FrostFire

by Zoe Marriott

  He laughed. “Come back to the tent and I’ll help you brush it all off.”

  By the time that I, carefully carrying my axe, had reached the tent, Luca had already lit two lamps inside and was rummaging in the chest at the foot of his bed. I laid my axe carefully on my pile of furs. When I turned, I saw that Luca had laid a drying cloth on the floor next to the low table, and had a silver-backed bristle brush in his hand. Such a fine item had never been near my shaggy mess of hair before.

  “This will get it out,” he promised. “Come and sit on the cloth, and that way the dust won’t get all over the rugs.”

  I smiled as I went to sit cross-legged on the edge of the towel.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Only … sometimes you can be a little … motherly.”

  There was a long pause. I glanced over my shoulder at him. He was still by the bed, mouth hanging open. “Motherly?” he repeated.

  I couldn’t tell from if his voice if he was angry or just shocked. I shrugged, taking a little petty satisfaction in having wrong-footed him for once. “Sometimes. Can I have the brush now?”

  “No,” he almost snapped, coming to kneel behind me. “You can’t see where the dust is.”

  A tiny laugh escaped my lips. I put my hand over my mouth. After a second I heard him laugh too, if reluctantly.

  “Any more jokes like that and I’ll make you go and dunk in the river again – and it’s cold at this time of night, believe me. Here, hold this.” He shoved the brush at me over my shoulder, and as I fumbled to catch it I felt a series of quick tugs at my hair. My braid uncoiled from around my head, falling down my back in a puff of rock dust.

  “How did you know how to do that?” I demanded.

  “How do you think? My hair’s longer than yours. I pin it under my helm all the time. Give me the brush now, and no more funny comments, please.”

  He tugged the tie from the end of my braid. Feeling him comb gently through the long wriggles of hair with his fingers, I abruptly lost the urge to tease him. My breath left me in a long, shuddering sigh. Mortified, I pressed my lips together, but I could do nothing about the goose pimples springing up on my skin.

  “Lean back,” he murmured, tilting my head. His fingertips brushed the curve of my ear. My teeth bit into my lip.

  The brush made a soft shushing noise as he ran it through the thick, fluffy layers, parting the hair gently to get at all of the dust. I felt myself slumping back further towards him – I couldn’t help it – and I put out a hand to steady myself. My palm landed on the leg he had stretched out beside me.

  The firm, warm bulge of muscle above his knee tensed under my fingers. The brush paused mid-stroke. I froze.

  He cleared his throat. “Tell me if your neck gets stiff.” The brush began to move once more. His other hand slid under the weight of my hair to curve supportively around the nape of my neck. Unwilling pleasure crackled down my spine, glowing bright, like the orange sparks that flew up out of a wood fire in the wind.

  “I think that’s it,” he said. The hand on my neck eased me up into a proper sitting position. I realized my hand was still on his thigh and removed it quickly, hiding my tingling fingers in my lap.

  Luca pushed the bulk of my hair forward, so that it hung over my left shoulder, and brushed my back, presumably to direct the dust onto the cloth. Then he shifted to my right. “Turn your head towards me.”

  Reluctantly, I obeyed. Luca didn’t meet my eyes, for which I was pitifully grateful. He had a smaller, folded cloth, which he carefully ran across my forehead and down my right temple to wipe the dust away. His other hand came to rest against my face, holding me still as he stroked the cloth under my jaw and then along the curve of my neck.

  “There,” he said; “that’s the last of it.”

  He put the small cloth down. I held my breath, longing for and dreading the moment when his hand would drop away from my face.

  It didn’t come. His eyes suddenly focused on mine.

  “Your heart is beating so fast,” he said softly, the words barely more than a whisper. “I can feel your blood humming under my hand. Are you frightened of me?”

  I swallowed dryly, instinctively whispering too as I replied, “No.”

