skill she’d used to gut her kills in the life before the soldiers.

Kaie dropped to his knees and gathered her up into his arms, sobs joining the tears as he held her unresisting frame against his chest. He pressed his hands to her wounds, but the blood pulsed through his fingers with a speed that made his efforts useless. “Why? Gods dammit, Ams, why?”

She laughed again, that same high-pitched desperate sound that set his chattering teeth on edge. “You’ll go to her when I’m dead,” she whispered. “You’ll ask for the collar. I told her I could make you. Now you will. I broke you. The one he loved best. You tell him that, when she takes you.”

Kaie heard her speak
but the words rolled off him like water. They made no impression. His eyes combed the empty white world, watching the dark red puddles from his vision form and grow in the snow at his side, seeking some miracle that would save her. “Vaughan!” he screamed. “Vaughan, help me!”

Time stretched and danced, seeming both unbearably long and impossibly short with each fading pulse of blood spilling through his fingers. When the
boy materialized from the ether he didn’t know if it was an instant or an hour after he called. However long, it was too long.

“Help me!”
he shouted, shifting so that he could hold Amorette out to him without letting up on his hold on her wrists. “You have to help me stop the bleeding!”

“Kaie…”

“Don’t say it!” he screamed over her cackling laughter. “Just help me!”

Vaughan dropped down, tugging off his shirt and ripping it in half with smooth and sure motions despite
the doubt written plainly on the kid’s face.

When the other boy offered out the ragged strips to bind her wrists, Amorette shrieked and began struggling against him. Kaie cried out wordlessly, trying to hold her still enough for Vaughan to wrap her arms, but her strength
was disproportionate to the life spilling out of her. Her foot caught the boy in the stomach and sent him toppling backward with an
oomph
. She broke her hands loose from his hold and used them to rake scratches all over his chest and back. They stung for all of an instant before going as numb as the rest of his skin, but Kaie’s blood was soon mingling with her own.

For all its intensity, the struggle didn’t last long
. Fierce as she was, Amorette could not overcome the weakness Kaie could see slipping into her. When he finally caught her arms again he couldn’t help but feel how slow her heartbeat was becoming. When Vaughan slid back down beside them she hardly managed a tired flail. They managed to get her wrists bound, though the blood stained the cloth almost instantly.

Kaie rocked back and forth
clutching her close to him as her laughter began again. It was weaker this time, soft enough that he could almost mistake it for the husky and warm one he barely remembered from the day on the hill. He could almost pretend everything was going to be all right and that when she healed it would be his Amorette again, not the bitter and manipulative woman who was giving up everything just to break him.

V
aughan climbed back to his feet but Kaie could not join him without letting her go. The boy gave up on convincing him of the wisdom quickly and instead went about yanking down sticks and branches from the trees over them. It sent down showers of collected snow but they were being covered with so much already that it hardly made a difference.

In short order
Vaughan was constructing a crude fire pit in the middle of the snowstorm. Kaie kept his doubts about the effectiveness of the efforts to himself, mostly because he was terrified that one word would break the spell of the silence and cost him Amorette. There were no storms like this back wherever his home was but it didn’t take an expert to see that the wood was wet and frozen, unlikely to catch fire even if they had flint to start it with. And there was no kindling to speak of, which would make the task even more impossible.

When Vaughan leaned over the rou
gh-looking pile Kaie expected nothing. But fire burst into life with an explosion of heat and light that sent the wildling toppling backward.

He gaped, blinking at the pink and blue after
-image floating around his vision, temporarily blinding him. In his agony over Amorette he’d forgotten what Vaughan was. What he could do.

Vaughan sat up from where he’d fallen, rubbing snow and soot off his face and avoiding looking Kaie in the eye. “I’m so
rry. I didn’t want it to be so…explosive. But it’s been a long time since I’ve channeled so much, and with all of this…”

He thrust Amorette back out toward the wildling. “You can fix her! Really heal her!”

Vaughan shook his head slowly. “No. Even if I wanted to, no.”

“What do you mean ‘if you wanted to’? Fix her!”

“It doesn’t work like that!” The shout startled Kaie. Vaughan never spoke above a low murmur. But the boy was no mouse now. “I don’t ‘use magic,’ I touch the
Balla Jhoda
. The Spirit of Life. I have no spells to control it, no hand motions to twist it to my will. It doesn’t do what we demand of it, only what my heart asks of it. I want to help you, Kaie. Because of what you’ve done, and because you are my friend. But my heart will never,
never
desire to save this creature. Not after what she had done to my sister.” He glared. “Or have you forgotten already?”

He did. For a minute, maybe two, he did.
And he couldn’t feel guilty about it. Kaie shook with the need to force the matter. But he remembered Peren now, so he did nothing. He longed to argue, to defend Amorette. But the truth of Vaughan’s words poked at the wounds she’d dealt to all of them.

He slumped over Amorette, trying not to notice how her breath was barely coming now. “She can’t die, Vaughan. She’s all I have left.”

“If I could spare you this, I would. If it was in my power, I would.”

Kaie sobbed and buried his face in Amorette’s shoulder. She didn’t react to the movement at all. He listened as her heart slowed and then stopped.

The fire burned bright and fierce, melting away the snow and thawing the ice in his blood. Sensation returned painfully as he tried to will air into her lungs and life into her heart. By the time he was finally forced to face the fact that it was just a body in his arms, not the girl he loved, even his chest felt mostly normal again. Vaughan, without his shirt, continued to shiver, but otherwise it almost felt like the fire had banished the winter itself.

The ground stayed frozen though.

“I can’t bury her.”

It was the first thing he’d said in a long while. Maybe hours. Vaughan jerked out of a doze, visibly startled. He frowned and turned to look at the fire again. The boy seemed entranced by the blaze. Kaie wondered in a detached sort of way if it was
because it came from his magic or if it was some other obsession entirely.

“We could build her a pyre. That’s how my people do it. We give our loved ones back to the
Jhoda
. They join back into the stream of life, and they give us our magic.”

Kaie nodded. He looke
d down at the corpse in his arm that was growing cold despite the fire. “Can I have the mirror?”

Vaughan darted over to where she’d
dropped the shards of glass. The boy hesitated before picking up the largest, the one she’d used to open her wrists, but eventually brought all the pieces to him. Kaie clutched that one tightly, hardly noticing as it cut through the skin on his palm.

Then he climbed to his feet and tossed the bloody carcass and bits of glass into Vaughan’s fire.
All except the biggest one. The fire was too small by half and didn’t resemble a pyre at all, but it was enough. After a moment where it seemed it would be smothered by the additions, the magical blaze fought free and eagerly set to devouring it all.

Kaie sobbed once then turned away and vomited.