The Frost Fervor Concordance Box Set

by Tom Hansen

  She wanted to feel bad about that, it truly was an overreaction to the situation, but he hadn’t once touched or rubbed his sore cheek where her fist had landed.

  In fact, given how much her knuckles hurt from the punch, and the fact that it didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest, it just made her want to punch him again.

  At least pretend like it hurt, damn you.

  “Well, I suppose now that I’m dressed, I should allow you the same luxury. I thank you for turning around the whole time.”

  Borym turned, hesitantly at first, checking that she was indeed dressed, she supposed, before setting his face back to the one she had seen last night.

  “N0thing I haven’t already burned into my mind, lass.”

  She threw his clothes at him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Despite Talia’s insistence that she begin moving, Borym didn’t have to do anything to convince her otherwise.

  Her body told her everything she needed to know.

  After waking up in a panic, punching the man who saved her life in the face, and getting dressed, she had about seven steps left in her before collapsing to the brown earth. Her stomach lurched as her legs gave out, exhausted beyond all measure.

  “Easy there, lass.” Despite being on the other side of the room from her, Borym’s large hands were around her middle once again, catching her before she hit the floor. He was warm and comfortable, gentle and strong. He had saved her once again, preventing further injury despite her bluster and insistence to charge into danger.

  Amidst a haze of convoluted emotions, he scooped her up and laid her back down into a sea of woolen blankets.

  “I may not understand the history you have with the man, but I’ll be Gods damned if I let you hurt yourself needlessly. You rest while I rustle some food for ye. You’re gonna need every bit of energy if you intend to take down the likes of him.”

  Borym’s face flashed a momentary concern, before he pulled the blankets over her once more, stood and grabbed his axe on the way out. He stopped before turning the corner. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Talia was asleep before his shadow receded from the room.

  She woke a new woman.

  The smells of cooked fish filled her nostrils as she rose from the blankets to see the large man hunched over a tiny fire.

  “Borym.” It was the only word her mind could conjure.

  “Good morning again, lass. I hope you are hungry.”

  “Famished.” Food was indeed the only thing on her mind. Her stomach growled like a snow tiger guarding her kill, but it was not the only hungry thing inside her.

  Her well ran dry, her body ached, she needed sustenance.

  Fire-headed Borym provided three fish, fully cooked and ready for consumption. It was a meal fit for a queen, and Talia Oblique devoured every last morsel, barely leaving any for the man who had made it all possible.

  For the man who saved my life.

  Licking her fingers clean, she finally had a moment to test her magic and ensure that everything still worked. Using the fire, and to avoid Borym noticing while he rummaged around inside a small pack, she cast small spheres of time magic around the flames.

  It froze as it should, like someone had painted an immediate picture of the fire, before allowing it to proceed.

  She did it twice, to ensure she was accurate in both location and timing of her spells.

  It was one of the trickiest things to do, casting outside of her body. Spelling herself was easy, innate, as shown by her body’s natural response to her falling in the ocean. Expanding the bubble around herself required m0re power but was similar, given that the magic tended to want to find a sphere when it could. But casting outside of herself, on a specific location, and maintaining that from a remote distance, proved to be one of the trickier things she had to learn.

  Luckily, she had the gentle hands of the Instructors and their Enlightenments to assist her in learning the finer points of time magic.

  For that, they had all paid with their lives.

  All but one, and his time comes due.

  Thinking about Caldin made her realize something her mind had been avoiding. Panic flooded her mind as she gasped.

  Borym whirled, a wild look in his eyes. “Something wrong, lass?”

  “How many soldiers–” She paused, realizing she didn’t quite know how long she had been asleep. “I’m sorry. First, how long have I been asleep?”

  Borym scrunched his brow, as if in deep thought. “Nearly a day and a half since the fight, lass. You got dressed yesterday and it’s already light out.”

  Her heart sunk at the news. She hadn’t realized she had been out for so long. “Have you been back to the village? Do you know the state of the people there?”

  A mixture of anger and sadness flashed across his angular face. “Many were killed while we fought, I’d say about half the men and a few women. All the children are scared, but otherwise unharmed.”

  It was all Talia could do to not fall into tears at that exact moment. Instead, she replaced her dread at being the cause of those people’s deaths and funneled that into pure rage. Rage at Caldin for doing what he did to her. Rage at her stupidity for stumbling across the village in the first place. Rage even more at her insistence of storming in to attack him head-on, when deep-down she knew she couldn’t have succeeded–she knew that.

  Her vision clouding over, she stared back at Borym. “He would have sent a runner to the Queen, informing her of this village’s location. Once she finds out I have been here, a far-larger and well-equipped army will descend upon this place. There will be no stone unturned, no cave unexplored. The village will end as you know it, and all the citizens will be tortured until they give up my location.”

  Borym took it all in stride, nodding with each admonition. “Well, none of them know where you are, lass.”

