Breakfire's Glass

by A. M. Valenza

  "Air sickness?" he asked. "Swell? And my nose is still bleeding. I can't wear the mask."

  "The cave is not far," she replied. He looked panicky, and she twitched her magic to calm him. He didn't notice, to her relief. "And the air sickness is from the height. The air is thin up here." The summits on this leg were significantly taller than the first. She had been careless. "It doesn't affect everyone, of course, and there's no way to tell who will be stricken." She glanced at him, shaking her head. "You're not weak." She held up her mask. "I won't wear it either."

  He pressed his lips together. They were smeared with blood. Pinching his nose, he nodded and squeezed her hand. They went back to the cave easily, retracing their path through the snow. She caught him every time he stumbled, until he finally just leaned against her. The cave Katerini had noted out of the corner of her eye, marking it in her memory for the return journey. It was embedded deep into one of the many jagged peaks sticking out of the mountain. Inside stretched straight, then dipped, then stretched even further until it ended. Still, it wasn't so deep the light from outside didn't filter to the jagged end, dim as it was. The wind and snow reached them only as a frigid breeze. Not ideal, but tolerable.

  Katerini didn't hesitate to light a fire, throwing down some of the wood she had collected and strapped to her pack on the way up before the vegetation died off. The ghostly blue flames erupted into life. She shucked off her cloak, arranging it like a blanket on the rocky ground, then sat against the wall and patted the spot next to her. Nikolai eyed it, the lower half of his face a red mess. The blood flow had reduced to a drip, she was relieved to see. He had stopped pinching his nostrils together.

  "Lie down," she commanded. "You need to get acclimated."

  He hesitated, then flashed his customary grin. "Well. This is a treat. I would have fallen ill sooner if I knew it earned a place on your lap." He sat down and then gingerly laid his head on her thigh, as if she would change her mind any moment and lop his head off. She snorted when he grinned up at her. "Treat me gently, lovely Katerini. I am in your hands. Though if you chose to bite, I would not mind." He waggled his eyebrows again.

  Katerini leaned back, folding her arms. Waited. He gave her a questioning look when she didn't respond. She could tell by his eyebrows he fully expected a tongue-lashing for calling her lovely again. Then his eyes drooped. Popped back open. Drooped again—ah, he was fighting it. He had bumped into the spell too, she could tell by the wriggling of his coiled magic. She reached out a hand and ran it through his thick hair quickly, once, twice. By the third time, his eyes were closed. She fetched a dark blue handkerchief from Nikolai's cloak. Spitting on it, she wiped the blood off his face.

  "Malaise and lethargy are common to air sickness, and I slipped you a spell while you were panicking," she muttered. He snored softly, and somewhat wetly. The blood, she figured. As he slept, she recalculated their route. They would skew sideways, give Nikolai time to adjust to the height. Hopefully he wouldn't notice or, if he did, wouldn't argue with her. She sighed. She also felt weak. The blood on his face had caught her off-guard, plunged her back into shameful memories. She didn't want to think anymore. Nor did she understand herself. Acting soft. Letting Nikolai call her lovely. Lovely. Bah!

  Why did he keep repeating it, even after so many weeks? She had thought he'd been teasing her, so she simply hadn't responded. He had not stopped. They always stopped goading her when she didn't respond, or when she snapped and beat them half to death. She had sent many running for lesser comments, yet with Nikolai it felt—restful. Affectionate. She eyed him as he slept, his mouth opening slightly, a line of drool ready to drip onto her leg.

  She didn't trust him.

  She didn't, but Zharva had said she could. Ilya trusted him, adored him, and that said more about his character than anything else. Nikolai was a good person. So why did her instincts continue to warn her away?

  She bunched her mouth and tugged on his hair. He snored on, a little blood mixing with the drool. Ugh. She wished she hadn't offered her legs as pillows. Annoyed at both Nikolai and herself, she closed her eyes and shifted until she was comfortable. Might as well rest while she could.

  When she came to, she was lying on her back. Alone. The rocks shimmered and glittered overhead. They reminded her of Nikolai's eyes, eyes which glimmered under thick black hair like rocks glimmered from a blue-black cave ceiling. The more she stared at them, the more the resemblance grew. Tiny stars in the fabric of the night sky. Nikolai's eyes pulsed with light just as a quartz crystal filled with daylight. And he hid them.

