Firefrost: A Flameskin Chronicles Novel

by Camille Longley

  Sol.

  His veins were buzzing with fire again, and the flames sparked as he caught sight of her face.

  Ashes.

  Everything hurt. But Sol was with him, and he didn’t care about anything else.

  He lifted his hand to touch her, and she jerked sideways.

  “Kelan?”

  She swore and stumbled. Kelan slid off her shoulders and onto the ground. He groaned as he rolled.

  Burnitall, this arm. He pushed his pyra into his arm to help dull some of the pain.

  Sol’s emberstone had fallen from her hand and dropped onto the pine needles. She scrambled after it and cast a wary glance at Kelan as she picked it up from the ground.

  He rubbed his face, trying to reorient himself. Sol approached cautiously, holding out the emberstone. She looked afraid.

  “It’s just me,” he said. He tried and failed to sit up, and instead lay groaning on the ground.

  She took a step toward him. “You aren’t possessed?”

  He shook his head in answer, and his vision spun.

  She threw her arms around him and smothered him with a kiss. He clung to her even as he struggled to breathe. She was back. They were together again. Nothing else mattered. Not even breathing.

  “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be running!” Marta shouted. They broke apart, and Kelan looked up to see Marta with an unconscious Silas on her shoulders.

  Sol pulled Kelan to his feet. “Can you run?”

  He wasn’t sure if he could even walk. “If you help me.”

  He straightened and took stock of his body. Bruises, cuts, and burns, but everything still seemed to be in place. His pyra was there, but absorbed in healing his arm. And he wasn’t possessed.

  He took Sol’s hand. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “We came to burn the Flameskin camp, but then—”

  “But then we found you and Silas,” Marta said. “And we caught sight of the Tokken Army.”

  “The Tokken Army?” Sol asked. “They’re here?”

  An explosion of fire sent the three of them scurrying in different directions. Silas fell onto the ground as fire struck the trees and the ground around them. Marta sent balls of fire toward their attackers and tried to deflect the blasts.

  “Go!” Marta shouted at them. “I can hold them off.”

  A wraith dropped from the tree above them and picked up Silas. But a volley of flames knocked Marta off her feet and sent her sprawling.

  Kelan took up her position. Marta didn’t have the practice he had, and he expertly wielded his pyra. For every burst of flame the soldiers sent toward them, he replied with one of his own. The air erupted with sparks and fire as Kelan deflected the blows.

  Through the flames on the ground emerged the soldiers, all mages, who held their emberstones aloft in their hands and drew swirling fire around their fists. They cast flames at the wraiths, dropping them from the trees and knocking them off their feet.

  Marta winced as she picked herself up off the ground. "Why are they attacking us?”

  “They think we’re hiding an army in the Wood,” Kelan said. He launched another explosive wave of flame from his fingers. “They think we’ll be able to push back Katrine.”

  “They’re insane!” Sol shouted.

  “They’re desperate.” Kelan intercepted the attacks and gave the wraiths a chance to regroup. His pyra grew in strength as he used it, but it didn’t try to overpower him. It was content to let him block the attacks and send fire and cinders exploding through the trees.

  Sol grabbed a bow and arrows that had dropped from one of the trees and shot the mages, dropping them onto the forest floor. Many of the red-coated soldiers lay on the ground, inexplicably suffering from burns.

  “How are the soldiers burning?” Kelan asked. He had to shout to be heard over the explosive crash of fire and the screams of men and women, and the crackle of fire licking its way up the tree trunks.

  “We fed them emberstone. Their pyri have been extinguished, for now.”

  Clever girl. Ingested emberstone would be difficult, if not impossible to expel. And it left them completely vulnerable.

  Sol raised her bow and shot another soldier who had gotten too close to the top of the hill. But there were too many soldiers for her to hold them all back.

  Kelan widened his stance. This was what he had been trained to do—hurl flames and fight.

