by Mary Weber
Screaming.
I’m awakened by a child screaming.
Bloodcurdling and familiar. Memories of rot, and flesh, and limbs being torn from their sockets. I grab my knife and sit up as the sound tears across the mountain range.
It’s not a child. It’s a bolcrane.
The blood drains from my chest.
What is it doing this far from Litchfell?
The gutting cry erupts again—so eerie and disgusting in its perfect mimic of a child’s tortured screech. I pull my blankets around me and look for the nearest tree to climb. From the resounding echoes, the animal’s still a long way off, but how fast is it moving? And what in hulls is it doing? Bolcranes don’t travel out of Litchfell. Ever.
A wolf howl reverberates across the range, followed by three others. Is the bolcrane hunting the wolves? I roll over to shove more wood on the fire and meet Eogan doing the same. His eyes connect with mine. He leans in and his fingers are cupping my face and slipping down, down, down my skin until I gasp at the craving welling up within me. What’s he doing? Adora’s warning flares in my head, but I don’t give a blast because his touch is lightning, burning me alive and breaking me down.
My lips part.
His eyes flash and widen, and his breath catches when mine escapes.
Then he’s sliding his fingers farther, to my neck, on my pulse, and telling me to sleep. He’ll stand guard. I mumble that I don’t want to sleep because the bolcranes are coming, but suddenly I can’t remember what I’m saying or why I’m awake because I don’t remember his calming influence ever being so strong.
When my eyes open the next morning, my head feels foggy, but I have the distinct sensation I’ve slept deeply. Colin’s still snoring, but he’s squirmed over with his sleeping blankets and has his head resting against my arm. He moans and shifts his freckly face onto my elbow. I sit up and jerk away. Mortified.
A low chuckle draws my attention to Eogan. He’s sitting next to the fire, sharpening a pile of his handmade blades.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I mutter, and scramble out of my blankets to scoot as far from Colin as possible.
“What? He likes you.”
“He likes anything female.”
“Maybe, but he also respects you. And that’s harder to earn.”
The casual way he says it, as if it’s true, punctures holes in my attitude. I tug my fingers through my hair and unwind it from its waist-length braid. I frown at the fire. Do you respect me? I want to ask him.
“How about you? Do you have any love interests?” I say instead.
“You mean aside from Adora?”
He waits for me to look up before breaking into a laugh. “Only once. A long time ago.”
“What happened? She break your heart?”
He’s slow to answer. When he does, his voice is decidedly quiet. As if remembering. “You could say that.”
Oh.
“How about you? Anyone ever swept you away?”
“Nope.”
“Ever? I don’t believe you. You’re telling me there’s no one you’ve ever had an interest in? Even now?”
One of these days I swear my face will stop exploding in flames, but clearly today is not that day. I glance at my hands as my skin ripens to the color of a sunburn and try to focus on releasing the final strands of my hair to ripple in the icy breeze. All the while I’m praying he doesn’t notice that my heartbeat just turned into a blacksmith’s hammer.
“Sure it’s not him?” He tips his head toward the still-sleeping Colin.
“What? No.” Fresh heaps of coals pour from head to toe.
“And yet she blushes,” Eogan murmurs.
“I don’t. I’m serious. I swear . . .”
“Or someone from the past still haunting the present perhaps? Young love cut short?”
I open my mouth. But nothing comes out. Except possibly steam from the heat I’m exuding. I cringe. I’ve never been in love. Ever. The only crush I had at the age of eleven was, in fact, cut short. By the boy’s father. Most owners don’t want their sons or servants distracted by a slave girl. Especially when they have their own lustful interests in mind.
I clear my throat and straighten my shoulders as the chasm of shame in me shudders and enlarges the crevice in my heart.
I stand.
“Nymia—”
I hear him behind me. But I pick up my pace because I don’t want to break open in front of him. Maybe he knows this because he doesn’t follow. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
When I return, half frozen with an armful of firewood, the sun is above the trees. Colin has returned from a quick run and Eogan is serving up breakfast. In my spot is a tiny leather belt with two simple metallic knife sheaths attached, from which two handles protrude. The blades Eogan had been sharpening.
