A man stepped forward with a knife in hand to cut out the girl’s heart.
Kelan couldn’t move. He couldn’t scream. He could only watch, horrified and transfixed like he had been that day so long ago when he had been that child. It was the same tragedy played out over and over again. This is how it would always be for Flameskins.
The man raised his knife and an arrow struck it and knocked the blade from the man’s hand. Both knife and arrow skittered across the ground.
The crowd hushed and turned from the Flameskin child to the huntress. Sol stood in the town square beside the pyre with another arrow already notched on the string.
Kelan gasped for breath as he came out of his trance. He threw off his pack and drew the sword he had stashed inside it.
He stood beside Sol and gave her a weak smile. Sol. He had never loved her so well.
“Put down the child,” Sol ordered, aiming for the face of one of the men.
But the men didn’t release her.
“What right have you to tell us how to do our business?” one demanded.
“To kill innocents like this is to bring the wrath of the Flameskin Army,” Sol said. “I’ve seen what they can do to a village.”
“Saint Katrine is riding with the Tokken Army. The Flameskins are no more.”
A chill ran down Kelan’s spine. Everywhere they went the rumors of Saint Katrine grew more numerous and hopeful. Saint Katrine had come to redeem Tokkedal and wipe every Flameskin from the face of the land.
“Don’t sully your hands with a child’s blood,” Sol said. “Let Saint Katrine kill her.”
One of the men dropped the sobbing girl’s arm and picked up the dented knife from the ground. He took a few tentative steps toward them. “Flameskin sympathizers aren’t welcome here.”
“Give us the girl,” Kelan said.
Sol shot him a wide-eyed glance.
“We’re traveling south,” Kelan said. “We’ll take the girl to the Hivid Wood.”
The crowd grumbled and there were hissed cries of “demons” and “wraiths.”
“Flameskin sympathizers are just as bad as the Flameskins themselves,” the man said. He gave them an ugly scowl as he advanced toward them. “Perhaps we need a bigger pyre.”
Sol loosed her arrow, the man cried out, and the arrow struck the cobblestone in front of his foot. The shaft broke, showering him in splinters of wood.
“I’m getting tired of this,” she said as she notched another arrow. “Give us the girl. The next arrow goes straight through your chest.”
The man’s hands shook as he dropped his knife. The crowd protested and shouted and raged, but no one stepped forward to challenge the huntress.
Sol nudged Kelan with her elbow. “Go get her, then.”
Kelan strode forward with his sword in hand and took the sobbing girl from the mob’s hands. He ripped the ropes from her body and left them in the bloody street, then he picked her up and carried her back toward Sol, still holding his sword.
Then, slowly, they retreated away from the mob and the still-burning pyre. Ash of the girl’s mother rose up into the air and followed them as they returned to the forest.
Chapter 46
Sol
They had done the right thing.
Sol kept telling herself that as she banked the fire and prepared for bed.
But taking in the girl wouldn’t make the journey any easier. They would travel twice as slow as before with her in tow, and she was another mouth to feed as well.
The girl had already curled up in one of their bedrolls and fallen asleep. They still didn’t know her name. She had cried all afternoon and they had taken turns carrying her until their arms ached too badly to continue on. They had found a campsite in the shelter of a grove of aspens and now sat exhausted on the ground.
Kelan had been silent all afternoon. They had witnessed many terrible things during their time together, but she had never once seen him freeze up like that.
She still couldn’t get the sight of it out of her mind. The heart lying on the ground in a pool of its own blood. The woman with the carved-out chest tossed onto the fire to burn. How could her pa have committed such a horrible crime? Even if the woman were a possessed Flameskin, how could they have considered giving the same punishment to her daughter, a child?
They needed to get to the Hivid Wood where all of them would be safe, where they could hide from mobs and from Tokken soldiers and from Saint Katrine.
Sol moved in beside Kelan, and he put his arm around her. The dim glow of the coals and the starlight illuminated his moist eyes.
She put a hand on his cheek. “Kelan.”
He rubbed at his eye and cleared his throat. “The world is too cruel to children.”
She sighed. Her childhood had been a thing of dreams and sunshine and warm, winter nights. How was it that some were blessed to be born into happiness and others born into misery?
“Thank you, Sol, for what you did earlier. You don’t know what it means to me that you stood up to them.”
“A year ago I would’ve joined them. I’m grateful you’ve taught me to be better than that.”
He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her softly. “I’m glad I fell in love with the kind of girl who would risk her life to save another’s.”
“It wasn’t my life I was risking; it was yours.” Her stomach twisted as she thought again of the mob passing by the trading post, and the terror that had gripped her, thinking it had been Kelan they had taken.
He sighed and pulled her in, hugging her to him. “We saved her. That’s what matters.” His eyes were fixed on the girl, trapped in a fitful sleep.
They watched her for a while as Kelan stroked Sol’s hair.
“That was how my mother died, too,” he whispered.
“Your mother?”
“I watched them cut out my mother’s heart, and they would’ve done it to me, too, if one of my neighbors hadn’t intervened. He was able to hide me until my uncle came to get me.”