  As Luca moved closer, the light from the lamp overhead filled his eyes with a thousand tiny golden suns. His hand slid around the nape of my neck again, fingers spearing carefully through my hair. There was a beat of stillness as we stared into each other, searching, waiting…

  We both moved at the same time.

  Nineteen

  His free arm curled around my back, grasping my hip. He pulled me against him, and my breath huffed out into his lips. I could taste the ale he had drunk in his mouth – honey and apples – and that same wild, heady flavour I remembered from before, but had no name for. I felt soft and weightless, pliable, as if I were not made of flesh but of some warm, golden substance that shaped itself to his touch. Tentatively, I lifted one hand to explore the shape of his jaw, brushing through strands of soft, silky hair, tracing the strong tendons of his warm throat, the vulnerable, bony point of his collarbone. His stubble scraped my chin, breath ghosting across my cheek.

  I felt him shift, starting to move back, and I clung instinctively, the fingers that had been wandering over the lines of his shoulders curling into his shirt to hang onto him.

  No, no, not yet. Not like last time.

  He lifted his face from mine. His breath was fast and slightly raspy, and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting to be put aside again.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for the longest time.”

  My eyes snapped open. “Bu–but before – you s–said it was a horrible mistake.”

  Having spoken, I was immediately conscious that I was still clinging to him, and I snatched my hands away from his shoulders, trying to put some distance between the warm bulk of his body and mine. His arms tightened, then loosened, but only enough to let me get to my knees. He kept his palms flattened against my back.

  “I never said it was a horrible mistake,” he contradicted. “I said it was a mistake. It was. You were a trainee who had just arrived in camp, and you were vulnerable and upset. I had no business kissing you at all.”

  Pain at the blunt words sheared through me, and brought the clean relief of anger. “Then why do it again?” I demanded. “I’m not a t–toy that you can pick up and put down as it suits you! If you’re with H–Hind then why – why ever kiss me at all?”

  Unbelievably, he laughed, his face suddenly alight. He dragged me back against him, burying his face in my hair. “You’re jealous, aren’t you? Thank the Mother! I thought you didn’t care one way or the other.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  I went still. Then I put both hands against the hard planes of his chest and shoved. “No you’re not!”

  “Yes I am.”

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Yes I – Frost, for Fire’s sake!” He was laughing again. “We could keep this up all night. Just listen to me.”

  I tried to scramble away, shaking my head furiously. “You don’t want me. I’m … I must be hallucinating or—”

  Luca caught my wrists. “I am in love with you. I’ve been falling in love with you ever since you promised me not to run away in order to save those kidnapped women, and kept your promise even when I gave you every chance to make a run for it. I thought then that you were the bravest girl I’d ever met, and nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind. I’m in love with you! You’re awake and it’s real. I’m real. So are you going to give me an answer or aren’t you?”

  I stopped struggling. “An answer?”

  “How do you feel about me?” His voice quavered ever so slightly. He coughed, then said more strongly, “Do you like me?”

  I let out a long, slow sigh, slumping. “Of course I – Luca, I like you so much. And it’s horrible! It hurts, and it makes me happy and sad at the same time, a
nd sometimes I want to hit you and other times I… And I can’t stop.”

  Luca relaxed, his fingers caressing my arms. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “But you were right the first time,” I said quickly. “This is a mistake.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “No it’s not, and if you say it again, I am just going to have to distract you until you forget to be stubborn…” he said, voice turning husky as he lowered his face towards mine.

  “Stop!” I turned my head away, more because the look in his eyes was making me feel weak and shivery than because I thought he would force a kiss on me. “You’re the one that’s being stubborn. You haven’t thought this through! You’ve forgotten what I am, what lives inside me. I’m still cursed. I’m not safe for anyone to love. I … I haven’t told you everything.”

  “Then tell me now,” he said simply.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. How could I say that I wanted to keep him safe from me without damaging his faith in me? That I feared if I told him everything he really would cringe away from me, and I didn’t know if I could bear it?