I pick up the belt to discover it’s the size of my lower calf and the flat sheaths have some kind of lock to keep the blades secure. When I push the lock, it acts as a spring, pushing the knife handles up the tiniest bit for a quick grip.
“For inside your boot,” he says when I look up. He smirks. “Thought it better than that knife you’ve been tying beneath those dresses.”
I nod and notice Colin holding a set too.
“Thank you,” I whisper, before taking my food to sit alone. I don’t speak further to either of them. Because I can feel myself losing. The more time I spend with them, the more exposed and tender I feel. As if I’m under the blade of one of those knives, my skin’s becoming thinner, and I can’t keep it covered enough to avoid seeing how bare I am. I find myself admitting to things, experiencing things, feeling things I cannot allow. But I don’t know how to make it stop.
Mercifully, the rest of the day takes place in a hazy blur so I don’t have to admit to anything more than being nauseous. Eogan says it’s our bodies still adjusting to the high altitude. He has us drink ridiculous amounts of water before our first lesson, which is similar to the ones we’ve been practicing for the past week. Colin shifts rocks while I try to steal them with the wind, except I accidentally keep dusting us in snow every few minutes.
After lunch, Colin begs Eogan for us to start attacking the Bron ships, to which our trainer scoffs and just alters the lesson—having Colin fling the rocks at him while I try to whip them away before they connect. Not that Eogan’s block would allow the boulders to hit him anyway, but it still feels good to shield something rather than attack.
An hour into the routine, a wolf howls, and it’s definitely louder. Closer. My skin bristles the length of my back, and I brace for the bolcrane’s scream to follow. But it doesn’t. I turn to ask Eogan, but he cuts me off with a brisk, “Don’t worry about it. And don’t mention it to Colin. Poor guy has enough on his mind with having his skills foiled by a girl.”
I give him an arrogant smirk and go back to foiling.
Late afternoon is spent with Colin griping about us “seein’ the Bron ships but not doing anything,” while we work on perfecting the new defensive technique, and Eogan teaches me to create icicles out of frozen air. I notice that more and more, his touch isn’t just capable of calming my blood, but with it he’s been honing my abilities enough that I can specify between wind and rain and lightning. But even though I’m halfway decent at icicle-making, by the time night falls, I’m also uncomfortably aware of how small scale it is compared to what Colin and I are looking at on the southern horizon. I’m defending one person. But those ships will take out an entire civilization. I eat and fall into bed beneath a smoky moon. If I can’t get this down faster, Faelen is going to fall.
In the morning, after we’ve rinsed our plates and greasy fingers and I’ve washed my hair and shaken it out to dry with the sun, Eogan straps his broadsword on his back and takes us to another clearing four terrameters away.
It’s slightly lower on the glittering mountain range and facing a sheer stretch of ice and snow on the adjoining peak above. It also has a clearer view of the villages dotted down the cra
ggy, forested sides. I can see the yellow rooftops of the little town we visited on our way up, where the small boy with the chubby hands lives. His flowers are still in my pocket back at camp.
“Please tell me yer havin’ us go after those Bron ships now?” Colin says with jittery excitement.
“Not exactly, mate.” Eogan tosses a water skin at me. “Ready?”
I catch it just as a wolf howl pierces the air in front of us. What the—? It’s followed by more howls all around as other wolves join in.
Colin recoils next to me. I shiver. “What in litches?” he mutters.
“They’ve been tracking us,” Eogan says.
The howling spreads out, and from the sound of it, the pack is surrounding the entire west end of the clearing with its snow-covered pine trees and rocky ledges. An enormous wolf emerges on one of the ridges in front of us and bares his teeth. Two more slink out behind him, like giants, easily as tall as Eogan, and shaggy. The leader’s long, gray coat is hanging off his bones, exaggerated by hunger-crazed eyes bulging above a thin, foamy snout.
