Burnt (Blood and Fire Book 1)

by Michelle Wheet & Lyn Lowe

confrontation. No matter the strength his work in the stables was giving him, Kaie was quite conscious of the fact he didn’t possess any of that rippling muscle Peren was so fond of. Yesterday’s lesson drummed through his mind and the cut above his eye.

  So he made a different plan.

  The brute was focused on Peren, only granting Vaughan attention when being directly attacked. Exactly the way the man focused on Keegan. Kaie still wasn’t getting any notice. His years of wrestling Sojun – who was both bigger and stronger than him – finally paid off for more than just a false arrogance. Letting out a low breath of air, filled with a wordless prayer to any god that might be listening he dropped his head and charged forward.

  He aimed himself for the brute’s legs. The sole advantage in a confrontation with a man as large as this one was his center of gravity. His victories over Sojun were false, he recognized that, but that didn’t make all his tactics poor ones. Some of them, he felt certain, were legitimately effective. Effective or not, they led to only a few debatable wins against a much smaller man. And Jun held no desire to do him harm. Both those thoughts screamed in his head in the split second before he collided. But Kaie didn’t let himself hesitate.

  He hit hard. The smack into the back of the man’s very solid legs made his head ring. For one awful second, Kaie thought it was going to be as ineffective as Vaughan’s attack. Then the brute toppled backwards. He rolled out of the way at the last second, avoiding being crushed by less than a breath.

  For all that he seemed shocked by his new position on the ground, the brute was swinging the instant he hit. Only one connected as Kaie scurried out of reach but it was enough to make his entire shoulder go numb.

  A quick scan around the room confirmed what he saw earlier: there were no more weapons in this house than in his own. It was bigger, with no divider sectioning off the place for a second resident, but that offered no advantage he could think of. He needed to figure out something. The brute would only be down another second or two. Then the gravity advantage would be gone. Without it, Kaie’s only chance was fleeing through the fields in the hope the other man would tire before he did, which seemed unlikely, or that someone else would intervene, which seemed even less. So, with nothing else to do, Kaie plunged his hand into the fireplace and wrapped his fingers around the first burning log they found.

  He felt the kiss of heat up along his arm, but no pain flooded through his system. There was no time to wonder about it. Kaie swung as hard as he could, bringing the wood down across the man’s head. There was a crack and the smell of burning hair filled the small room in an instant, but no scream came. The man just dropped back down and went limp.

  Kaie dropped the log and blinked down at his hands. The left, the one he swung with, was perfect. The brute was hurt. Maybe dead. And there were no burns on his hand. No marks. Only the numbness in his right shoulder.

  Peren cried again. It jerked him out of the haze his mind was threatening to get lost in. He shook his head free of it, stepped around the brute, and dropped down to her side. He was afraid to touch her. He didn’t know where she was hurt but was certain it was bad.

  “Vaughan!” he shouted.

  There was no need to call him. The boy was right behind him. He spared Kaie the quickest of glances, just enough for him to notice the small trickle of blood leaking out from beneath the white blonde hair. Then he wrapped his hands around her shoulders.

  Kaie recognized the hold. He saw it with Sojun and felt it himself. He knew what Vaughan was doing. But he saw nothing. Felt nothing. The boy felt the old magics on him, but Kaie was blind to it. He could do nothing but watch and hope that something was happening.

  After a few agonizing and endless minutes, the crying stopped. She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t react to them, but she seemed to be sleeping rather than unconscious. Worried he might be interrupting something important, Kaie risked catching Vaughan’s eye again. “Is she ok?”

  The boy glanced up for just a moment. “Yes. I couldn’t fix everything… not all at once. It took so much of the Jhoda to keep your hand safe.”

  “You…” He shook his head again. Of course. “You should have saved it for her.”

  Vaughan frowned and ran a finger through her blood-soaked hair. “I know.”

  Kaie’s hands twitched with the same need to touch her; to be sure she was still there. Still vital. But there were other things to do. “I have to go.”

  Vaughan nodded once. “I know that, too.”

  “Are you guys going to be ok? With…him?”

