“Kelan isn’t a monster, and I’ll defend him with my life. Consider that carefully before you do anything else.”
His shoulders sagged. “Sol, Sol, this is—You can’t love him. Your children would all be—”
They’d all be Flameskins, if they weren’t mages. All cursed with fire.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“I saw the emberstone on his wrist downstairs.”
She let out a slow, shaky breath. She’d been a fool to think that life they had pretended to have downstairs, with Johan and Anna, could be theirs.
“My father saved your son’s life,” Sol said.
“And that’s why I determined to save yours after I realized what that thing was,” he said, jerking his chin at Kelan. “I owe Elo a debt after what he did for Oscar.”
“Spare Kelan’s life. Let us pass though Vodskov and tell no one that we were here or what Kelan is. You’ll never have to see us or hear from us again.”
His face crumpled. “Oh, Sol.”
“Please. Please, Johan. I’m begging you.”
He glanced at Kelan, his shoulders sagging. “You have to leave in the morning. I don’t know how long Anna can keep this quiet.”
“You can’t tell her what Kelan is. You can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. But are you sure about this? We can help you. You have friends. We can get you back to Hillerod.”
“I know my own path.” She crossed the room and fished in her bag for the jeweled letter opener. “We need supplies for our journey. Food and a bow, if possible.”
He pushed it away wearily. “Keep it. Let me repay my debt. I’ll get everything ready for you to leave in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t condone this.”
“I know.”
“I wish you would change your mind. We can have him sent to Olisipo. They have people there that would take care of it.”
She shivered. “I won’t change my mind.”
He nodded and started for the door.
“He’ll wake up, won’t he?”
Johan gave her a strained smile. “I use that particular mix to help especially rowdy travelers settle down. He’ll wake up in the morning.”
He slid the door shut behind him, and she latched it. She slumped against the screen. Her heart was still pounding erratically. Had Kelan lived his whole life like this, jumping from one near miss to another? Was this what her life would be like from now on if she stayed with him?
She sank onto the bed beside him and laid her head on his chest. His heart thumped inside him as she ran her fingers over his scars.
She wanted so desperately for him to be part of her life in Hillerod, but Johan had found out what Kelan was only minutes after meeting him. It would be an impossible secret to keep, but they had to find a way. If her neighbors found out what he was, they would drive him out, if they didn’t try to kill him. A life without Kelan and without her mountains would be unbearable.
She shivered and wrapped an arm around him. She listened to his heart thump in his chest a long time before she could fall asleep.
They would find a way. They had to.
Kelan and Sol left the inn with full bellies and full packs. When they set off into the mountains, they weren’t cold.
Each day was filled with the bright, winter sun glinting off the white carpet at their feet, and the touch of Sol’s warm hand. And each night was starlight and fire and kisses and laughter.
Winter tightened its hold on the Ulves, and then like a sigh, it let go. As they descended the mountains into Tokkedal once more, streams thawed and swelled with snow melt. Trees stretched their branches, their heavy boughs now unburdened by snow.
With a bow in Sol’s hand, they were never hungry for long. And with her leading their path through the mountains, they were never lost and their pursuers, if there were any, would never find them.
They had reached another saddle in these endless, beautiful mountains. Sol held his hand, pulling the darkness from his pyra and leaving him with just the warmth.
Kelan looked at her as she stared at the valley beneath them and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. Maybe they could travel these mountains forever, live like dryads or sojourners. Never stopping, always moving. It wouldn’t be an easy life, but they had both already accustomed themselves to it. They could be safe this way, far from the reach of any army.
He could travel anywhere with her by his side. He never wanted it to end.
“We’re here,” she whispered.
Chapter 40
Sol
Returning home had the unsettling quality of a dream, familiar and yet strange. Everything about her life had changed dramatically, and yet Hillerod was the same.