Snow begins to fall, and the wind lashes my hair back as the thrum tweaks my blood. I sneak a glance at Eogan to ask what we’re to do, but the words dissolve with the swirling snowflakes flecking his black skin as he stares calmly at the animals. He knew they’d be here.
A deep growl, and the alpha on the ridge centers his attention. Colin retreats three slow steps and leans to the ground.
“Colin, don’t,” Eogan says. “Let Nym take care of them.”
Me? “What?”
“You need to know how to take down live, moving targets.”
This is a test? I back away and toss the water jug down, keeping my eyes on the leader as he tests the snowy gravel flanking the ridge. The two wolves with him whine and circle. How many more wait hidden? I shake my head, nausea rising in my stomach. I can’t. “I don’t want to kill anything.”
“I’m not asking what you want, Nym. Do it.”
The alpha slides down the gravel fifteen feet to land in the clearing. The animal’s growls become louder, vicious.
Colin bends low again. “It’s fine, Eogan. I’ll handle it.”
“I said this is Nym’s, mate.”
Why? To prove I can be the bigger monster? My insides are buckling. The other two wolves scamper down the slope, and suddenly more emerge all over the clearing. Five, ten, twenty. They’re growling and taking cues from their leader. They make their way toward us as the sky rumbles overhead. The falling snow feels like an inferno on my skin as the scent of smoke and salt in the air demands forth my curse. Eogan’s already beside me, ready to clench my arm if I don’t erupt, but it doesn’t matter. Because the lead wolf charges.
Colin’s gaze connects with mine.
The wolf jumps.
CHAPTER 19
MY MUSCLES SEIZE AND MY ARM JERKS BACK. A bolt of lightning hits the ground directly between Colin and the alpha. The beast yelps and flips back five steps. Shakes his head. He leaps again, and the next bolt nearly takes off his head. His yowl is consumed in the other wolves’ snarls as they release and plow toward us, frothing, churning, angry.
My ears nearly explode from the fracturing sky as my hand pulls jagged streak after streak of lightning and slams them into the ground, cutting off the lunging beasts. Hailstones begin to fall. Then shards of ice. The wolves keep rushing, and I keep blocking their surge. There’s an explosion of smoke followed by the smell of burnt flesh, and suddenly, all twenty of the pack members back away with their tails between their legs. In a chorus of weak howls, they turn and slink into the forest.
“Ease it off,” Eogan says, his fingers on my wrist, and immediately the squall dims until there’s only crackling in the air from the ebbing friction and depleting wind. “Perfect.”
The area falls calm, except for the drifting ice flakes and the smoking, scarred ground. And the broken body.
“Hulls!” Colin yells. “You’re incredible, Nym! How the . . . ?”
He keeps talking, but the words blend together until the only sound I hear is my own heartbeat pulsing in time with the labored breathing of the alpha lying on the ground. I walk over. The entire back half of his emaciated body is blackened with exposed pieces of smoking bone and muscle. He looks at me with pained, clear, beautiful eyes and whimpers. Broken. Wheezing. Thinner than any animal should be—a pitiful, starving creature who’d simply been looking for food.
And I’ve burned him alive like Bron did to those towns.
My mouth turns bitter.
A weapon. That’s what Adora called me.
The most powerful Uathúil is what Eogan said. And now he’s tested me out on something alive and breathing. Nausea churns up my neck. I’ve been shoving it down for weeks—for my whole life for that matter—hoping that with Eogan it’d be different, that I’d be capable of becoming something different.
But I’m not. I’m a monster.
I turn to Eogan. “You set me up.”
“Pardon?”
My legs are shaking. “You set me up to kill him.”
“No, I tested to see what you’d do, and you performed exactly as you should’ve.”
“As I should’ve? I did the same thing to that wolf that Bron is doing to us! You’re not teaching me to defend—you’re training me as your weapon.”