  “Go. Set this right, Bruhani. Or I will.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Despite walking back and forth between the compound and his little shack, the sudden storm robbed him of the certainty as to which way he was heading. Frustrated tears sprang to his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. They’d only freeze, anyway. He tossed the blanket across the door aside and pushed forward against the angry wind that filled the inside of his nose and throat with icy needles. He walked all of ten feet before he stumbled and, for a moment, thought he was going face-first into the growing drifts of snow pooling around his bare feet.

  A wiry arm wrapped around his shoulders and righted him. A second later Vaughan’s face was close enough to his own that Kaie could hear half-muttered curses and it nearly conjured up a smile. “Thank you.”

  “I won’t let her kill you,” Vaughan replied lowly. He supposed that was all the explanation needed, and he wasn’t about to press his luck. The boy seemed to suffer from none of his own confusion. Apparently, having decided to help, Vaughan was eager to be done with the whole thing. The kid dragged them both along through the snow with a trajectory so certain Kaie almost believed Vaughan could see.

  The storm, in all its sudden anger, could only have come from the gods. It beat at them with a ferocity of months of winter suppressed for this one moment, rendering their thin clothing less than laughable. It burned through his chest with a frozen fire that threatened to unman him and erase him from the world with the ease of swatting away an ant. In the swirling white world Kaie was forced again to face his own helplessness. If it were not for Vaughan he would be lost utterly.

  When the boy stopped his unforgiving pace, Kaie pulled away and stumbled forward, nearly colliding with the well. Vaughan shouted a warning – one that was so muffled he nearly missed it – just in time to stop him from careening down. His breath coming in painful gasps that were fueled only partially by the close-call, he pushed on.

  Now that they were close the confusion dropped away like shed clothing. The vision back in the Lemme’s hut burst into his mind’s eye with the same brutality of the first time. Kaie remembered the image of Amorette kneeling by a frozen stream – remembered and gods help him, understood. He locked on to the place in the snow where she would be waiting, an arrow loosed and hurtling toward the target.

  As he drew close to the small space of earth nestled between two weeping trees heavy with the wet drifts gathering in their boughs, the snow parted like curtains drawing back. For a time Kaie could do nothing but stare on at the beauty from his vision brought to life.

  She knelt, as he knew she would. Her back was to him and her short, light red hair swirling about her like fire against the stark white world. He tried to approach silently, a part of him terrified of disturbing what seemed almost a sacred moment, but his shivering body was in no mood to cooperate. His chattering teeth gave him away and her head turned just enough for him to see her profile.

  Had any lips ever looked so red?

  “I knew that you’d hate me,” she said.

  His eyes drifted to the snow spread out before her, but the stark red puddles were nowhere to be seen. Letting out a slow, shaking breath of relief, he wrapped his arms around himself and plunged his hands into his armpits for what little warmth they offered. “You knew that I loved you,” he replied, surprised at how even his voice was for all the chattering. “There was no reason to do that to her.”

 
“There was every reason!” Amorette screeched in the voice that wasn’t hers. “I did so much, gave up so much. For this. And she was going to ruin it all. I watched you smile at her every morning! Tell her jokes and stories. Our stories! You wouldn’t even look at me this morning, but that boy says her name and you start smiling and laughing! She was taking you away!”

  With effort that cost him dearly, Kaie set aside the rage at what was done to Peren. There would be time for that, so much time for that. Right now he needed to get back in to the fire. He could feel the cold deep in his chest, knew the dangers that came with it. He and Amorette were going to freeze to death out here. No matter what she did, he couldn’t bring himself to wish that on her. He loved her still. “I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

  “What then? Are you here to spout more garbage about how lost we both are? Are you going to promise to keep me safe when the people come to drive you out of East Field?”

  “It wasn’t garbage,” Kaie insisted. Guilt twisted in him, more vicious than the cold. She was right. He barely gave thought to protecting her. Instead he slept with her. Even though Ren and Silvy were bound to hear, even though doing so painted a target on her for anyone who wanted to hurt him. But he would do better. So much better. “You’ll be safe. I’ll figure some