  The first soldier reached the crest of their hill and swung with his sword. Kelan stepped in front of Sol and sent a blast of fire into the soldier’s chest, igniting his red coat and sending him to the ground. Kelan wrestled the sword from the soldier’s hand. He slashed the soldier’s chest, then swung his new sword upward to meet another blade.

  Kill. Kill. Kill, his pyra hissed.

  Kelan struck down soldiers one by one, distracting them with flames and cutting them open with his blade.

  His whole life he had been doing this. He had joined the army at ten, alongside Markus and his uncle. And now he turned everything he had learned against the people who had raised him.

  The forest burned. Kelan’s injured arm ached, but he couldn’t let it distract him. Sweat ran down his arm and stung his wounds. Whenever Kelan’s blade faltered, one of Sol’s arrows felled his foes.

  He slashed at a soldier who went down with a cry, and two more took her place. Sol’s bow twanged above him on the rise, and the soldier fell. Kelan used the distraction to run the other soldier through.

  The flames crept up the hill in the wake of the soldiers. Sol coughed as smoke choked the trees.

  A familiar figure strode through the smoke and the fog. Uncle Haldur.

  Haldur advanced slowly, almost casually through the trees. His soldiers passed him and ran at the wraiths, hurling fire and getting felled by arrows. The number of advancing soldiers was diminishing. The flames that now consumed the forest created an impassable barrier for the poisoned Flameskins.

  “Kelan,” Haldur said, drawling out the word.

  Kelan raised his sword. “Call off the attack. This is my home, Uncle, and I won’t let you take it from me.”

  “I gave you a home. I was the one who took you in when my sister was murdered.”

  Nearby, Sol was doubled over and coughing again. Black pine smoke drifted as thick as the mist.

  Haldur tried to kill us, his pyra hissed. Now we will kill him.

  “You betray your own kind,” Haldur said. He stopped in front of Kelan and drew his sword.

  “I don’t want to kill soldiers. I just want to protect the people I love.”

  “Flameskins that won’t fight with us don’t deserve our protection.”

  Haldur swung his sword without warning, forcing Kelan to step backward to block it. Their blades clashed and rang through the forest as sparks flew around them.

  Haldur was the one who had taught Kelan to use a sword, and his uncle had always been the better swordsman.

  But he doesn’t have a pyra.

  Kelan drew on his pyra, sending fire into his arms and his shoulders to strengthen the muscles. He slammed his blade against Haldur’s, each blow pushing his uncle backward down the burning hill. Haldur’s face was slick with sweat, and the heat intensified, coming out in blistering waves as the flames leapt through the trees.

  Kelan kept Haldur on the defensive. Kelan’s attacks grew heavier and faster with his pyra strengthening his body. Sparks flew from their blades and Kelan’s hilt began to glow with the heat of his hands.

  Haldur threw a blast of fire at Kelan’s face, temporarily blinding him, and in return Kelan sent out a wave of flames from his hand. Haldur knocked Kelan’s sword from his hand. Kelan scrambled backward, trying to get away from Haldur as he regained his bearings.

  Haldur had picked up Kelan’s sword from the ground and held both of them as he circled. “Join with us, Kelan. It isn’t too late. The Tokkens are here, and we need soldiers.”

  “I won’t be a weapon anymore.”

  Hald
ur sighed. “I always did wish you were more like Markus.”

  “Makus is dead.”

  Haldur blinked. “What?”

  “Markus was a monster, but you could never see that. He wasn’t a soldier. He was a murderer.”

  “What did you do?”

  Kelan clambered to his feet.

  “What did you do?” Haldur shouted. His face changed. Haldur was extinguished; he could no longer feel grief or anger or happiness, but something had triggered inside him.

  Haldur threw himself with a roar at Kelan. Kelan raced toward a fallen soldier and grabbed his sword from the ground. He tumbled backward, and Haldur’s sword struck the trunk of a tree just above Kelan’s head.

  Haldur slammed his swords at Kelan, and now their positions were reversed. Haldur forced Kelan downhill toward the fire and the fallen Flameskin soldiers. Kelan could barely keep track of Haldur’s two flashing swords. His pyra quavered, and his strength diminished as fear threatened to take him.

