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 looked 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.
Thirty-One
They waited until the wind stopped tugging at their hair and the fire of the pyre was nothing more than hot red ash. The flames lasted a long time. Vaughan’s power was great. Great and useless. As the last of the fire flickered out the last of Amorette’s bones collapsed in on themselves. Vaughan turned his head away but Kaie watched as the ashes rose up to embrace all the bits of the girl he loved.
There were things to be done. Not a one of them felt important but he knew that would pass. If not for him, for Vaughan and Peren. They both suffered enough for the death of this last piece of Kaie’s world. He wouldn’t see them punished more. So, with much effort, he forced his mind to work through those things and come up with a plan.
Unable to shake free of the sense he was wading through water with Kaie led Vaughan back to the well then left him with the instruction to gather the blankets and bowls from his shack and return to Peren. Vaughan didn’t ask why or what he would do. It was a small favor, one the boy was likely not even aware of, but Kaie was grateful.
He stumbled around for a little while after that, unsure of where he was going. Every time he tried to come up with a way to move forward his thoughts would return to that cackling laugh or his eyes would drift down to the blood that coated him. It was useless, he supposed. Even when he was thinking clearly he never sorted out where Josephine was. Things were all messed up now and he was certainly not thinking right. He was stupid to even try finding her.
It didn’t matter. Just as he was ready to give up and collapse in the snow, she found him. Always near. Always watching. He remembered.
Kaie told her what happened, all of it, in a voice flat and alien. Her sneer faltered and vanished as he went. Another time he might find that satisfying. Another time he might lie. When he was finished she was silent for some time. He slumped down against the well, trying to remember how he got back there. He thought about how easy it would be to just fall asleep and let the winter take him. Better than facing what Amorette left behind.
Josephine grabbed his aching shoulder and jerked him back to his feet. It took a little while for her barked words to sink in, for his mind to make sense of them. She wanted him to take her to the place. No, not where Amorette burned. The place where Peren was attacked. That’s right. That’s why he told her. She was going to take care of Peren and Vaughan, to make sure they didn’t get in trouble for the dead man Samuel.
He blinked and they were in the other version of his neighborhood. The one with color and flowers. Except the flowers were all buried underneath drifts of snow. Still, he was certain it was the other side. At first he suspected the sudden change in location was due to magic, but Josephine was behaving like nothing happened. After a few seconds of confusion Kaie realized he led her there the normal way. He just didn’t remember the trip.
Disconcerted and struggling to focus, he sorted out which house used to be surrounded by yellow flowers by tracking a set of footprints coming from the same direction they were. It was more instinct directing him than any conscious realization that the prints belonged to Vaughan.
They were inside the house. The body and the two he was trying to protect. Peren was awake. She looked up at him with those huge eyes, comb pausing halfway down its path through her hair. The corners of her thin lips turned upward, just the barest hint of a smile and for a second Kaie found an anchor. Whatever she saw, when she looked into him, it wasn’t a monster. His head cleared enough to hear what Josephina was saying.
“… not a favorite. But she will still raise trouble over this. Gods, you and your bitch picked the worst time for your little melodrama. Mistress won’t be back for another five weeks.” The woman sighed heavily.
“What does that mean?” Kaie asked, because it felt like he should.
“It means you keep your head down! Only do it this time!” she snapped. “If we are very lucky and the gods like you very much, Master Peter will find just enough backbone to keep Lady Luna’s fingers off you that long. Chaos’s balls, I will never understand why Mistress is willing to waste such effort keeping your worthless ass safe.”
“Me neither,” Kaie muttered. But Josephine wasn’t listening to him. She was tugging and jerking on Samuel’s body. Large as it was, she still managed to get it up and somehow hoist it over her shoulder.
“Can he… can Kaie stay here?” Peren asked.
He didn’t want to stay. He almost said so. But Peren’s eyes were locked on him, asking him for something. She was beaten because of him. Because she gave him a puzzle to solve when he needed one. Because she ate lunch with him so that he wouldn’t be alone. He couldn’t deny her this. Not today.
Josephine eyed them all with clear irritation. “Keep him from making this worse.”
Peren nodded, her eyes never leaving his.
“Fine.”
The second the woman was out of the room, Kaie dropped to the dirt. He was stuck. Anything he did now would be Peren’s fault. He couldn’t finish his plan. Without it there wasn’t anything holding him up.
Kaie ran his thumb over the edge of the glass, mindless of the cut it made or the way his blood mingled with Amorette’s. He lost himself in the past. What he saw was too vivid, too solid, to be memories. It was a vision and he embraced it.
Two boys were racing. They were young. Six. With a start, he recognized the children he was watching. Sojun, towheaded back then, and his own auburn curls bobbing along ahead. He was always ahead. The kids were heading for their hill. Even back then, it was theirs.
They skidded to a halt, their twin expressions of shock so similar it was comical. There, on their hill, was a stranger, a tiny girl with a burst of strawberry hair that caught the light and made a fiery halo around her delicate features. W
hich were, at that particular moment, twisted into an expression of angry determination.
“You’re going to fly!” she announced to her feet. He concentrated on the image. That wasn’t right. As he focused, the blurry shape on the ground fleshed out. It was a sparrow, the sparrow, just a baby and all alone.
“Kosa take you, you stupid bird, fly!”
The boys’ mouths dropped open so in sync with each other it almost looked rehearsed. Little girls didn’t speak that way. No one but adults said the Destroyer’s name out loud. Everyone knew it was bad luck.
She spat more curses at it, not one less shocking than the first. Then she began stomping her feet and screaming at it. Both boys watched the scene, neither sure what to do about this tiny terror losing her mind because a baby bird wasn’t flying.
The red-haired boy was always the more daring of the two. He was the one who cautiously approached. Before he made it three whole steps, the girl spun on him, sticking out her finger in such a convincing imitation of an angry adult that the boy’s face paled. “You stay right there! This stupid sparrow is going to fly, and I will not let you scare him before he does!”
Sojun was the first one to laugh, but it didn’t take the other boy long to follow. Soon both of them were rolling on the ground, laughing so hard they could barely breathe. The girl grew increasingly angrier, until she finally came
Burnt (Blood and Fire Book 1) Page 32