“That’s an absurd comparison. You’re not Bron.”
“It’s a perfect comparison, and you had me do it!”
“Look, I needed to see how far you’d go. Now we know.”
“How far I’d go? For what—some sick practice game?”
His voice drops in irritation. “I tested you because this isn’t a game. And like it or not, killing is one aspect of war. If you can’t kill an animal, Nym, how do you expect to defend Faelen when lives are at stake? Because you will be killing people.”
I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. The nausea roils in my stomach. “So you’re preparing me to decide between people’s lives—to choose who lives and who dies?” I shake my head and start to walk away. “In that case, I don’t want anything to do with this war—because unlike the rest of you, I can’t justify it.”
“Then those people will die and Faelen will fall.”
I stop. Turn. “Excuse me?”
He stares straight at my face. Unwavering.
The sky growls and anger sparks along my skin, so intense I hear it sizzle. “Faelen will fall? Who are you to put that on me? To put that on Colin?” Blood pounds in my ears as energy snaps. I point at his chest. “When Adora says it, that’s one thing—because she actually believes it. But you? You’re not even sure the world’s worth saving!”
“Nym,” Colin says, and his tone sounds nervous.
“Or does it just make you feel good to have control? To boss us around because all your other Uathúils left you?”
“Nym,” Colin says louder.
Eogan’s gaze flashes above me and his expression is instant caution. His voice softens. “Nym. I understand you’re upset—”
“You think?”
“But right now I need you to calm down.”
“Calm down?” My chest burns, and my vision darkens, and my hands are shaking, and I’m not going to calm down because I hate him. I hate them all. Adora. Myles. I shift my finger to point in his face. “You’re all so disillusioned you’ll have us fight for the sake of killing. And for what? To protect an upper class who kills Elemental babies and enslaves children and sells out their king to the highest bidder! You want me to protect people who cut each other’s throats!”
“Nym!”
“Shut it, Colin!”
“Nym, you—”
“I said shut up, Colin!” But instead of my voice, it’s an explosion. As if the storm leaned down and stole my words and ripped them like thunder across the sky. I look up in shock.
Black clouds rage, tossing static back and forth. What the—?
Abruptly come the echoes—mini thunderous eruptions of my voice a
cross the entire range. So loud the ground shakes. And I know immediately it’ll unsettle that glacier of snow on the mountain next to us.
Eogan must know it, too, because he grabs me and yanks me backward, but I can already hear the sound of the ice breaking.
It matches the sound of my heart, as the snow begins slipping, then sliding down from the neighboring slope above us, moving faster than an ocean wave. It’s headed straight for the town of the little boy whose flowers sit wilted in my pocket. My eyes start to heat and blur. Oh please no.
“Colin, stop it!” he yells.
My body wrenches from Eogan’s grasp, as if energy’s being pulled from my bones, igniting my hands, my chest. I have to stop this.
“Nym, don’t!” Eogan jerks me back. “You’ll only make it worse.” He presses both hands into my skin, willing me his calm.
“Let me go!” I scream, and I’m beating his chest and fighting to push him away even though I know he’s right—no amount of lightning or wind will help. It’ll only build the avalanche faster and destroy the boy and his mum sooner, and I am the cause.
I am useless.
Helpless.
No better than the Bron army.
Oh hulls, what have I done?
The little boy’s face wavers in my gaze.
Suddenly, it’s not only him but every face I’ve ruined, every person I’ve killed, and that lid I’ve been trying to seal over my broken soul for so long comes flinging off, and there’s nothing underneath but death and grief and horror.
And tears.
They rip through me like a hurricane, tearing out my lungs and replacing them with a heaving flood. Eleven years I’ve kept them in, and now they erupt, wave after wave.
Over the mess I hear Eogan’s voice right next to me, but the wind is picking up too loud. I can’t understand him. The storm is too fierce . . .
The storm.
I open my eyes as Eogan’s words click through my head. “Nym, you have to stop.”