“I’m sorry, Kelan.”
“Bringing a Flameskin child into the world is a sin,” Kelan whispered. “I used to wish that I had never been born. We’re all miserable. Every Flameskin in Nordby.”
Sol’s heart twisted. Any child born to her and Kelan would be a Flameskin as well, if not a mage. Not that it was likely they would have children in the near future. Their journey was far too arduous for her to expect she could conceive. But the thought frightened her nonetheless.
Kelan’s brows drew together. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m not miserable, not since I met you.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I know what you meant.”
“Oh! I almost forgot.” He pulled a shining object from his pocket. Then he took her hand and slid a small silver ring onto her finger.
“This is beautiful. Where did you get it?” she asked, admiring the band with its lovely filigree leaves.
“Today, in town. Do you like it?”
“Did you steal it?”
He frowned. “I’m not a thief. I traded for it.” He tapped his collar where the chain and its brass ornament used to hang.
She stared at his bare throat. He had always worn that chain, as long as she had known him. “That was important to you.”
He kissed her cheek. “It was. But you’ve given up much more for me.”
She ran her fingertip over the band. She had never seen anything so beautiful. Her heart swelled. “You didn’t have to get me a ring.”
“You don’t like it?”
She kissed him. “No, I love it. Thank you. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.”
He smiled and brushed his lips along her cheek and whispered in her ear. “Now you’re officially mine.”
“I’ve always been yours.”
“Not always. And now the mountains will know you belong with me, and that they can’t take you away.”
Sol forced out a laugh. “You’re st
ill worried about that?” It had shaken both of them, but Kelan especially. She had started to think he wouldn’t let her go back to the Ulves.
“Nothing will ever separate us,” she promised.
He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “My wife,” he whispered, and met her eyes. A shiver of pleasure ran through her.
“Can I call you that?” he asked.
She nodded. Their life was so hard sometimes, but she had never known anything so wonderful as being with him.
When she laid down, he pulled the blanket over them. They were squished tight in a single bedroll since the girl had taken the other one, but Sol didn’t mind. She loved being close to him and feeling his heartbeat beneath her fingers.
“You are my queen,” he whispered between kisses.
That always made her smile.
A crash startled Sol from sleep. She woke to blinding, orange light and heat that singed her skin. A burning tree branch had crashed to the ground nearby and thrown sparks into the air. She coughed as smoke filled her lungs and burned her eyes.
Fire.
She grabbed the emberstone from her pocket. The moment she had it in her hand, the burning heat abated, and she could breathe easier in the smoke.
“Kelan!” she shouted over the crackle of the flames.
He lay still beside her in the bedroll. She swore and her shaking, panicky fingers searched for the key in her pocket to unlock his manacle.
“Kelan!” She shook him roughly and unlocked the manacle. She took one of his hands to draw the fire from his pyra and could feel the sparks underneath his skin. He was still alive. She crawled out of the bedroll and started dragging him away from the flames, but the blanket caught on the prickly forest floor. The fire roared as it snapped and popped, throwing sparks over both of them.
She coughed and shouted his name and shook him again, and finally, finally his eyes flickered open.
“Get up! Fire!” She dragged him upright as he coughed and blearily took in the scene around them. The trees north of their camp were burning, and the fire had spread to the grass. Smoke filled their little clearing, and sparks leapt onto their bags and bedrolls.
She put Kelan’s hand on her arm so they wouldn’t break contact and threw their bags over her shoulder, then she picked up the girl.
“Don’t let go!” she told Kelan over the crackle of the flames. He clung to her as they hurried away from the fire. Smoke still billowed around them, and she coughed it out of her lungs. The girl woke and clung groggily to Sol’s neck.
Sol and Kelan were both coughing. They had inhaled a great deal of smoke in their flameless states. When Sol doubled over again, Kelan took the girl from her arms and threw her over his shoulder, then took Sol’s hand in his.
The fire raced after them, leaping from tree to tree. The wind hurled sparks at them, and little fires started on the grass beneath their feet. They tripped over fallen logs and tore their way through bushes to get out.
They didn’t stop moving until the smoke and the fire were far behind them, and they had come out on the other side of the forest.
Kelan set the girl down in the grass and took Sol up in his arms. They both sank to the ground. Sol’s head and limbs ached. Both of them were still coughing.
“You all right?” he asked as he coughed.
“I’m fine. I don’t know what happened.” She coughed again. “I thought I banked the fire properly, but I guess not.”
“I don’t think we started it. Look.” He pointed toward the forest behind them. An enormous portion of it was burning now, and it looked like it would continue to spread through the night. It burned all the way to the edge of Rodding, the town they had just left.
“You think it’s more Flameskins?” Sol asked.
“No. They were trying to burn us out. They knew we would be here tonight.”
“But that’s madness. They’d burn down their own forest to kill the girl? And risk their town catching on fire?”
Kelan’s face was dark. “You haven’t seen what people are willing to do to destroy Flameskins.”
Shapes approached from the darkness. Men with torches and shining weapons.
