Burnt (Blood and Fire Book 1)

by Michelle Wheet & Lyn Lowe

very clear he wasn’t convincing anyone. “You’re probably right. No big deal. I need to get back. Dinner was perfect, Peren. Thanks.”

  “Hey,” Kaie regretted the word even as he said it. Better he just let Vaughan go. Anything he said now would make it harder for all of them. But it was too late to stop. The boy was already looking at him with those eyes, every bit as big as Peren’s if not nearly so intense. “Thanks. For everything you’ve done since the minute you walked into that tent and healed me.”

  Vaughan smiled. “It’s been an honor, Bruhani.”

  “What does that mean, anyway?”

  The boy blinked. “You don’t know? I thought Peren would have told you.”

  Peren giggled, waving her hands frantically. “Don’t you tell him, Auny!” She looked to Kaie and winked. “Ask again after tomorrow.”

  He grinned. “When I earn it?”

  She nodded. Vaughan rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I feel like you two are speaking another language entirely.”

  “We are,” Kaie teased. That won him another giggle. “Get some sleep tonight, Vaughan. I’ll see you on the other side, yeah?”

  After a minute of scrutiny, where Kaie feared he tipped his hand, the boy nodded. “Ok, yeah. I’ll see you then.”

  The minute the blanket fell back over the door, Peren was tugging the bowl out of his hands and collected Vaughan’s as well. He let it go without much of a fight, most of the food gone already. He didn’t feel particularly inclined to eat the salted pork. Ever again, actually. But that was another matter.

  He watched as she arranged the bowls in a neat little triangle in the far corner of the shack. Then, with her back still turned to him, she tugged off her shirt. Kaie choked on the noise coming out of his throat and quickly threw his gaze to the opposite wall. Not before he caught sight of bandages wrapped around her chest and milky white skin. The blush crept up his neck and into his cheeks. Certain she didn’t have any idea how uncomfortable she was making him, he struggled to come up with anything to say that wasn’t about how very topless she was.

  “Are you…” He cleared his throat of whatever was making his voice squeak and tried again. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “But those bandages…” He bit back a curse. This was Peren. He shouldn’t be this awkward. Not with her. He shouldn’t be thinking about how so much softer the lines of her shoulders and curve of her back looked without a shirt. Or how he was pretty sure she wasn’t twelve.

  “I have to hide,” she answered as though he managed to finish the question. “I told you, I’m invisible. If I go around looking too much like a girl, someone is bound to notice and you aren’t hiding if you’re getting noticed. So I wear big clothes and hide all the curvy bits under bandages Vaughan brings me. But I don’t want to hide right now.”

  Because he thought he heard invitation in her voice, and because he wanted to see way more than he should, Kaie dared a glance in her direction.

  “Oh.”

  She was still Peren, still tiny and more sharp angles than anything else. But her chest wasn’t flat anymore. She was wearing different clothes now, smaller. Until that moment, he never noticed how big everything she wore was. And her hips… “Oh.”

  She smiled. “Good, then?”

  He shook his head, struggling to hold on to any thought that wasn’t about her hips. Or her skin. Or… were her lips always that plump? “What’s going on, Peren?”

  Her smile took on a different look, a – gods help him – sexier look. Things were spinning out of control. This was Peren! He wasn’t supposed to wonder what kissing her would be like. “Whatever happens tomorrow, this is the last night you’re mine. There’s not going to be anything I regret about it.”

  Something in his head was broken. It wouldn’t produce anything resembling intelligent. “How old are you?”

  She laughed. It was the same laugh as before, loud and not at all ladylike. But it was different, too. Now he was hearing an element that was always there but that he never noticed before. Like she shoved his perception of him slightly left and now he was seeing all the things that made her absolutely intoxicating.

  “Old enough to know you just said goodbye to my brother. A real goodbye. Old enough to know that anything that happens between us tonight is going to make whatever you’re planning for tomorrow hurt so much more. Young enough to think it will be worth it.”

  She was absolutely determined to remove his ability of speech. There was no other explanation. Not for what she was saying, not for the way she slid dropped down in front of him. Gracefully. Like that day at the stream. “That’s…how old is that?”