  When she grabbed his neck, he had recoiled from her. And when he touched her chin, he had miscalculated their proximity and pulled away. He hid them on purpose; it was obvious now, all his odd little mannerisms. How he ducked his head to smile, or shook his hair out to fall over his eyebrows to his nose—he lifted his shoulders and backed away when others peered too closely. Without dim lighting or distance to hide his eyes, Nikolai had tried to pull away from her. She cursed herself for not noticing sooner. The uneasiness she felt whenever she met his eyes was precisely because they were unnatural. She was sure of it. If she had placed her unease earlier, perhaps she could've asked Porfiry and Vasiliy about Nikolai's eyes. They would never have told her themselves. It wouldn't have occurred to them to do so. They rarely said anything they didn't absolutely have to. Infuriating.

  She sat up, gnawing on her lip. She should ask. He had said he would tell her if she asked, hadn't he? She growled, rubbing her face furiously. Her fingers caught on her hair and she winced. Baffled, she reached up and felt along her scalp, surprised by its soreness. From sleeping in caves too long, no doubt. The rocky floors usually gave her a headache, even with the packs. She dropped her hands and stared at them. She shouldn't ask. Still, curiosity ate at her, the desire to—

  Desire.

  She jerked, paling. No. She wouldn't ask. They crawled up on you when you least expected them to, prophecies. She would stifle her desire to learn more about Nikolai. She had been doing it unconsciously the entire time, but now she knew it was desire. A type of desire, at least, one the prophecy could act on if she was careless. She must fight it, at least until the journey was over. She shoved thoughts of shining eyes to the back of her head, encasing them in glass, and clenched her fists against her stomach.

  She was staring at the flames when Nikolai returned. His face was ghastly in the eerie lighting and Katerini had no doubt she was the same. Her face was thinner than his, so she must've looked like a painted skull, the kind used to honor Quiet Death on the last day of Lonely Winter. Offerings were made on the graves of ancestors, loved ones, or even complete strangers. She thought of her father's grave, barren. No gifts, no body, not even bones. Devoured whole.

  "You look pensive," Nikolai remarked as he settled down on the opposite side of the fire. Katerini barely blinked before he had his distaff and spindle out, spinning as if he had never stopped. She found it hard to stare at the process. It looked boring and tedious, but Nikolai's lips curled into a little smile whenever he picked it up. "Thank you for earlier. You spelled me, didn't you? I feel much better." He glanced at her when she said nothing. "Do you want to share your thoughts?"

  Katerini sighed. He wasn't making this easy. "No."

  "This has been a very lonely journey, Katerini," he replied.

  She blinked.

  He flicked the drop spindle, his whole mien deceptively absorbed in his work. There was a tension in his mouth, however, and his beautiful eyebrows were pulled tight. Much too tight for a person able to spin in a blizzard, walking up an impossible mountain.

  When the silence stretched, he glanced at her and said, "I am desperate for any opening, Katerini, you are willing to give me. Do you only want to be partners? Not friends? You are Ilya's friend."

  She reached up and gnawed at her fingers. "A miracle, I assure you. I am not a good person, or kind." She was sharp, all edges and broken glass. The only friends she had were those from childh
ood, who grew up with her bad tempers and biting tongue. Everyone else respected her, a respect which bordered on fear. Nothing else. "I heard them whisper in the Wandering Wolf, the other Darkrow. They pitied you. I am heartless, nasty, and ill-tempered. You have experienced it, and yet you want to befriend me?"

  Nikolai clicked his tongue. "We have had this conversation already. I do not think you are heartless or nasty. Gavrila didn't say any such thing, and neither did Ilya. Nor did your siblings, and did you know they cornered me in the Palace? Right after you told them about the mission and went off to read the letters." Another flick of the spindle. She stared at him. She hadn't known. "It doesn't have to be lonely. You think it does. You think you're unkind and severe—and you can be rather severe, and I won't deny the ill-tempered, but I'm beginning to think it's a family trait. Your brothers are the same." He added in a mutter, "Downright terrifying up close…"

  "Brothers?" Katerini scoffed. "You insist on referring to them as such. Surely you don't see them as my brothers."

