by Lyn Lowe
“Okay.”
She pursed her lips. “You don’t mean it. I can tell.”
“I’m trying. Don’t be a brat.” The words slipped out, and shame filled him the instant they left his tongue.
Peren stuck her tongue out at him. Then she giggled. Just a little. The sound of it was sweeter than anything he’d ever heard before. It was proof that she was okay. He was not going to lose her. Not today.
“Where’s Kaie?”
Vaughan’s fury rushed back, only somewhat diminished. “Following her,” he spat. “With any luck, the storm will rid us of both of them.”
She scuttled out of his lap, clipping him with her elbow and a knee as she went. “What is wrong with you? How could you say that?”
“That girl tried to have you killed.”
“She was…” Peren shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Kaie had nothing to do with it. He saved me, Auny.”
“Had nothing to do with it?” He was almost shouting, and knew that he shouldn’t. There was a dead man laying just across from him. Once it was discovered, there would be no measuring the suffering they would endure for the roles they’d played in putting it there. They might not survive it. Vaughan couldn’t find it in himself to care, though. “It’s all because of him! That bitch only noticed you because he did! He’s been playing out his little drama, with no care to what it might do to the rest of us! And if I hadn’t been so caught up in him, I would’ve seen the danger right from the start!”
She shook her head again. “It’s not his fault.”
“No?” Vaughan stood and started pacing. “So it’s just a coincidence that all of this fell down upon us the moment we let him into our lives? It’s just supposed to be us! That’s what’s kept us safe for all these years. We let him in, and now everything is… It nearly killed you! It still might!”
“That’s just how it worked out. He didn’t do anything but hold on to his past too tightly.”
“If you say so.” On some level, he knew she was right. He knew exactly why Kaie had struggled to realize the brewing danger of Amorette. Vaughan hadn’t even seen that clearly, and he hadn’t been blinded with affection. Not for Amorette. He wasn’t ready to let go of the anger, though. “Nothing we can do about it now, anyway.”
“You could go after him.”
Vaughan scowled at her again, and this time he didn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt about it. “Abyss take me, I will. This is between the two of them.”
“And the storm?”
He nodded, refusing to let the judgmental tone in her voice sway him.
Peren set her jaw and crossed her arms over her chest. “This is why we’re here. For him. I felt it, the instant I saw him. It was like something wonderful and terrifying came to life in my chest. It reminded me who I was, and who I was supposed to be. I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten myself, until he woke up that part of me. I know you feel it too. I see it whenever he’s around. You need the feeling as badly as I do. Something like that could not be an accident. The gods put us here for him, because they knew he would need us.”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, trying to swallow down the surprise. Vaughan had thought it was just him, some byproduct of the connection he had to the Jhoda. He wasn’t sure if he liked knowing that he wasn’t the only one. It meant he was not losing his mind, at least, and that was something. But he’d thought that there was a part of Kaie that only he knew, that only he could ever understand. Now that he shared it with his sister, it meant that he was diminished. Even in those moments when he’d truly hated the other man, Vaughan had wanted to believe that he was special.
“They aren’t our gods,” he murmured, though he knew the argument was already lost. It had been the moment she made him think about that first brush with Kaie’s power. It had never been as strong as the day they’d met, and he couldn’t feel it at all now. But he didn’t need to touch the tendrils of that blinding, pulsing force of pure Jhoda to get lost in it’s song. The notes of it had been playing in the back of his mind ever since.
“We are Balla Kinda,” Peren answered in a hard voice that did not sound much like his sister. “We are the first children. We are meant to watch over those that come after. Would you truly turn your back on one that the Jhoda has chosen?”
He sighed and reached to brush hair out of her face. Peren pulled away, just as she always did when she was determined to get her way. “Fine. You’re right. I will go. Just… I saw her face when she told us you were in trouble. She was gloating. I don’t think she’s done playing her game yet. If I go, and someone comes for you… Will you please try to remember how hurt you were? You aren’t invincible here. Please, don’t try to fix things on your own. Just run and hide. For me.”
Her stern look melted, leaving no trace of it behind as she broke into another of those rare smiles. She caught his hand up in her own and squeezed. “I’ll be here waiting, safe and sound. I promise. Now go and bring him back home.”
Sixteen
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 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. “Thank you.”
“I won’t let her kill you,” Vaughan replied lowly.