  I couldn’t say that, because it was pure cowardice. If I cared for him, I had to tell him the truth.

  I tugged my arms out of Luca’s hands and gripped the wolf tooth through my shirt. Father, give me the strength to do this.

  “A–all right. I … I didn’t know this myself until last year. Ma didn’t tell me until she was dying. I don’t know if she even meant to tell me then. Her mind was wandering with fever.

  “My father was a wolf hunter. A f–famous one. He roamed from place to place in Uskaand, ridding villages and towns of their local wolf packs and selling wolf pelts. My mother travelled too, selling her remedies and nursing the sick. After he and my mother met, they travelled together, a perfect match. When my mother was far gone with me, my father was called to a large town on the edge of one of Uskaand’s great forests. There was a lone wolf haunting the town. They said it was a massive creature, black as night, with eyes like stars. At first it had only ravaged the local farms. The elders ordered traps set – the animal avoided them. They left poisoned meat – the wolf ate it and lived. The beast began to encroach into the town itself. The elders sent hunters and dogs out. The dogs came back mad, foaming and snarling at any human they saw. The hunters did not come back at all. The town was in a panic. People began to say that it was more than just an animal. That it was possessed, or cursed, or … or sent by the Other god. It became known as the Demon Wolf. Ma told me that when she heard these tales, she begged my father not to go after such an unnatural creature, but my father only laughed.”

  I paused, a cold shiver working down my spine. Luca tucked a fluffy hank of hair behind my ear, his hand brushing my cheek. I couldn’t resist leaning into that touch.

  “What happened?”

  “My mother waited for him to come back. For three days, she waited. On the night of the third day, a terrible storm blew up. Snowflakes the size of a man’s hand fell and a raging wind shook the walls. In the storm, my mother heard a wolf howl – a terrible howl that made her put her hands over her ears to try and block it out – and she knew my father was dead. Knew it, she told me, as if she had been able to hear words in the wolf’s cry. And in that moment the birth pangs began to come on her. All night long she laboured alone in the middle of the blizzard, and when I was born…” I stopped. This was the worst part.

  “When you were born?” Luca prompted.

  “The birth cord had wrapped around my neck. I was dead.” I heard Luca’s sharp intake of breath. I didn’t look at him. “My mother had assisted at many births. She knew there was nothing to be done for me. But when she saw her first and last child blue and withered and still, she cursed the god Askaan. She cursed him for letting her husband die. She cursed him for taking her baby from her before it had even drawn a breath. She called to the god of the Other, and begged him to take the child – to take me – as his own, if only he would give me breath. If only I would live.”

  “She offered you to the Wolf?”

  “Yes.” I smiled bitterly. “I can’t even imagine what she must have been feeling in that moment. So much sorrow and pain, so much loss. All she wanted was what any mother would have wanted – to save her baby. It was madness… But somehow, it worked. The wind raging around the house rose up so that it deafened her, and the windows and doors burst open and snow filled the room where she lay until she couldn’t see a thing. There was a vicious snarl, as close to her as you are to me, and her baby’s body was jerked from her arms. Then … she heard a child begin to cry. The storm died down just as suddenly as it had come, and there in the fallen snow, I lay. Alive.”

  I touched the curling white mark on my face. “There was blood on me – fresh, red blood, as if from a wound. But when my mother cleaned it away there was no wound there, only this scar. In the morning, the townspeople brought my father’s body home, and with it the body of the Demon Wolf. They found them locked together, the wolf’s teeth in my father’s neck, my father’s axe buried in the wolf’s side. They had to cut them apart – as if in death they had become one creature. That’s how I became what I am. My mother made a bargain with the darkness to save me, and paid a heavy price for it.”

  “Not as heavy as you,” Luca said gravely. He traced one finger carefully along the curving mark on my cheek. “I can see the tooth marks.”

  “It isn’t the end of the s–story.” I could feel my muscles tensing into hard, knotted bands as I waited for the moment when Luca would understand what I was telling him, when he grasped what I truly was and pushed me away, just as my mother had.