  "You don't see them as your brothers?" Flick. His fingers were deft as spiders. "I do. You are remarkably similar."

  Katerini became so angry she couldn't speak—and then it left her in a rush. She sagged, her forehead brushing her knees. "None of us are related. It's a ridiculous family."

  "Relation counts for very little, I assure you, Katerini." He viciously flicked the spindle. "You think I would go this far because Ilya and I are related? Born by chance into the same blood? No. Never. If you are unkind, then I am selfish. I chose to do this precisely because I am selfish." Katerini scrunched her mouth, blinking. He was a Darkrow. Family had nothing to do with the mission. "I love Ilya. He is kind and sweet, deserves more than he has been given. The illness, Aunt and Uncle dying—I had never seen him so broken. He summoned me to the Palace to name me heir apparent because he could not trust any other kin, because we were friends. I never wanted the title. That I can call him cousin means nothing." He impatiently loosed more fleece from the distaff when the connection broke.

  She stared at her knees and said, "I know. I know exactly what you mean. I'm not related to my father." She heard a clack and glanced up, unsurprised to see the disbelief on Nikolai's face. "What? You thought Clyish was my birth father? I'm an orphan, Nikolai. He saw me as a babe and adopted me on the spot. Said I smiled sweetly and my voice sounded like—well, never mind. I've been told the silly story many a time. He was a bit of an idiot, my father. He summoned two demons who ate him, after all."

  "Yet you look—"

  "Yes, yes, we all look alike, even the damned demons. The fair-headed Gorchevs." She waved a hand dismissively. "My father intended them to look like me. One of the finer points of summoning demons down from the heavens is that they have no earthly bodies. They must be crafted. If you'd known my father while he was alive, taken a good look at us side by side—well, we both have blonde hair. That was all. His was much darker than mine." A broad-toothed smile flashed in her vision and Katerini twisted her mouth. She missed her father, even if he was a fool. "Those two—the demons—they devoured him, bones and all. You have undoubtedly heard the stories. The rules of exchange between a demon and human are skewed. To deal with a demon—ultimately a human has to sacrifice more." He stared at her intently. "They broke the binding as their nature demands—by consuming it."

  Nikolai sighed and lowered the spindle. "Yes. I understand." He rubbed his lips together, then met her eyes. "Yet they care for you, those demons. They became Darkrow, and call you sister, even though they have been ripped from the sky to serve creatures they should rightly despise." He took a breath as she ruffled. "I know you do not blame them for your father. If you did, you would never explain their actions. You would never think to defend them. But you hate them for it."

  She glared at him. "Is it wrong?"

  "No."

  Her eyes widened. Nikolai held out his distaff to her. She looked at it, then wrapped a hand around the thin wood. Lighter than she predicted. Carefully he showed her how to stretch the fleece to the appropriate thinness. It felt like air in between her gloved fingers. Then he flicked the spindle and said, "I would very much like to be your friend, Katerini."

  She stared at the distaff, the fleece reminding her of cobwebs. Then she dropped her head on her knees again, closing her eyes. Usually she would have shouted a person into submission by now. She wasn't used to the listening, the gentle way Nikolai refused to back down without dismissing her. The others shied away from her rage like it burned them, not her. Of course it burned her! Of course it warped her glass and made it limp and weak! It was inside her, a red flame of rage and guilt and—she tightened her grip around the distaff. They made her feel like a monster, like the worst sort of idiot. Why did she call her poor father a fool? He was a hero who sacrificed his life to bring Zhakieve stars down from the heavens! If she did not blame the demons, why did she treat them so poorly? Why not bind them herself? She gritted her teeth. How dare they tell her what to do, how to act and feel. They didn't know a damned thing!

  Except Nikolai did not do those things.

  Maybe he wasn't an ass after all.

  And she had been too quick to judge him. She had admitted it, hard as it was.