The valley was dotted with patches of green where the snow had melted, and grass was coming through. The spring birds had returned and twittered in the trees. Her neighbor, Oscar, had finally fixed the hole in his roof and had new shingles to keep out the snow, and her Aunt Saffi had already set up a terrace for her peas to climb and constructed supports for her tomatoes.
Sol’s house stood on the edge of the woods and seemed to lean toward the forest, as if the logs that the house had been built from wished to return to their native home. The ivy that curled over the walls was dead, but it would soon put out new buds and grow once more. Everything was almost exactly as she had left it.
Her heart caught in her chest when her eyes snagged on her sister, Carol. She stood out front of their house with an ax raised over her head, chopping wood.
“Carol!”
Carol dropped the ax and whirled around. Sol tore free of Kelan’s hand and ran to her.
Sol grabbed her sister in a tight embrace. She pushed at the tears that tugged at her eyes. She had missed Solstice. She had left Ma and Carol and the girls alone to fend for themselves while she had been running for her life and struggling to survive in the mountains. Every day she had worried and wondered what was happening to her family.
“Where have you been?” Carol demanded, squeezing her fiercely.
Sol measured the question. The tone wasn’t one of anger or hurt, but more of despair and worry. She pulled away and looked at Carol’s face. It was thinner than she remembered. They hadn’t been eating well enough. Carol had surpassed Sol in height last year and was even taller now, but as thin as a pine in a dense wood, grasping for sunlight.
Carol was looking at Sol, too, studying her eyes. What would she see? The danger and fatigue of their journey, or the fire beneath her skin, or how she had betrayed Pa?
“Have you been eating?” Sol asked, trying to deflect Carol’s penetrating gaze.
Carol’s chin lifted in a very familiar way. “Of course, we have. I’ve been feeding them. You weren’t the only one Pa taught to use a bow.”
“And Ma and the girls, they’re all right?”
“You told me to take care of them and I did. Ma! Come see!” she shouted at their tiny house.
Sol turned expectantly toward the door as Carol turned to look up at Kelan. “Wait, who’s this? He came with you?”
He bowed low. “Kelan Burke.”
Carol’s eyebrows rose.
Sol met Kelan’s eyes and reached for his hand as her stomach fluttered. They had talked about this. It didn’t matter what her family thought. She had told herself that a thousand times. But now standing before Carol, she wanted so much for them to love him, for them to accept him.
Carol’s eyebrows rose to her hairline as she stared at their joined hands.
The door flew open, and Lisbet d’Hillerod stepped into the sunshine. Sol ran to her mother and threw her arms around her as Josef d’Hilledrod and Commander Jahr stepped out behind her.
“Sol!” Kelan shouted.
Sol was able to do little more than take a ragged breath and drag her mother away from them as Commander Jahr smirked at her.
“Hello, Sol.”
She stuffed a hand in her pocket and grab
bed her emberstone. Ashes and cinders. Her bow and arrows were tied to her pack and not in easy reach.
“I thought you were lost to us,” Ma murmured, and brushed Sol’s hair away from her face.
Sol pushed her mother behind her and grabbed the knife from her belt as Kelan pulled his sword from his pack. But Sol wasn’t sure who she was supposed to attack first.
She turned on Josef. “I told you if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you.”
Josef backed away, bumping against the wall of the house. “I was only trying to help. They said you had been kidnapped.” He looked meaningfully toward Kelan.
“No need for weapons,” Jahr said. “You’re outnumbered here.”
Josef had already strung his bow and notched an arrow in it, but his eyes were uncertain
“Aim for his head or his heart,” Jahr ordered, pointing at Kelan. “Nothing else will kill a Flameskin.”
Flameskin. The word sent a chill through the air. Carol stumbled away from Kelan. Through the trees, Tokken soldiers in blue coats appeared. Sol’s little sisters, Dorit and Grete, stood in the doorway with pale, frightened faces.
“Get inside, girls!” Lisbet said, her voice shrill.