  She shook her head. “Then they will all be tortured to death for no reason whatsoever. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to go after Caldin so soon. I should have taken out every soldier he had first. At least then he would have been forced to leave the town himself, leaving you all alone, at least for a while. I could have led him away, taken my problems to the barren tundra.”

  Her mind spun and spun, thinking of all the possibilities that she could have, and probably should have, considered.

  But Borym was there once again, with large, soft hands gripping her around the shoulders. “Lass, I have a present for you. I’ll be right back.”

  She sat stunned for a long minute as she watched him leave through the crack in the ice.

  Talia packed her things. It had been too long since she had been active, and it was time to change all of that.

  A scrape around the corner caught her by surprise, and she reached for her dagger, before realizing it was just Borym returning.

  He came around the corner dragging something that she couldn’t quite decipher for a moment. But once she realized what it was, her breath left her.

  It was a soldier, dead.

  She remembered what she had told him right before he left. “Is this the runner?”

  He dropped the corpse to the ground. “Aye. Once you were unthawed, I stole back out and watched the village to see if there was anything I could ascertain, when I saw that man you loathe order this one here to leave. I followed him for a mile or so, until he was far enough away that his screams wouldn’t make it back. I then planned and executed my trap.”

  She didn’t quite know what to say. The worry about this runner had been gnawing at her innards for a while now, just under the level of her consciousness. Knowing that Borym had killed him was a load off her mind, leaving just one big problem she needed to deal with.

  Anticipation squirmed in her stomach, making her both excited and hesitant. Was she truly this close to being free?

  More like this close to dying … or worse.

  Borym cleared his throat. “Now you don’t have to worry about the Queen finding out,
and our village will be safe once we take care of the rest.”

  She didn’t miss his emphasis on the words ‘our village’.

  Chapter Twelve

  As much as Talia appreciated all that Borym had done for her, he seemed to find ways to irritate her that she had never known. Something changed in Talia’s mind. All the years of capture, confinement, and torture combined into a ball of rage at the base of her skull, prompting her to unleash at the nearest target. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been responsible for any of it, it didn’t matter that he had kept her alive. In fact, part of her wished she had been left to freeze to death. At least that way she wouldn’t have to worry about all of life’s pains anymore. But now she was alive because of him, and all of her previous problems had done nothing but compound.

  Talia snapped at him.

  “I’m not moving here, nor am I going to marry you no matter how many dead soldiers you drag to me. You should know that killing this man probably saved your lives, and was one of the smartest things I’ve ever seen, but I caused all of this mess by coming here and I need to get on with cleaning it up. I honestly don’t know what got that notion into your head, but it wasn’t the Fates.”

  Borym replied, a hint of defensive trepidation in his voice. “It was the Fates, they came to me when I was younger. They never shy away from the truth, no matter how difficult it may be to understand their true meaning. Just like them, I won’t shy away from you. I cannot in good conscience allow you to walk into danger without doing something about it myself. I’m going with you. The Gods Above have willed it.”

  “The Gods Above?” Talia scoffed, the ball of anger bursting into pure white heat in the base of her skull. “You think the Gods Above care about us mortals a whit? A pox on the Raven’s ass, I say! She might be the only one who actually cares about us, and that’s only for her damned book so we can spend eternity in her twilight. I’ve seen too many horrors in my life to rely on myths to guide me, sir. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if it’s all a farce. Maybe there are no Gods.”

  Borym opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He appeared truly shocked for the first time since she had met him. Scrunching up his face, he replaced his dumfounded look with one of determination. “I don’t know how the likes of you can possibly deny the Gods. I understand that you might not like what they have planned for us, but denying them all together is simply unfathomable after all that they have done for us.”

  “Done for us? Look around! We’re in a cave hiding from soldiers. What have they done for us any of us? Sending a bow in the sky or rainfall for the crops isn’t going to make up for all the inaction and neglect.”

  “We don’t always know their reasons, or their grand design, but we just have to trust that they are there, guiding us.”

  “Oh yeah, and what makes you so sure?” The yelling had released some of the pent-up rage, causing the ball in the base of her skull to abate. Talia wasn’t sure why this man made her emotions go so crazy, but here she was, and she wasn’t going to be made a fool by anyone.

  “I seen them with my own eyes for one.”

  “That could have just been a dream. I’ve seen atrocities that would curdle your stomach and make you curl up in a ball, Borym. Why would the Gods allow people like the Queen to rule over us like she does, taking parents away from children, pitting sister against brother, and using us all to her own end? Why haven’t the Gods intervened in all of that?”

  “Maybe they have.”

  “And how is that?”

  “They sent me to you, for one. I seen you up on the rise looking down in, then shortly thereafter the soldiers showed up on the other side of town. I knew something was up.”