  She peeked at Nikolai. His tongue was between his teeth as he unwound a particularly lumpy piece of thread. She hated them, right? Porfiry and Vasiliy. Nikolai said she did, which meant that was how it seemed—yet when she thought of Porfiry and his black eyes, Vasiliy towering next to her like an owl, all she felt was a gaping hole. Nothing. She felt nothing. Had felt nothing since her return from Kalinstad. In an instant, her rage turned to dust, and she knew why. A Darkrow of many moods indeed.

  "I regret what I did," she muttered. "What I did was—was monstrous." Nikolai paused in his spinning, and it pushed her to speak. "In Kalinstad. I was a demon, truly, maybe worse. My rage did blind me, like Porfiry said. You were in Ilya's great chamber too. You heard." She frowned. "You snorted."

  "It was hard not to. He said adopted. Who says adopted? They're lovers!" She lifted her head to give him a flat look. "What?" He laughed, and Katerini couldn't help but grin to match him, her cheeks reddening.

  Then she sobered, recalling the memories which shamed her. "I should not have let my rage get the best of me, yet I did. I was so—so angry. Angry at my father, at Porfiry and Vasiliy. I felt like they mocked me, mocked my father when they said they would become Darkrow and my siblings. I didn't understand—I still don't, even after five years with them. Demons are so damned confounding." She ran a hand through her long hair. "And the image of that day, when I found them covered in my father's blood and crunching his bones between their teeth—" She gulped. "The eyes never lie."

  Nikolai twitched.

  She continued, ignoring his sudden apprehension, "Porfiry and Vasiliy say it all the time. The eyes never lie." Her mouth felt dry. "And I took them from the warlock, Alexey. I ripped his eyes from his skull because when I looked at him, I saw Porfiry and Vasiliy. I saw something they cherished. I wanted to destroy them." She laughed bitterly. "I earned a hole in my stomach for it."

  Nikolai watched her.

  "And can you believe it? He grew them back. He grew back his eyes." She shuddered. "Warlocks. They are as bad as demons. I daresay the three of them together could bring back the dead if they wanted." She raised her eyes to meet Nikolai's, an ugly grin on her face. "So I am not a good person, Nikolai. I do not understand why you would want to be my friend."

  He stared at her. Slowly, a grin stretched across his face. "Ah, but you see, you are a good person. You have told me great news. It would be my greatest honor to call you friend." She blinked as he waved the spindle in front of her face. "And we are friends now, you realize."

  She snorted. "You decided that on your own."

  He hummed, satisfied. He flicked the spindle, his mood better than she had ever seen it. "Is there anything you wish to know about me, Katerini?"

  "No," she said sourly. He made a h
urt expression and she rolled her eyes. He really wasn't making this easy for her. The prophecy sat in her stomach like a toad. Focusing elsewhere, she saw the fleece becoming too thin. She quickly loosed more before the connection broke. She frowned, her finger catching on a fiber much thicker than the rest. She went to pluck it out, and realized it wrapped several times around the distaff. "Nikolai," she said, the fiber a thin white line across her finger. "I think something caught in your fleece."

  Nikolai glanced up, a big smile squishing his eyes into lines, like a fox. "Yes, my lovely Kat—" His face went pale, then reddened, and he said, "Leave it. I must not have carded the fleece well enough." She blinked and shrugged as he busied himself with the spindle, which clacked on the ground. He muttered to himself, his cheeks still red, "—such a careless idiot—finds out, I'll be headless—"

  She raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps we should eat and start moving. You don't feel ill anymore, correct?" He continued to mutter. "Nikolai. Nikolai? Nikolai."

  He dropped the spindle with a clatter, a sheepish grin on his face. "Yes, my lovely Katerini?"

  She blinked. Glancing sideways, she repeated herself. He acquiesced a little too enthusiastically and she narrowed her eyes. While she unpacked their food, he put away the spindle, which was nearly overladen with thread. He brought out another spindle, this one easily the length of his arm. She had mistaken it for a distaff, she realized. She hadn't noticed the little hook atop the whorl. She looked at the distaff she held as she passed it over to Nikolai. The fleece hadn't gotten smaller at all. She pursed her lips.

  Magic.

  She did not want to ruin the calm atmosphere, not after his bout of air sickness, but the unease knotted in her stomach made her feel sick. Why was he wasting so much magic? He wasn't really incompetent, was he? She bit her lip, and did not ask.