Embrace the Fire (21 page)

Kinna pulled to her feet again, and backed away, horrified. She'd saved her own life, but at the expense of another creature's. She turned and ran into the Valkryiedimn who had directed his creature. The Dimn's panicked gray eyes stared into Kinna's. “What have you done?” he whispered.

Pain vibrated through Kinna, and the world fell silent. The noise of the battle deadened beneath the waves of agony that radiated from her stomach. In a slow motion, she looked down, touching the hilt of the dagger the Dimn had lodged beneath her ribs.

A wisp of air escaped her lips, and the ground spun in a circle, fast and faster, until Kinna fell, dead silence her only dirge.

The creatures moved around her, each their own mediator in a bargain for life, and the Dimn and soldiers stirred the mulch and foliage of the forest floor, but she heard none of it.

The peaceful rays of the morning sun filtered through the leaves far overhead, and the cries of a Pixie's song accompanied her toward the light.

L
uasa's thoughts
had been conflicted all the way over the Channel of Lise and beyond.
Psuche
loyalty choked out thoughts of Chennuh; any time she began to pine for her mate, she put on an extra burst of speed, determined to placate Ayden's wishes.

Ayden had begun feeling selfish before Luasa's wingtips had even cleared the shores of the Forgotten Plains.

“Don't worry, Luasa,” he breathed. “You can go back to him as soon as you set me down on Lismarian soil.”

She snorted her derision for his idea. He smoothed his hand over her hot scales, the burnished mirror blackening as they always had before he had broken his Ash-Touch.

I wonder...
he thought. Before, when Chennuh's tattered wing had nearly grounded the Dragon for good, Ayden had touched the wing, day by day treating it with his Ash-Touch, and gradually, the tattered wing had healed.
Is it possible my Fire-Touch would do the same thing?
With the Ash-Touch, Ayden had never been able to touch any other living beings; only Dragons would survive his contact. Perhaps with the Fire-Touch, he could continue to help the beasts.

A life with Dragons was all he knew.

You
could
know something else.
His thoughts scattered across a flame-haired girl who still slept beside cold embers far behind him.

Luasa crossed the shores of Lismaria. Far below, Ayden could see Sebastian's army tents spread near the shore, clustering thickly along the foot of the Marron Mountains. He banked Luasa, straining to find the command center, where Sebastian would be huddled with his men.

He could rain fire on the King; between Luasa's quick flames and his own Fire-Touch, they could take out any number of soldiers and target the King.

Closer, Luasa
. The Dragon dipped, her wings passing perilously close to some tall firs.

That's when Ayden felt it. Lightning burst in his head and pulled him to the right.

He couldn't have explained for worlds what he felt, but he knew Sebastian was on the other end of that pull. The force—he hadn't felt it since that moment beneath Sebastian's palace in The Crossings when he'd handed the Amulet to the King and felt the power shatter in all directions.

With a trembling hand, Ayden pointed. Luasa banked once again, her mirrored belly brushing over treetops until she settled in a small clearing north of a craggy silhouette of rocky outcroppings and branchless firs.

Ayden slid off of Luasa's back, rubbing his hand across the smooth, warm scales of her neck and up to her snout, where he scratched around her nostrils. She shuddered a groan of appreciation, and the pupils in the middle of her smoky irises narrowed.

Ayden took a deep breath and carefully drew his sword. Luasa stilled instantly, raising her head and inhaling a great draught of air. Her wings beat, fanning a warning downdraft.

Ayden crouched in the mulch.
Sebastian's here, nearby.
He knew; he'd felt him. He didn't know what had triggered the feeling, but it had been there in the air. Though he couldn't find the same connection now, he would have bet his own life on the fact that Sebastian was somewhere nearby.

Luasa was one moment in front of him, and the next, several spans away, her head turning swiftly up, over, down to the ground.

There. In the clearing ahead, Ayden reacted to Luasa's sense of another person, a living body that leaned against a tree. Another rumbling shudder of Luasa's throat brought the person to their feet.

“Who's there?”

Ayden tensed. That same voice had first cast him into a life of isolation and dread, and he'd lived for years, terrified to touch another living creature. He'd had to suffer through another meeting with the man months ago when he'd handed over the Amulet.

“Show yourself!”

Ayden's jaw cramped. He descended toward the clearing.

“Show yourself!”
The King's demand fueled Ayden's fire, and he stomped purposefully on a branch, alerting the man to his presence.

“Sebastian.” Loathing dripped from the word. Ayden stepped into the clearing. “It seems we meet again.”

