“You had an emberstone the whole time?”
“It was my pa’s. I’ll be back before nightfall.”
Sol found a spot near a frozen stream deep in the woods and hid herself among the snow and brush. There she waited as the day grew long, and she grew chill from the cold air. If she touched the emberstone, she would be warm, but she didn’t dare.
It was sacrilegious to use an emberstone to hunt. The forest had been Pa’s temple. Here he had worshiped the gods and had taught Sol to shun the taint of fire. And now she would use Pa’s skills to desecrate his memory and the gods he had worshiped.
She sighed and pushed the guilt away, and thoughts of Kelan replaced her thoughts of Pa. She wished suddenly to be with Kelan, for him to warm her with the heat of his body, to kiss her cheek again. Every time he touched her, he betrayed how he felt about her. She yearned for those touches, but hated them, too. He was only making this more difficult. They could never be anything together. Once they left these woods, they would part ways forever, and there was nothing either of them could do to change that.
Even if he wore an emberstone manacle, Kelan would never be safe in any of the five kingdoms. Choosing to be with him would be choosing to join the Flameskin Army, or live a life on the run. That wasn’t the life she wanted.
Something crunched in the snow to her right. A doe tramped toward the stream, its ears flicking as it walked. With bated breath, she watched it come toward her, and the hunt sent a thrill of adrenaline rushing through her. She slowly closed her left hand around the emberstone in her pocket, and her body warmed, all the way to her freezing toes.
The doe stopped at the stream and stooped its head to drink. She slowly lifted her fist and drew fire into it, letting it coil around her hand like Kelan had instructed. But she was concentrating on the deer, not on the flames. The fire wobbled and sparked, and she hurriedly flung it toward the deer, but it exploded a few feet from her, melting a patch of snow. The doe jumped and sprinted away.
She yanked energy from the emberstone and wrapped it around her hand. But the flames were wild, as erratic as her breathing. They exploded on her hand, knocking her backward into the snow. She cried out with pain, and the front of her coat caught fire. She rolled into the snow, instantly extinguishing it, but the fur of her coat had burned, and the smell of the smoke was sickening. Her hand ached and she groaned as she clutched it to her body. It felt like someone had hit her palm with a club and kicked her in the chest.
That was her deserved reward for trying to use an emberstone. She swore and wrapped her burned coat tightly around her. This had been a waste of time. She never should’ve tried to use the emberstone.
She shook the snow out of her hair and started the trek back to camp. The sun would already be set by the time she returned, so she kept a quick pace, and the throbbing in her hand lessened as she walked. She cut across the woods, taking a shortcut along a ridge. As she passed around the peak, she caught a glimpse of the valley below.
Sol gasped. Olisipo lay just a short walk down the slope.
Chapter 26
Kelan
“Kelan!” Sol shouted.
Kelan startled and sat upright, but too quickly, and he winced as his skin pulled at the movement.
“What is it?” he asked, reaching for the sword.
But her voice was happy, excited. She raced into the clearing, her eyes shining, and her cheeks flushed. He loved how the cold made her cheeks pink. But the front of her coat had been burned black, and she smelled of fire.
“What happened?” he asked.
She raced into his arms and hugged him tight. He winced, but didn’t complain. It was enough to have her close; he’d endure any pain for that.
“We’re so much closer than I thought. The city’s only two or three hours walk from here. If we leave in the morning, we’ll be there before lunch time.”
Kelan smiled and sighed. To never be hungry again, to sleep in a bed. And a bath! The gods knew he needed one. They both did.
“Sol, I’m so happy.” He squeezed her tighter, ignoring the ache in his heart.
This was it, then. Their last night.
“Do you think you can make the walk? We’ll go slow.”
“I can do it,” he said, trying not to let his voice sound bitter.
“Are you sad?”
He pulled away and sat down on the skins. “I’ve gotten so used to having you around. Who’ll be there to tell me not to slip in the ice?”
Her shoulders slumped.
“What happened to your coat?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not meant to use emberstones. It . . . didn’t work for me.”
“Did you get hurt?” he asked, his heart catching.
“My hand hurts a bit, but it’s not bad.”
He drew her into his arms. “Let me see,” he murmured. A bruise had already formed on the pad of her palm. “I’m sorry, Sol. I should’ve had you practice more before you left.”
“No, I shouldn’t have used it in the first place.”
“Fire isn’t evil. You can control it with practice.”
“Maybe.”
He kissed her bruised hand. “Does this hurt?” he asked, looking up and meeting her eyes.
She shook her head, her lips pressed tight together.
He slowly kissed the tips of her fingers. “What about this?”
He brushed his lips across the back of her hand, then raised her hand to his face and kissed her wrist.
She made a small noise of protest and hurriedly stood. “Let me try to wash your tunic again. You can’t walk into the city with bloodstains all across your chest.”
“I can wash it myself.”
She shook her head. “No, save your strength.”
“I’m afraid it’s beyond help,” he said, but obediently stripped off his coat and tunic. The air wasn’t cold to his bare skin, but his pyra did have to work harder to keep him warm.