  Sol followed close behind, but her quiver was empty. She stooped to yank an arrow from the back of a dead soldier.

  Haldur slammed both swords at Kelan, and Kelan lost his footing. Kelan stumbled back a step and tripped on a root. He fell. Haldur had the opening. He could thrust in his sword and end Kelan’s life.

  But instead, Haldur turned and charged Sol. He threw a blast of fire at her and knocked her down. She cried out as she fell, and Haldur lifted his sword over her head.

  “No!” Kelan screamed. He hurled flames at Haldur, catching him in the side just an arrow struck Haldur’s back.

  Kelan’s flames blasted Haldur sideways into the dirt. Haldur’s chest heaved once, and then he was still.

  Kelan scrambled to his feet and ran to Sol’s side.

  He beat out the flames burning her red coat and helped her up from the ground. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Are you?”

  He shook his head as she wrapped her arms around him. She didn’t hold him too tightly, and he was grateful for that. Everything hurt.

  He ran his hand over her long, black hair and brushed his fingers across her soot-streaked face.

  Sol. He closed his eyes as smoke billowed around them, and didn’t release her until she began to cough.

  “Keep drawing on your emberstone. It will help with the smoke,” he said.

  She nodded as her eyes watered. He took her hand and led them away from the fire that raced up the trees. But he paused when he caught sight of the body.

  Haldur had an arrow protruding from his back, and fire still smoldered on his red coat. His skin and his hair had burned.

  This was the uncle who had saved him from the mobs, who had raised him since he was a boy. The uncle who had taught him the art of death and destruction, who had turned him into a weapon, who had encouraged him to give in to the darkness.

  Sol edged toward Haldur, and turned away after she had gotten a glimpse of him. “I’m sorry.”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “I’m not. He would’ve killed you if he could’ve. He knew that was the best way to hurt me.”

  “But he’s your family.”

  Fire had taken every member of his family in the end. His mother and his aunt had been lost to the pyre, and now Markus and Haldur had been burned as well.

  Kelan let out a long sigh. “It’s over now.”

  Marta had slid down from a tree branch above them. “No, it’s not. The Tokkens have arrived.”

  Chapter 59

  Sol

  “The Tokkens are in the Wood?” Sol asked. She clung tight to Kelan’s hand, not wanting to ever let go again. She was also a little leery of him without his emberstone. How was he not possessed?

  “Come and see,” one of the wraiths shouted from above.

  She needed to get up there and see what was going on, but she hesitated. “Do you need the emberstone back?” she asked Kelan.

  “I don’t think so.”

  All this time they had spent worrying about what would happen if he was without his emberstone, and now he didn’t need it?

  But she trusted him.

  Her eyes watered, and she coughed as she climbed. Up there the air was thick with smoke. She could peek through the boughs at the Flameskin camp beyond the forest from the canopy. The fire had spread across the camp, leaping from tent to tent. The Flameskin soldiers were in complete disarray. Many of them were burning and dying. Their contaminated food was doing its work and keeping the Flameskins from using their pyri.

  Beyond the sea of fire and red coats came a wave of blue across the grass. Tokken soldiers marched toward the camp and began their own version of destruction with steel. At their head stood a woman wreathed in flames that shot a frothing sea of fire into the Flameskin Army. As she stormed through the camp, the flames burning the tents bent toward her, as if being sucked in by her breath, then she blasted the fire outward at the Flameskin soldiers.

  Marta had followed Sol up the tree and hung from a branch beside her. “They’re going to destroy the entire Flameskin Army, then they’ll come for us.”

  “We’ll have to hide,” Sol said.

  Marta shook her head. “We can’t hide from her. Haven’t you heard the stories? She can summon fire from our bodies without touching us. She can find us by our heat.”

  Other wraiths had gathered at the base of the tree. The Flameskin Army had abandoned the attack on the burning Hivid Wood to face the advancing Tokken Army.