  “Ma left the town where I was born and settled in a village far away. She watched me closely, always looking for signs of the Wolf in me, praying that somehow the curse she had called down had not taken root. Then when I was eight, some local boys decided it would be fun to tease me. They threw rocks at me. One of them cut my face, I think, I can’t really… Anyway, I saw b–blood. The Wolf came. The villagers had to pull me away and put me in chains to stop me. They were only children, and I nearly killed them.”

  “You were a child too,” Luca said. “If they were stoning you, they could just as easily have seriously hurt you. It seems to me that the wolf – whatever it is – is a kind of guardian to you. He protects you.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “It uses me as a portal into life, into this world. It uses me to bring d–death. That’s all it wants.”

  “You can’t know that,” Luca said, gently easing my hand from its death grip on the wolf tooth, and taking it between his. “I may not believe in demons, but I know that gods exist, and that their motives aren’t readily understood by anyone. In the past, the wolf has emerged to defend you whenever you were bleeding and in danger, but now you can defend yourself. You’re learning to control your fear, and I believe once you’ve done that, you will be able to control the berserk rage. You’re not alone with this any more.”

  I remembered all the times I had faked the trances in front of him and felt overwhelmed by guilt and weariness. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. Still, I tried again. I had to. I cared about him too much not to try.

  “Luca, you don’t know if I’ll ever be able to control the Wolf. All it takes is one drop of blood and I lose myself. I feel – I feel as if every time the Wolf possesses me, it becomes stronger. I can sense it all the time now, like ice under my skin. Sometimes I know it’s close to surfacing – waiting, watching for the right moment. I hear its voice. I have dreams where it calls to me. One day … one day I might disappear forever.”

  Luca pressed his lips sweetly to the corner of mine. The tugging sensation in my chest got worse, pushing at my ribs until they seemed to creak and expand – and I realized, abruptly, that it was my heart I was feeling. My heart that jumped whenever Luca came near. My heart that felt as if it were swelling now. After all that I had told him, he still wanted to kiss me. He
didn’t fear me. He feared nothing.

  “Never,” he said, and his voice and eyes held the same conviction that had spellbound me and convinced me to follow him back to the hill-guard camp. “Frost, your bravery, your kindness, the things that make you, you – those are yours, no matter what. No one can take them away. That’s why humans can choose to worship gods or reject them – why they can’t force us. They might have powers we don’t, but we have something they can’t ever touch. A soul. The wolf may borrow your body, but he can’t take your soul.”

  I made one last attempt to warn him off. “I don’t know if I even have a soul, Luca. My mother might have given it up when she offered me to the Other. I–I’m a monster. Trusting me could get you killed.”

  “Trusting anyone can get you killed,” Luca said with sudden grimness. “Listen to me now. You’ve told me your story and I’m honoured that you did. It doesn’t change my mind or my heart. You’re not a monster, and I won’t listen to you say that again. I know what monsters are. I’ve seen their work. I’ve lived with one.”

  I looked into the darkness of his eyes. “Y-your brother?” I whispered.

  “Did you ever know a child that delighted in pain? A child that captured butterflies to rip their wings off? One who drowns kittens for the sheer fun of watching them die?”

  I nodded slowly, shivering. Luca tugged me closer, and I leaned into him, unsure if I was comforting him or myself. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve known boys like that.”

  “That’s what my brother, Ion, was like. He was ten years older than me. I don’t know if my parents spoiled him before I was born or if he was just made that way but … you see, he was so charming. So clever, and handsome. He could smile at you so that you barely noticed the blood on his hands. My mother and father tried to excuse the way he acted by saying it was just boyish silliness. My uncle and aunt lived with us then, with my cousin Sorin – King Sorin, as he is now – and they tried to tell us, tried to warn us what he was like but we didn’t want to see.” Luca paused for a second, his gaze fixed on something far away.