  Talia’s heart skipped a beat as she remembered the first glance of his smiling face, coming out of her bath. It was incredibly unnerving that he had found her in such a vulnerable position. If he hadn’t been so cocksure and good-looking, she might have been mad. Still, he had respected her despite his jokes.

  “You just saw me from the rise is all. Don’t need Gods’ intervention for that to happen.” Despite the anger in her voice and her snappy retort, a part of her mind recalled with fondness the ridiculousness of the bath, and the gentle warm waking she had the day prior. Deep down, she realized those moments might be the only two good memories she had for the last few years, and both of them had happened because of Borym.

  He licked his lips, narrowing his eyes at her. “Then you have to at least admit that the Gods sent you to us.”

  She guffawed out loud. “Are you serious? I stumbled upon this place by accident.”

  “Be that as it may, but you never know how the Fates guide us. What you might see as an accident, might actually have been their doing.”

  Something nagged at the back of her mind. Here she was arguing religion with a man she barely knew. Yes, he had saved her life, but she was supposed to be out killing Caldin right now, putting an end to years of misery. So why was she so dammed irate at this man? Why was he able to distract her so easily?

  Talia folded her arms. “We have no way of knowing that.”

  Borym replied by folding his arms in turn. “We have you.”

  She guffawed. “Me? What does that prove?”

  “Well, you’re a mage. Shouldn’t your magic abilities prove that there are Gods at least?”

  Her brain disconnected from her mouth as she realized what he just said. What? How? Questions swirled around her head, hundreds of them, but none deigned to stick.

  The Fates and the Gods forgotten, she focused on the here and now. All her frustration, all her bluster, and all her irritation coalesced into one singular question. “How did you know I have magic?”

  Borym grinned. It was a slow, sure smile, like someone who knew that he had all the time in the world to gloat. It reminded her of the smile he had the previous night when her towel had blown away. It was as cocky as you could get. He was such an infuriating man.

  “I know it because the Fates told me you would be a mage. When I first saw you poke your head over the rise to the south with your bright red hair, my heart skipped a beat at that moment. It skipped another beat when I saw you bathing naked in the cold, too, and again when you disappeared, leaving me by the shore. Oh, and it skipped once again when I picked you up and dragged you into the cave. In fact, the whole time I held onto you, trying to warm you up, I felt like my heart was going to explode simply by being next to you. At first I thought it was that I was holding on to you naked, but I puzzled it out slowly. You have the touch of magic on your skin, lass. It’s the reason you are here today. They sent their skilled soldiers after you, and not the simpletons. It’s the only explanation.”

  She had been preparing to reply to him, her mind had been working on some kind of a retort, but after his admonition, she simply could not come up with anything anymore.

  Talia slumped her shoulders, staring at the floor. “I cannot lie, sir. I do have magic, you are true there.”

  Suddenly, he was very close to her.

  She stiffened, staring up into his dark green eyes that seemed to glow with an otherworldly light.

  “I don’t rightly care what the Queen wants with you. I just want to see you safe.”

  Borym put a large hand on the small of her back and pulled him to her, so their bodies were almost touching.

  The sensation set her nerves afire, as tingles ran up and down her body. She wanted nothing more than for him to pull her all the way to him. She craved human contact with every part of her body, and he was as human a man as she had ever met.

  “No more secrets between us, lass. Your magic is safe with me. You are safe with me, and I will give my life to see that you are triumphant here.”

  She gaped, vaguely aware that she nodded at him, her mouth half open, wondering if he was going to kiss her or pull her closer to him so their bodies connected. She wasn’t sure she would care about either, now that she was in this man’s grasp.

  “How about we go
kill this man Caldin and put an end to all your suffering?”

  Talia put a hand up, intending to place it on his face. She wanted to touch him, she needed to feel someone so sure of themselves in the hopes that it would give her courage. She settled on his chest, feeling his tense muscles ripple beneath her touch.

  She smiled at him. “Let’s go kill the bastard and free the town.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Borym looked over the rise with Talia. “I count three outside of the house, plus two more inside with Caldin.”

  Talia shook her head. “See that woman standing by the boat? She’s a soldier too, but using a glamour to look like one of the townsfolk. The only reason I know is because of a faint shimmer around her person.”

  Borym growled. “So it’s not enough that they steal into our town and kill off half of the men, but now they impersonate us?”

  She glanced over to him. “How long have you lived here, anyway?”

  “My entire life. I was given up as a babe to an elderly couple who passed on years ago.”

  Talia’s heart sank at the news. “You never met your parents?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. My ma supposedly was a young fire-headed lass, much younger than yourself. She showed up in the dead of night during a raging blizzard, asking for a warm fire to save her child. I was half-frozen and near-death. They of course said yes and took me in their arms to hold me close to the fire, but when they turned around to tell her to come warm herself, she was gone, never to be seen again.”

  Talia could barely contain her mixture of emotions at the situation. “That’s horrible. That poor woman.”