The boy seemed to suffer from none of his own navigational confusion. Having decided to help, Vaughan seemed 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 could only have come from the gods. It beat at them with the ferocity of months of winter bottled up for this one moment. It burned through his chest with a frozen fire that threatened to steal the life from him.
The vision from 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 in a world of white – remembered and gods help him, understood. “Which way to the stream?” Vaughan pointed. He locked on to the place in the snow where she would be waiting, like an arrow loosed and hurtling toward it’s target.
As he drew close to the small patch 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 at the beauty from his vision brought to life.
She was kneeling, as he knew she would be. Her back was to him and her hair swirled about her like fire in the stark white world. He tried to approach silently, a part of him terrified of disturbing what seemed almost a sacred moment. His chattering teeth gave him away and her head turned just enough for him to see her profile.
“I knew that you’d hate me,” she said.
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. “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 from me!”
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 and knew the dangers that came with it. He and Amorette were going to freeze to death out here. No matter what she di
d, 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’d barely given thought to protecting her. But he would do better. So much better. “You’ll be safe. I’ll figure some way.”
“And all I have to do is open my legs whenever you desire it.”
“No! That’s not what this is! You don’t have to do anything you don’t want… I thought you wanted that.”
She laughed again, this time with a harsh pitch that sent off warnings all down his spine. “You have the cock, don’t you? I remember you sticking one in me. You’re all sweetness and honor now, but I know better. I know how long it takes your kind to turn. Selfish, vicious monsters, all of you. Already, you’re tripping all over yourself to claim me. Like a dog marking his territory. Just like all the others.”
“Gods, Amorette, that’s not what I want! Last night was a mistake! All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is for you to be happy!”
“You want more than that,” she hissed. “You’ve wanted more than that for years, don’t try to pretend different. I saw the way you looked at me, even before I understood it. And now that you got a taste, you’re trying to figure out a way to get more. If I don’t let you, you’ll just take it. Until you love someone else more. Then you’ll leave me all alone, used and broken.”
“I wouldn’t!” The tears were coming now, and there was no stopping them.
“You would,” she answered flatly. “Just like him. Like your ‘heart’s brother’.”
Kaie’s anger returned, mixed with all the hatred and guilt that bore down on him every day since he failed to take that collar. “Sojun gave up everything for us!”
“For you!” She shook her head. “I asked him, before I let him take me that first time, if he would choose me over you. He promised me he would. He swore it. But when the time came, it was you he loved best. Always you.”
Kaie shook, though he didn’t feel the cold anymore. “You’re wrong.”
She laughed. That awful, wicked laugh. “No I’m not. He loved you best. And then he gave me to you. Like I’m nothing more than a whore, to be passed around whenever it suits you. But I won’t be your whore, Kaie.”
“You’re not anyone’s... Everything that’s happened, it was done to you! To all of us. It doesn’t change what you are. Not unless you let it.The gods know –”
“I don’t love you. From the first time you touched me, I’ve been using you. I hate you. Just looking at you makes me want to be sick. Pretending to want you was the vilest thing I’ve ever been forced to do. But I had to do it. You had to know!”
He didn’t want to ask. Gods, he didn’t want to. But the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Know what?”
“Enough. I’m done talking to you. Go away.”
“Not without you,” Kaie insisted. “You’ll die out here.”
She tilted her head toward him again. There were no tears on her pale cheeks. “Get out of my sight.”
“No.”
She shrugged. “Fine then.”
One of her hands lifted and for a second Kaie thought she’d called down some sort of magic. But the flashing light in her palm was no spell, only a mirror catching some glittering light hidden in the snow behind him. Peren’s mirror. “I told her I would let her have you. Before I gave her to Samuel. But only if she bought it. This is what she paid to fuck you, Kaie. This is what your seed is worth. A piece of dirty glass. Now we’re both whores.”
“What are you doing?”
“What I’ve planned.” She cackled. “Now you’ll know what it’s like to be alone! You’ll love four others, but I’m the first! And no matter what those others say or do, you’re going to remember this! You’re always going to know what it feels like when the person you love won’t love you back! When every touch was a lie!”
She took a breath and turned back to the frozen stream. And then, at the sound of the glass breaking, Kaie understood. “NO!”
It was too late.
Even as he darted forward, Amorette dug the glass deep into the skin of one wrist, then the other, splitting open the flesh with the same skill she’d used to gut her kills in the life before the soldiers.
***
Kaie dropped to his knees and gathered her up into his arms. He pressed his hands to her wounds, but the blood pulsed through his fingers with a speed that made his efforts useless. “Why? Gods dammit, Ams, why?”