A heavy pause stretched. Sebastian broke the silence. “I thought it must be you. What I felt, I haven't felt—”

“Since the Amulet.”

“Aye.” Awe and something akin to panic crossed Sebastian's face, and Ayden gripped his sword tighter.

“So, are you come to gloat?”

“Over what?” Ayden asked.

“The wretched curse you placed on me with the Amulet—the ice that freezes my veins and anything else I touch.”

Ayden didn't reply at first. Sebastian's confirmation of the Amulet's Touches relieved him in a way. He steadied his sword. “You have the Ice-Touch?”

“Aye, my skin freezes with cold.” Sebastian's tone gave away nothing.

“And I the Fire-Touch. Opposing extremes as the papyrus said.”

Sebastian's eyes narrowed in the moonlight. He paced, and Ayden countered, every nerve tingling with awareness of his surroundings. Luasa crouched behind him, just out of sight, wishing to end this man once and for all, and she would have done it but for Ayden's strong
No. He's mine.

Sebastian abruptly lowered his sword, the point resting on the ground. “Perspective is a key ingredient in a pitched battle, don't you think?”

His calm tone sent Ayden even closer to the raw edge that he struggled not to fall over.

“On one hand, the adrenaline and furor that stirs in the heart of a soldier on a battlefield is hard to match. Glory and honor for country and home! What could be better?” His rough laugh cut the air. “On the other hand, the Commander watches from his position over the army, seeing the overall picture. He has everything to lose if the battle turns awry, and so his eye is keen and his judgment keener.”

“Where are you going with this?” Ayden asked, suspicion weaving the timbres of his voice.

Sebastian held his sword at arm's length, loosening his grip on the hilt until it swung from his fingers, point in the earth. His other hand loosened a dagger. “What say we finish this as surely we were meant to start?
Taibe
challenging itself. Fire and ice meeting in a grand burst of magic? Hmm?”

His fingers released the sword and the dagger, both weapons dropping onto the mulch at his feet. “Come, you misbegotten cur. Show me your strength.”

Behind Ayden, Luasa snorted in rage. Ayden felt the beast's temper course through him, but sense of honor did not allow him to kill a weaponless man, though he'd dreamed of this moment for months.

His fist cramped. “All right.” He kept his voice measured and even, and leaned his sword against a nearby tree.

The weapon had hardly left his touch when Sebastian dove, driving him to the ground with a hard thud. Fire shot outward from Ayden's fingertips, igniting the forest floor in a flash of flickering light.

Ice ringed his neck where Sebastian's hands had found a grip, and Ayden clamped his own hands around the king's. Sebastian grunted as the fire licked across his wrists, and he let go.

Ayden flipped Sebastian onto his back, and his hand flamed to life, hotter than he'd felt yet. He slammed it down into his enemy's face, but Sebastian blocked the thrust.

A sphere of ice erupted where their skin met, rising into the air as it expanded. Flickering flame licked the insides of its transparent depths. The sphere grew, floating higher above the two struggling men, changing and morphing.

Both men stared at it, gripped in a deadlock, neither able to move.

“What is that?” Ayden grunted.

“That,” Sebastian gasped, shaking with strain, “is the combination of fire and ice.”

“And where,” Ayden managed, his hands trembling against Sebastian's wrists, “is the Amulet that is the source of all this?”

Sebastian writhed to the side, and Ayden rolled with him. The ball of ice and fire remained above them, glowing with an energy and heat that felt nothing like natural fire.

“You wanted hand-to-hand combat,” Ayden gasped as he flipped Sebastian on top of him, the King facing the sky as Ayden wrapped his arm around Sebastian's neck in a headlock. “I think the odds are slightly in my favor.”

“How so?” Sebastian gurgled. His feet thrashed the ground.

Ayden tightened his chokehold. “After you cursed me as a child, practicing your fledgling
taibe
on an innocent boy,” he spat, grappling for control, “I spent years in the back alleys and fighting arenas of West Ashwynd seeking a fortune through fighting. What have you done?” Ayden's boot pinned the king's flailing legs to the ground. “Nothing but sit on your throne and make yourself as hated as possible.” He hissed into Sebastian's ear, and the King flailed.

Sebastian's boot kicked into the morphing sphere that had grown massive. A blinding flash of white-hot ice and fire shot outward in an explosion that echoed throughout the woods. The force of it tossed Ayden like a rag-doll into the trees, blinding him for several minutes, slicing through his ears with a high, keening ring that echoed pain everywhere inside his head.

When his sight returned, the clearing was empty. Sebastian had vanished. Even Luasa had lost her scent of the King.