  She laughed again. Driving him crazy. “Seventeen.”

  It was his turn to laugh. Twelve? She was older than him! Old enough to be married.

  Then life snapped back the way it was supposed to be. Not exactly. He was still thinking about her lips and, gods help him, her hips. But now he was also thinking about why he was here instead of finding a wife in his village or staring up at the roof of his shack in East Field.

  “Peren, I’m not in love with you.” Not yet, a part of him whispered. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was today and today it was true.

  She placed her hand on the side of his face. The same as she did so often when he fought his way free of the nightmares. But different now. So different. “I know.”

  “Amorette…”

  “I know that, too.” She sighed and sat back. “I’m not asking you to forget her. You wouldn’t, even if you could. And I’m not asking you to lie to me.”

  If it were anyone but Peren saying it, Kaie wouldn’t believe. Even with her, after all she did for him, it was hard. Amorette’s cackle echoing in his head made it nearly impossible. But it was Peren.

  “I’m not even going to ask you what you’re planning for tomorrow. But I’m not wrong about you not intending to come back.”

  “No,” he agreed. Because what else could he say? “You’re not.”

  “If you say no, we can forget this…but couldn’t we spend it this way?”

  His comparing her to Amorette lasted exactly until the moment her lips pressed against his. When she pulled away again, he couldn’t help the smile that turned up the right corner of his mouth.

  Then, because he could deny her nothing now, and because he found he actually wanted it, Kaie nodded. “Ok.”

  The fire went out. He didn’t know when. They were too busy to notice. But he stared at the darkness now, waiting for the self-loathing to wash over him. And waited. But it didn’t come. It took a while, but as the last coal turned black, Kaie finally accepted that it wasn’t going to. That he was allowed to enjoy the warmth of holding Peren curled up against him, underneath the blankets. That he could keep the peaceful, satisfied feeling that suffused him. It was almost enough to make him forgive the gods for what he needed to do. Not quite, but it did get damn close.

  When her finger started drawing that same pattern on his chest, Kaie nearly leapt out of that warm circle he was enjoying. She was so still for so long; he never suspected she was awake.

  “Are you thinking about her?” she said.

  Kaie chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “No. For the first time I can remember, no.”

  He didn’t need to see her face to know she was smiling. That made him feel good, knowing he put it there. Better than he expected.

  “Do you love me?” he asked. It seemed important. Something he should know, before he said goodbye to her too.

  “Not yet,” she murmured sleepily. “But it’s close, I think.”

  He knew exactly what she was talking about. He could feel it, too, right now. Like maybe this was the way things were supposed to go. That all the pain from before was only to get him here. Or a few weeks from here, when he could let it go and just be with her.

  But there were some hurts weren’t supposed to heal.

  “Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t love me. Don’t hold on to me. It will onl
y hurt you. And it won’t be worth it.”

  “Don’t I get to choose things like that?”

  “I mean it, Peren. Don’t hold on to anything of me, when I leave. Get rid of my clothes, my bowl, everything you don’t need. Let go of anything that comes of tonight. Feelings. And if there’s a child…You have to let every bit of me go. If they think, if they even suspect, that you care what happens to me, they will find a way to use it. You won’t be able to stay invisible.”

  “You aren’t making sense.”

  “Maybe not. But do it anyway.”

  She sighed, sounding nothing but tired. “Does it have to be tonight that things get all dark and dramatic? Can we just have this?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I think we can.”

  Thirty-Seven

  He dreamed of freedom.

  He was climbing a hill. The grass beneath his feet was impossibly soft. There was a sweetness clinging to his lips, and his stomach was comfortably full. When he looked up the sun nearly blinded him. But he could just see two shadowy figures holding hands and waving to him. He grinned, knowing he was safe. One of them was the brother of his heart, and they were waiting for him.

  Something warm tickled against his calf. He looked down. He could see his footsteps clearly in the earth. Each one was marked with brown, dead grass, hot red sparks and thick black tendrils of smoke. Panicked, he stopped. That was the wrong decision. Fire erupted out from beneath his feet and consumed the grassy hill in a powerful whoosh that knocked him over. Kaie cried out as the two figures at the top of the