She laughed again, that same high–pitched desperate sound that set his chattering teeth on edge. “You’ll go to her when I’m dead,” she whispered. “You’ll ask for the collar. I told her I could make you. Now you will. I broke you. The one he loved best. You tell him that, when she takes you.”
His eyes combed the empty white world, watching the dark red puddles from his vision form and grow in the snow at his side. He sought some miracle that would save her. “Vaughan!” he screamed. “Vaughan, help me!”
Time stretched and danced, seeming both unbearably long and impossibly short with each fading pulse of blood spilling through his fingers. When the boy materialized from the ether he didn’t know if it was an instant or an hour after he called. Either way, it was too long.
“Help me!” he shouted, shifting so that he could hold Amorette out to him without letting up on her wrists. “You have to help me stop the bleeding!”
“Kaie…”
“Don’t say it!” he screamed over her cackling laughter. “Just help me!”
Vaughan dropped down, tugging off his shirt and ripping it in half with smooth and sure motions despite the doubt written plainly on the boy’s face.
Amorette shrieked and began struggling against him. Kaie cried out wordlessly, trying to hold her still enough for Vaughan to wrap her arms, but her strength was disproportionate to the life spilling out of her. Her foot caught the boy in the stomach and sent him toppling backward with an oomph. She broke her hands loose from his hold and used them to rake scratches all over his chest and arms. They stung for all of an instant before going as numb as the rest of his skin.
For all its intensity, the struggle didn’t last long. Fierce as she was, Amorette could not stop the strength pouring out of her. When he finally caught her arms again he couldn’t help but feel how slow her heartbeat was becoming. When Vaughan slid back down beside them, she hardly managed a tired flail. They managed to get her wrists bound, though the blood stained the cloth almost instantly.
Kaie rocked back and forth clutching her close to him as her laughter began again. It was weaker this time, soft enough that he could almost mistake it for the husky and warm one he barely remembered from the day on the hill. He could almost pretend everything was going to be all right. That, when she healed, she would be his Amorette again. Not the bitter and manipulative woman who was giving up everything just to make him as broken as she was.
Vaughan climbed back to his feet, but Kaie could not join him without letting her go. The boy gave up on convincing him and went about yanking down sticks and branches from the trees over them. It sent down showers of collected snow, but they were being covered with so much already that it hardly made a difference. Soon, there was a crude fire pit in the middle of the snowstorm. When Vaughan leaned over the rough–looking pile Kaie expected nothing. But fire burst into life with an explosion of heat and light that sent the boy toppling backward. Kaie gaped, blinking at the pink and blue after–image floating around his vision, temporarily blinding him. In his agony over Amorette he’d forgotten what Vaughan was.
Vaughan sat up from where he’d fallen, rubbing snow and soot off his face and avoiding looking Kaie in the eye. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be so… explosive. But it’s been a long tim
e since I’ve channeled so much, and with all of this…”
He thrust Amorette back out toward the boy. “You can fix her! Really heal her!”
Vaughan shook his head slowly. “No. Even if I wanted to, no.”
“What do you mean ‘if you wanted to’? Fix her!”
“It doesn’t work like that!” The shout startled Kaie. “I don’t ‘use magic,’ I touch the Balla Jhoda. The Spirit of Life. I have no spells to control it, no hand motions to twist it to my will. It doesn’t do what we demand of it, only what my heart asks of it. I want to help you, Kaie. But my heart will never, never desire to help this creature. Not after everything she’s done. She was content to leave my sister for dead. She’s earned the same treatment from me.” He glared. “Or have you forgotten Peren already?”
For a minute, maybe two, he had. He longed to argue, to defend Amorette. But the truth of Vaughan’s words poked at the wounds she’d dealt to all of them.
He slumped over Amorette, trying not to notice how her breath was barely coming now. “She can’t die, Vaughan. She’s all I have left.”
“If I could spare you this, I would. If it was in my power, I would.”
Kaie sobbed and buried his face in Amorette’s shoulder. She didn’t react at all. He listened as her heart slowed and then stopped.
The fire burned bright and fierce, melting away the snow and thawing the ice in his blood. Sensation returned painfully as he tried to will air into her lungs and life into her heart. By the time he was finally forced to face the fact that it was just a body in his arms, not the girl he loved, even his chest felt mostly normal again. It almost felt like the fire had banished the winter itself.