Sol gazed at his chest and Kelan smiled. He stretched casually, hoping three weeks of near-starvation hadn’t left him emaciated, and that he still had something to admire.
“It’s almost healed,” she said.
He sighed. And he had thought she would be looking at the rest of his body. “Feeling much better, thanks to you.”
“What’s that you wear on your neck?” she asked, staring toward the button on its chain.
He squeezed it. “A reminder not to become what I hate.”
He hoped Sol wouldn’t ask any more questions, though he could tell she wanted him to say more. But then she knelt on the ground and scrubbed his stained tunic against a stone with chunks of snow and ice.
“You still planning to turn me?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.
“No. We’ll part as friends.”
“Part as friends,” he repeated, and scowled.
She sat up. “You’re a soldier, Kelan, and you have a war to fight. I’m my village’s huntress, and my family relies on me for food. We belong to different worlds.”
“Don’t you wish it could be otherwise?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. That’s the way things are.”
She scrubbed harder at his shirt, mostly with her uninjured hand. Then she sat back and held it up. The once-white tunic was now a dingy gray where it wasn’t rust red.
She sighed. “There’s nothing I can do about the hole, either.”
“It’s fine, Sol. Don’t bother with my tunic.”
He took it from her and tossed it aside into the snow and took her by the hands. “Your hands are freezing,” he murmured.
He pulled Sol into his lap and placed her hands on his burning chest, covering them with his own. She stared at him and her eyes slowly trailed up his body, as if seeing him for the first time. He smiled. So she wasn’t immune then, like she pretended to be.
But having her so close made his body ache. His heart raced in his chest beneath her fingers.
“I’m not g
oing back to the army,” he said and met her eyes. “I still want to protect Flameskins, but I don’t want to lose myself fighting this war.”
“Where will you go?” she asked, breathless.
“Where do you want me to go?”
He swept his hand along her neck. As he brushed his lips against hers, her breath caught. She pushed away and shed her heavy fur coat, revealing the blue Tokken coat she wore underneath.
“Ashes, Kelan,” she murmured. “You’re so hot.”
“I can make it hotter.”
She gave him an unreadable look, as if she were trying to decide if he was joking or not.
He wasn’t.
“Do you have any plan of what you’re going to do once we get to Olisipo?”
“Once I’m healed, I’m going to put on the emberstone manacle and never take it off. I’m going to live an ordinary life.”
“But you can’t have an ordinary life. You’ll always be a Flameskin. You’ll always have that emberstone on your wrist, marking you for what you are.”
“I’ll hide it then, if that’s what you’re worried about. Wear long sleeves. Or I could get a larger cuff and wear in on my upper arm.”
“People hunt and kill Flameskins. You’ll never be safe anywhere in Nordby. And not even in Cassia.”
“I’ll find a place. Sol, you know the mountains. There must be somewhere I could go where no one could find me. Or a village where I could conceal what I am.”
She shook her head, her face downcast. “You wouldn’t be safe in my village.”
He pressed her to him. Her face was flushed, and she fidgeted in his arms, tracing patterns on his chest with her icy fingers.
“I don’t want this to end,” he whispered. “I’d travel these mountains with you forever if it meant you would always be with me. If I could share my bed with you.”
Her head jerked up. “Kelan, please.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. “I . . . care about you, Sol. I’m not ready to let you go.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Kelan tipped her face toward his and their lips met. Her hands trailed across his chest, then over his shoulders, and she wrapped her legs around him.
His heart raced, and his pyra soared with the intensity of his emotions. It was distracted from numbing his wound. Pain flared, but Kelan didn’t care.
She slid out of her blue coat and pressed up against him, wrapping her arms around his neck as they kissed.
Kelan pulled the manacle from her pocket, careful not to touch the emberstone, and clipped it on her wrist. Then he placed her palm on his chest.
“I want to show you something,” he whispered, meeting her eyes. “Draw fire from me like you do an emberstone.”
Her eyebrows drew together, and she hesitated. She tried to move back, but he held her there against him.
Flames flowed out of his skin and into her hand. She yanked hard at his pyra, and he gasped and gripped her arm as the pain in his abdomen increased.
“Not so much. Gentle,” he said. She was drawing his fire into her blood, and taking too much of it left little to numb the pain.
The flow slowed to a trickle, and Kelan’s fire seeped into Sol. Her skin crackled against his with the sparks that they shared.
She stared at her hand on his chest then looked at his face again. “What—”
Kelan smiled. “You’re pulling out my pyra. It eats my emotions, so when you take my fire, you feel whatever I feel.”
“Your pyra won’t corrupt me, will it?”
“No. I’m the only one it can speak to.”
Her face was pensive and unreadable. The sparks and the twisting flames that entered her body were filled with the yearning he had for her. She would know that he had never felt for anyone what he felt for Sol.
“No secrets from you now,” he murmured. “Here’s my heart, laid bare.”
“Kelan.” Her eyes were lidded as she ran her hand through his curls.
“Whatever it is you want, Sol, I can be that for you.” He kissed her lips, then her throat. “But don’t tell me we can only be friends.”