Carol slowly reached down and picked the ax up from the ground. “Sol, what’s going on?”
“Lay down your weapons,” Jahr said, his voice edged but calm.
Jahr had all the cards. Sol felt the panic rising as she and Kelan drew closer together, Sol with her knife, and Kelan with his Cassian scimitar. Ten of Jahr’s blue-coated soldiers surrounded them, their swords raised, and Josef held the same bow that had taken the life of Elo d’Hillerod.
Jahr advanced slowly. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt. Don’t forget that your mother and your sisters are here, Sol.”
“I haven’t.” She was struggling to keep her breath even.
After all this. After all the time they had spent hiking through the wilderness struggling to survive, she had thought they were finally free of this.
“Sol,” Jahr said, his voice sharper now. “Put down the knife. Is that any way for a lady to behave?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He scowled at her. “I want that arrow pointed at the boy’s head,” he told Josef. “Think about what you’re doing.”
Josef met Sol’s eyes, his face uncertain, then slowly, his bow inched up from Kelan’s chest to the level of his face.
Kelan’s breath hitched. Sol’s knees wobbled. Josef wouldn’t miss if he loosed that arrow. And at this range, Kelan would die instantly.
Sol stepped in front of Josef’s bow, staring down the arrow into his eyes. “I won’t let you kill another man I love.”
“Sol!” Ma cried. The same anguished tone she had used that night her husband had died.
A shudder ran through Josef. His arm jerked, and he turned the arrow at Jahr’s enormous chest, instead. “You told me Sol had been kidnapped.”
“That man is a Flameskin! A soldier in their army! They stole her from Prince Turullius’ house.”
“Do I look kidnapped to you?” Sol spat. “I ran away.”
“Is he a Flameskin?” Josef asked, his eyes flicking toward Kelan.
“Does it matter?”
Josef’s lips curled into a snarl. “Of course, it matters.”
Sol took the emberstone out of her pocket. “Does it matter if I’m a mage?” She drew on the emberstone and orange fire lit her fingertips.
Josef gasped, and his bow dipped. Jahr leapt at him, tackling him to the ground in the melting snow. The soldiers charged. Lisbet screamed. Carol swung her ax at one of the Tokken soldiers, and the soldier deflected it with his sword and wrenched it from her hands.
Kelan swept his scimitar through the air, trying to block the attacks of four different soldiers at once. Soldiers grabbed at Sol. One took her arm, and she drove her knife into his leg. He dropped with a cry, but two other soldiers grabbed her arms. She screamed and thrashed as they yanked the knife from her fingers.
Jahr kicked Josef aside and grabbed tiny Dorit, who was frozen in the doorway. He yanked her forward by her hair and rested the tip of his sword against her pale neck. “Enough!”
Lisbet moaned. She had fallen to her knees and had her hands pressed to her mouth.
Sol twisted against her captors’ hands to see Dorit. One soldier held each of Sol’s arms. Her knife lay on the grass, covered in blood.
Kelan was surrounded by soldiers and had a cut on his arm. Blood ran down to his wrist and dripped on the body of a fallen Tokken soldier. Another soldier had Carol’s hands pinned behind her body.
“Put down your weapon, Flameskin,” Jahr spat.
Lisbet let out a small moan.
Kelan slowly lowered his sword.
“Kelan,” Sol sobbed.
They were going to kill him. They were going to run him through and make her watch. Her happiness was bleeding onto the snow with every drop of Kelan’s blood. He held her gaze with mournful eyes.
“Tie them both up,” Jahr ordered.
One of the soldier’s shoved Kelan down, and he hit the ground with a grunt. Soldiers tied their hands with rough cords.
Josef stood and stared at Sol in open-mouthed silence.
Traitor. He had killed her pa, and now he would kill Kelan, too. Josef was the one who had led Jahr through the mountains to Hillerod.