Ayden dashed madly into the woods, first one way and then back across the clearing the other way, but he could find no trace of his enemy.

He collapsed on his knees in the center of the clearing, searching the heavens for the last remaining Stars before the sun took the sky. All the fury that flamed inside of him boiled through his chest and out his mouth in one heartfelt strangled shout. “
Why
?”

A
yden traced
the mountain ranges that rose high above him with a calmer gaze now that the sun had risen. He had no intention of returning to Sebastian's armies, but emptiness consumed him. He'd sought out Sebastian, determined to gain answers, satisfaction,
something
, for the fire that replaced the ash. But morning had dawned, Sebastian was gone, and he was no nearer a solution than he'd been at the close of the previous day.

He wished he could revisit Helga, the
taibas
who had originally given him the Amulet, but when he'd visited her cabin two months after the Tournament, there had been no sign of her.

“I don't know what to do, Luasa,” Ayden whispered. The Dragon's grunt resounded through her neck, and her warm breath huffed over Ayden's head. “I know,” he scratched the Dragon's snout as he responded to her thoughts. “Chennuh would appreciate us coming back.” Ayden sighed deeply. “I'm not sure Kinna would, though. I left her without an explanation.”

Luasa snorted again, and this time, flames kindled the neckline of Ayden's tunic. “Watch out,” he snapped, smothering them. “I just got a new tunic to replace my other one. I don't want to burn it off again.”

If Dragons could smile, Luasa's scaly face would have shown it. She nipped at his shoulder, and Ayden rocketed to his feet. “Fine. We'll go find the others—for now. But I'm going to get answers about the Amulet, sooner rather than later, Luasa.” He stared seriously at her as she rolled on her back, joy rolling off of her in waves. He couldn't quite hold the stern expression, and a smile broke through.

“Let's find water. I'm thirsty.”

He rubbed the Dragon's neck gently and headed for the edge of the clearing. Her figure flashed across the rocks ahead of him, tense expectation in her form as she waited for him. She was so unlike Chennuh; Kinna's Dragon lurched ungracefully in a thudding stomp whenever he moved. Luasa made little or no noise, and all her movements were quick and tense, like a bird's.

They entered the darker areas beneath the treeline. Ayden strained his ears for soft sounds of the unnatural—the shifting of a body, the sharp report of a cracking branch, the whisper of breath not from the wind. The only things he could hear were the quick, lithe shuffles of Luasa ahead of him and the quiet footfalls of his own boots. No sign of any other man or creature disturbed the forest.

Midmorning daylight filtered through the leaves before they found a mountain stream splashing into a brilliant clearing. Luasa dove for the water, pulling in deep draughts. Ayden approached the water and cupped his hands beneath the clear surface, quenching his thirst.

Once his throat no longer burned, he pulled the remains of a rabbit he'd roasted the afternoon before from his pack and tore off a dry piece with his teeth. It certainly wasn't culinary genius, but it would fill the empty hole in his stomach.

When he was finished, he tossed the bones aside and crouched by the riverbank to cup water into his mouth. A sharp pain sliced his upper leg, and he jerked to the side, fingering a rip in his breeches where a jagged rock had cut through the skin of his thigh.

“Stars above!” The edges of the torn leather tinged red, and Ayden hissed in pain as he widened the gap in the leather to see the damage done to his skin. A scrape the size of his palm oozed blood, running in small drips downward. Ayden twisted for better light and swiped his finger across the bottom edge of the scrape to catch the blood before it sank into the leather.

The wound smoked.

Ayden snatched his hand away, watching the blood sizzle on the wound before drying, leaving a light brown residue.

“What under the Stars...?”

Luasa's snort startled him; she'd come over to see what he was doing. “Luasa, look.” Quickly, he ran his finger across the rest of his scrape and watched the wound smoke and sizzle again. When it cleared, the same brown residue covered what he'd touched. Ayden swiped again, and the residue fell off like powder, leaving unmarked skin underneath.

“How do you think that worked, Luasa?”

Her heated snout nudged his shoulder, and he looked up.

There was something in the expression of her smoky irises that raised the hair on the back of his neck.

The stillness in the air spelled danger.

Ayden's hands erupted into flame, startling him. Until this moment, he'd been managing to control the urges to release his inner fire. Intense pain rocked him.

Something was wrong, and his body reacted to an instinct that refused to connect with his rational thoughts. The Fire-Touch was more complicated than he'd imagined; when fear had overcome his reasoning, he'd lost control of the flames in his hands.