He laid her on the bed of skins, and she held him tightly. Her breath was cool against his burning skin as he traced the curve of her with his hands and pressed his lips to hers.
Nothing else mattered but Sol and this last night together.
But he would make sure it wasn’t their last.
His blood boiled with the fire inside him, and heat pulsed out of him with the rapid beat of his heart. He slid his hand from her waist to the top button of her wool tunic and paused. He met her eyes, his lips parted in a question.
She went rigid and wrapped her arms around her chest.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured.
“We can’t.”
He stroked her hair and kissed her temple. “I won’t hurt you. I promised I wouldn’t, remember?”
“Stop, Kelan.”
He sat up and she pushed herself onto her elbows, but didn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe this doesn’t mean to you what it does to me, but—”
“It means everything to me,” he said, and kissed her again. Was that all she was worried about? “You know how I feel about you. There’s no other girl who ever has or who ever could make me feel that.”
He had never believed anything so firmly. He needed Sol, not just now but always. Maybe they had once been enemies, but the ties that drew them together now were only the stronger for it.
Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “I always wanted my first to be my last, but you can’t be my last, Kelan. There’s no future for us together.”
Her words turned his heart to ice.
“There’s nowhere you can live where you’ll be safe,” she said. “And I don’t want to live a life on the run.”
“But I can wear my manacle. I can—”
“Just stop, Kelan.” Her eyes glittered with tears. She squirmed her legs out from underneath him and yanked on her coats. She lay down again with her back to him.
He ran his hand over her arm, but she didn’t move. How had he even hoped she would want him? And she was right. He had no future, except to be possessed by his pyra or killed by a mob. He couldn’t ask her to abandon her home and her family and her way of life for him.
He lay down next to her and nestled in close, resting his head against hers and pressing their bodies together. His abdomen ached from his wound, but more than that, his arms ached to hold her, and his lips ached to kiss her. He listened as the night grew quiet, and Sol’s breathing slowed, and she fell asleep.
There would be no sleep tonight for Kelan.
Chapter 27
Sol
They were silent as they hiked toward Olisipo. With bandits on the main path, taking one of the game trails seemed safer, even though it was a much longer route. Sol led them along the path she had found the day before, and from there they began a steep descent toward the city.
Olisipo came into view briefly over the ridge, but disappeared again as they descended into a ravine. If they kept at their usual pace, they could’ve arrived before sunset, but Sol’s feet dragged, and their pace slowed as they drew closer to the foothills.
She kept glancing back at Kelan. Last night she had considered leaving everything to be with him. Drawing fire from his pyra had been intoxicating: the crackle of his flames in her blood and the warmth of the love he had for her. His was love deep enough to drown in.
But it was a ridiculous dream. Where could they go? Even if he did wear his emberstone, people would eventually find out what he was. They’d never be able to hide anywhere for long, and while this war was going on, he’d always be hunted. Even after the war, there was no guarantee that Flameskins would have a place in society, especially if the Flameskins lost.
But was this really the last time she was going to see him?
Kelan had stopped in the trail, and she turned around to face him. He stared at the tree line above them with a troubled face.
“
Kelan. . . .” She didn’t know where to begin. He could show her exactly how he felt about her, but she hadn’t yet dared explore the extent of the feelings she had for him.
What was the point? It would only lead to heartbreak. They were born into different worlds. Their paths would never again converge, and they weren’t meant to. Soon they would stand on opposite sides of the divide as enemies.
She cleared her throat and tried again. “Kelan—”
“Quiet.”
She frowned and followed his gaze toward the ridge. Something was moving among the trees.
“Bandits?” she whispered.
“They’re wearing red coats.”
She breathed in sharply. Flameskin soldiers?
Kelan grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. “Let’s move. Burnitall. I didn’t think the Flameskin encampment was this close to Olisipo.”
“What? But you told us there weren’t any other Flameskins in the Ulves.”
“I was tied up. I lied. Which way out of the ravine?”
She pointed, and they stomped through icy sheets of snow as they ran. High, snow-covered walls hid them from view on either side of the narrow canyon, but prevented them from seeing out.
“Did they see us?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
They burst out of the canyon’s mouth and into the brilliant sunlight. The snow was blinding white and shot through with red. A dozen Flameskin soldiers waited for them with weapons ready.
Sol stopped short, still clinging to Kelan’s hand. The soldiers were a mix of men, women, and adolescents, and several had fire sparking on their fingertips.
Sol reached for her dagger, but it had disappeared in the fight with the bandits. She swore inwardly as the Flameskins advanced. Most of them had crooked, demonic smiles on their faces.
“Why don’t we have some fun?” one of them hissed. “Let’s see how well they dance.” The soldier formed a swirling ball of fire around her fist.
“Stand down, soldiers,” Kelan barked. He straightened and strode toward them with a hand on the hilt of his stolen Cassian scimitar. The soldiers faltered, and the woman’s ball of fire evaporated into the cold air.
Firefrost: A Flameskin Chronicles Novel Page 12