Sol twisted her wrists against her bindings, and the cords cut into her cold-chapped skin. If she could just somehow get the emberstone off Kelan. But then what kind of destruction would he cause? She had her own emberstone, and she might be able to burn the ropes, but then what would become of Dorit? Jahr still held her sister with his sword against her neck.
“Let them go!” Carol screamed. The soldier holding her cuffed her cheek, but she struggled against him, and he almost lost hold of her.
Two soldiers lifted Sol off the ground as Jahr approached, still dragging Dorit with him.
“Corrupted,” he said, scowling at her. “We can’t let Turullius find out she’s a mage. We’ll bring her back dead. That’ll be enough to convince Turullius to ride with us. He’ll want his revenge.”
Lisbet fell to her knees. “Please. Please let my daughters go.”
Jahr released his hold on Dorit, and she wailed as she ran into her mother’s arms. Sol closed her eyes against the sight. She never should’ve come back. When she jumped from that window in Olisipo, she should’ve known she was saying goodbye to her family forever. Coming here had only put them in danger. How could she have ever thought Jahr would give up the chase?
“And the Flameskin?” one of the soldiers asked. Kelan’s coat sleeve was hitched up by the cords, and his emberstone glowed a brilliant red on his skin.
“He’s harmless with the shackle on, but make sure you cut out his heart before you burn the body.”
“No!” The scream tore out of Sol’s throat like a living thing made of horror and ashes. She tried to lurch away from the soldiers, but they held her tight. “Kelan!”
They picked him up from the ground. She couldn’t stop screaming. Her body shuddered.
“And you, Hunter,” Jahr said, whirling on Josef.
Josef had been staring at Sol’s face, frozen in place as he watched her scream.
“You’re leading us back to Olisipo. We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Turullius is waiting for his bride.”
Josef startled, as if coming awake. His eyes flicked to Jahr and back to Sol’s. Then he slid his arrow onto his bowstring. The arrow flew into the air with a twang and embedded itself in Jahr’s chest before Sol could blink.
Jahr gave a dying gasp as another arrow slid from Josef’s quiver and into his hand in one effortless motion. Two more soldiers fell before they could react, arrows protruding from their thighs. The other soldiers rushed him. Carol tripped the one who had been holding her and yanked the knife from her belt to hold against his throat.
The other soldiers launched themselves at Josef. He fired
into the chest of one, dropping him beside Jahr, and hurled his bow at another as he yanked his knife from his belt. A soldier cut a bright line of red across Josef’s arm as he thrust his dagger into the soldier’s belly. He yanked it out, covered in the soldier’s blood. The last soldier stopped, his sword still raised as he faced Josef.
“Put it down,” Josef said, his voice trembling.
The soldier dropped his sword and stumbled backward. There were a half-dozen soldiers moaning and injured on the ground, and a few more dead or dying.
Josef looked down at Jahr already dead on the ground. “I don’t take orders from monsters like you.”
Then he walked toward Kelan with his blood-slicked knife and madness in his eyes.
“Josef, no!” Sol screamed.
He brought his knife down and cut through the bindings on Kelan’s wrists, and Kelan scrambled away from him.
Carol ran to Sol and cut her free as well.
Sol and Kelan collided, and she buried her face in his chest.
“Sol,” Josef said.
She turned.
Josef had his bow in his hands once more. There was an arrow notched and ready to fly, but he hadn’t taken aim yet. “Why did I just kill two Tokken soldiers?”
Chapter 41
Kelan
Kelan sat at the kitchen table beside Sol. Her hands were still shaking.
He used to get like that after battles. He remembered that ragged edge that was left over when the adrenaline had worn off, and there was only the gore and the realization of what you had done, and what you had almost lost.
But he had seen so much death in his lifetime. He was ashamed to admit that it rarely affected him anymore.
His shackle lay on the table, making the worn, wood surface glow red. He had slid out of his bloody tunic and coat, and Sol now traced her burning fingers over the cut on his arm. Her family and the hunter watched with wary eyes.
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