Sol struggled to her feet and yanked the bow from her bag. She coughed as she searched for her string and arrows.
She gasped and jerked upright.
She had broken contact with Kelan. She wasn’t absorbing his pyra.
Kelan stood and slid his sword from his bag.
Sol grabbed the girl and scrambled away from him, swearing under her breath. She had gotten careless. She had known eventually this would happen and Kelan’s pyra would escape, but why did it have to be now?
Her mind was foggy from the smoke. She smothered a cough as she struggled to string her bow.
But Kelan’s pyra must have been consumed by rage at the pyre they had witnessed yesterday because it ignored her and the girl entirely. He strode soundlessly through the tall grass toward the advancing mob. His scimitar looked like a wicked crescent moon in his hand.
Sol finally got her bow strung and threw her quiver over her shoulder. “Stay here,” she told the girl. The girl nodded and curled up beside their bags.
Sol stole forward, keeping a safe distance from Kelan. She didn’t want to have to hurt him, but he’d forgive her for sticking an arrow in his leg to get him down. She could do it without hurting him too badly, but they’d have to lie low for a few days while he healed.
She knew what she had to do, but still her fingers trembled on the string. She couldn’t look at that thing wearing Kelan’s face. It had the twisted familiarity of nightmare.
Kelan had stopped before the mob. There were about ten men, armed with the weapons of villagers: axes, a shovel, daggers, a pickax, and an old sword. It was the man she had shot at earlier in the village who carried the sword. He had that same cruel look on his face.
“Give us the girl,” he ordered.
Kelan raised his scimitar. His voice was dark and angry. “You almost killed us.”
“You brought fire on yourselves when you aligned with Flameskins,” he spat. “Give us the demon child so we can end this.”
“Leave now with your lives,” Kelan hissed.
His voice sent a shiver down Sol’s spine.
The man roared and swung with his sword. Kelan knocked it away with a practiced blow and thrust his sword through the man’s side. The man fell with a cry onto the ground and the villagers beside him shouted and charged as Kelan slid the sword free and the body dropped.
Kelan barely moved. He didn’t even need fire for this fight. His scimitar carved the air, a vicious streak of silver moonlight. He blocked ax heads and knives and dropped three more men.
Sol was rooted in place. Her hands shook. She tried to pull back the bowstring, but her strength failed her.
The six remaining villagers retreated with their axes and their scythes. “What have you done?” one man gasped.
A shudder ran through Sol. This was what Kelan became without his manacle. She raised her bow and strained as she pulled back the string.
Kelan lifted his sword again toward the mob. “Get out of my sight.”
The men lurched backward and scrambled over each other as they fled.
Kelan lowered his sword tip to the ground and slowly turned in place until he faced her. He dropped his sword and stumbled backward when he saw the arrow pointed at him. “Sol, what—”
It was then she saw the manacle peeking out from beneath his sleeve, bathing his hand in red light.
She dropped her bow.
That hadn’t been the demon at all.
That was all the work of Kelan the soldier.
How often she forgot who he had been, and what he was capable of, even without his pyra.
He sank to his knees beside the bodies and pressed his palms into his forehead. Sol ran to him and threw her arms around him.
“I thought you were possessed. Are you hurt?”
“I can’t blame you for thinking that
,” he said, his voice dark. “I am a killer. Not any better than they are.”
“You protected us.”
“These men had families and lives of their own. Why did they have to fight me?” he asked. He was shaking. They were both shaking.
“You did what you had to,” she whispered, but the words tasted wrong in her mouth. Why did he have to kill them? Couldn’t he just have wounded them, instead?
He took her by the shoulders and looked into her face. “I never asked to be a soldier, and I never wanted to fight. But for you, I’d fight every day of my life if I had to. I’ll do anything to protect you.”
Chapter 47
Kelan
The girl didn’t speak a single word as they trekked through the forest away from Rodding, leaving bodies and ashes in their wake. The girl didn’t complain about the long days and how sore her feet must have been. When she got tired, she just sat down in the road with silent tears, and then Kelan and Sol would take turns carrying her as far as they could go.
Kelan’s heart ached for the girl. He had been that child once.
The girl clung to Sol’s neck as Sol carried her on her back. “Do you have a name?” Sol asked for the hundredth time. “What did your ma call you?”
In answer, the girl closed her eyes and rested her head on Sol’s shoulder.
“We can’t keep calling her ‘the girl,’” Sol said.
“We could guess her name. Is it Isabella?”
The girl shook her head and Sol made a face at him. “Very funny.”
Sol stuck out a hand and swiped a flower off the side of the road. “This is an azalea. What if I call you Azalea, too?”
The girl crushed the flower to herself and gave a brisk nod of assent.
“Azalea. It’s a pretty name for a pretty girl,” Sol said and smiled at her.
Azalea had long black hair that Sol braided with flowers and tied with string. She had haunted green Tokken eyes, and nothing they said or did could lift the darkness from Azalea’s face.
Firefrost: A Flameskin Chronicles Novel Page 24