  Sol climbed down to the forest floor and the wraiths gathered around her. Kelan rested his head against her shoulder, and she put an arm around him. Kelan wasn’t the only one injured. Many of the wraiths had cuts and bruises, and all of them had drooping, tired eyes and were covered in soot.

  How were a handful of youths supposed to stand against a saint?

  “They say the goddess made her immortal,” one of the wraiths said. “There’s nothing we can do to stop her.”

  “Even if she can heal, arrows will slow her down,” Sol said.

  They gave her uncertain looks. “Slow her down, maybe, but not stop her,” one muttered.

  “Were any of ours killed?” Sol asked.

  “Mie is dead,” one boy said.

  Marta let out a strangled cry and the boy put an arm around her. Sol let out a long sigh. Hopefully there would be time to mourn the dead at the end of this, if they didn’t all perish in the fight.

  “There’s a couple missing, and some of us are hurt pretty bad,” said the boy who had carried Silas. Silas lay inert on the ground nearby among the bodies of Flameskin soldiers.

  “Take Silas and whoever’s been injured back to the haven,” Sol said. “The rest of us will stay and fight. We won’t let Saint Katrine take our home.”

  Kelan ran his thumb across Sol’s cheek. “Our home,” he murmured.

  “Kelan, you should go back with Silas. You can barely stand,” Sol said.

  “Didn’t you just see me fighting?”

  “I know, but . . . .” He looked ragged around the edges, and he was obviously in a great deal of pain. He winced every time he moved.

  “I’m not leaving you again,” he said. “We stand or we fall together.”

  “Kelan.” She sighed and kissed the corner of his mouth, careful of his healing lip.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her closer. “No. Kiss me, Sol.”

  She kissed him, and tasted the smoke and the fire and the desire and the hope on his lips.

  “We have to find a way to survive. I don’t want this to be the end.”

  Silas was carried off to the haven along with the other wounded, and Sol led a retreat deeper into the woods away from the fire. It looked like the whole forest would burn. The redwoods resisted the flames, but they weren’t immune to them, and the elms and the oaks were already crackling with fire. Flames devoured the bed of pine needles on the forest floor, and burning limbs rained hot coals on their heads.

  The wraiths took up a position near the haven and climbed the trees. From there, Sol got a
view of the Tokken Army pushing through the burning camp. Flameskins fell by Tokken swords, and Saint Katrine led their charge. She absorbed the flames at her feet and created a path through the fire for her army.

  Katrine stopped her soldiers at the edge of the forest and sent them fanning out in every direction to destroy the camp. Then she turned toward the Wood and stretched one hand toward the crackling flames that curled up the trees. The flames wavered, then leaned toward her. The fire flowed from the trees into the air and sank into her open palm.

  On each of her arms were several dozen circular emberstones. As the fire entered into her body, she touched each of the stones running up her arm. They glowed brighter as she filled them with fire.

  She reduced the fire in the Hivid Wood to a smolder, and all that remained were the black, dead coals, the ash beneath Katrine’s feet, and the smoke that lingered in the air.

  Then she gathered a small retinue of soldiers around her and started her advance through the Wood.

  “She’s coming,” Sol hissed at the wraiths below her.

  Kelan hid behind a tree with his sword in hand, alongside a few other wraiths. More wraiths were in the trees and they each drew their bows.

  In the bright light of the emberstones on Katrine’s body, Sol could make out the faces of the soldiers around her: Queen Vara, with a braid woven through a gold circlet on her head, and the two female guards who had come with her before to the haven.

  Saint Katrine leaned against the queen, apparently for support. Queen Vara led the saint into the forest and took her on a direct path toward the haven.

  Sol’s shoulders slumped.

  All of Vara’s promises had been lies.

  In the end, Queen Vara was just like all the others. She had sold them out to Katrine.

  Sol drew her bow and aimed for Katrine’s heart, but the trees here were too densely grown to get a clear shot

  Saint Katrine reappeared from behind a tree and Sol released her arrow.

  One of the soldiers shouted and threw up her shield. The arrow embedded itself in the leather.

  Vara drew her sword. “Cease fire!”