A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Thirty-six

Thirty-six

“She’s going to be mad about this.”

Dwyn drummed her fingers against her arm impatiently. “No, she isn’t. She hates snakes.”

“Then why did you force her to picture a snake?” Tyr demanded, sword dripping with a sticky, tar-like blood as he stood over the slain body of an enormous serpent. The sulfuric stench of spoiled meat and rotten eggs wafted from its steaming corpse. His lips pulled back in a snarl as he shot a glance to the bits of the regency’s road he could spy between the trees. They’d been running parallel to the road, picking their way through the woods just out of eyesight from passersby until he came upon a snakelike abomination. A goddess-sent gust of wind rustled the branches, moving their hair and clothes as it brushed the leaves together, sending the demonic cloud of noxious odor as far from them as possible.

“Because she—” Dwyn stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Wait, how did you know? Goddess, dog, how long have you been spying?”

He wiped the black substance on his pants as he shrugged. “It’ll be good for you to keep in mind that the walls have ears.”

“You’re disgusting.” Her eyes widened. “She and I have shared a bed! We’ve—”

He leveled an unamused stare and leaned against the same tree that tethered Knight. “While I’d like you to keep in mind that, yes, I do have the power to have been there watching your every intimate touch, I prefer for the partners to perform consensually if they’re putting on a show for me.”

Her nose twitched. “You are repulsive.”

Tyr lifted a shoulder. “You say that now, but you look like the kind of person who’d enjoy an audience. Most narcissists do.”

“Is this why your woman left you?”

He cast his gaze to the trees once more. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dwyn’s words took on razor-sharp accusation. “No. No, noble Tyr. This isn’t lovelorn, this is love lost. She was killed, right? Is that it? Is that why you’ve crossed the Straits—you’re on a righteous mission to avenge your…what? Betrothed? Your wife? Your lover?”

His face wrinkled in a flash of disgust. “The words of a witch who’s never known love.”

“Fuck off and make yourself useful.” She gestured to the grass, the trees, the pressed road beyond. Dwyn abandoned her torment and returned to the task at hand. “If her snake is here, how far off is she?”

He glared. “Make myself useful? I just killed a hell-snake the size of an ox. Why don’t you make yourself useful? You have the ability to find her, don’t you? Unless calling on fire wasted what you took from the farmers.”

She looked at her hand, flexing and unflexing her fist. “It wasn’t just the fire. You also made me heal you.”

He raised a single brow. “I made you fix what you’d broken. I’m sorry if you don’t enjoy the consequences of your actions.”

Dark hair danced around her shoulders as she shook her head. “I’ll need new blood, but I have an idea.”

Tyr’s mouth turned down. “I’m guessing if you’re going to try to replicate what Ophir did for finding things, you’ll want a manufacturer. There should be one in the next town. You can find them everywhere in Sulgrave.”

“First: no, I don’t want to copy Firi’s compass-watch. Second: this isn’t Sulgrave. The continent is backwater once you get south of the Straits. Which I should be grateful for, I suppose. If they had evolved beyond monarchs, we wouldn’t be chasing a princess across the world, would we? But no, I don’t need a manufacturer.”

“You need a tracker’s abilities, don’t you?”

“I used that farmer husband’s life to char the palm of your hand, but the wife will do just fine when it comes to tracking power. I can still feel her blood humming within me,”

It was a struggle not to sneer whenever she spoke. “You’re disgusting.”

She’d been ignoring him completely, eyes trained on the snake’s body when she said, “Did it just move?”

“It’s probably an involuntary reflex. Some cadavers spasm.”

“It’s not dead!” Dwyn leapt backward, half of her body careening into the trunk of a tree as she stumbled out of the way. The snake’s tongue flicked out of its mouth. She held her hands out in front of her as she continued to back away, but there was no water on which she could call. Its body twitched, then began to worm toward its severed head.

“What the fuck?” Tyr balked, shaking his head at the snake. He swung his sword on instinct, chopping the wriggling torso. Three disconnected parts paused for only a moment as corpses should before they began to move.

“This isn’t possible.” He gaped at the horror, then lofted his sword overhead once more.

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?!”

“I want to see…” Dwyn took several cautious steps toward the man to stop his butchering. “Let’s see what it does.”

“What could it possibly do?” His words came out in sputtered repulsion. Knight whinnied uncomfortably beside him, pulling on its tether to try to put as much distance between itself and the snake as possible.

“Shh, boy.” Tyr tried to calm the horse, but its fright was clear as it yanked its head against its constraint.

Dwyn’s tone changed, words hitching with excitement. “It’s not dead! This is goddess-damned incredible. Look at its blood, Tyr. The thing doesn’t bleed red. Look!”

The pieces of the snake twisted and moved as if searching for their missing pieces. A second wave of sulfur and meat hit them as the wind stilled. Grass and leaves crunched beneath its enormous body as one severed part found the other. The bisected sections of its smooth, black body rolled into one another. Smoky tendrils began to reach from one side of the body to the disconnected piece like a sweater unraveling in reverse. Tyr swore as Dwyn gasped. The snake was knitting itself together.

Abject horror leached down his spine. “If it reaches its head…”

“It can’t die.”

“It can’t die,” he repeated. “Holy fucking shit.”

Dwyn’s face flickered with pride, her mouth slowly turning up into a smile. “Well, well, well. Look at that, Firi. What on earth have you done?”

***

Being near Dwyn was a lot like being infected with repulsion. Tyr couldn’t get his top lip to stop sneering, as if it had settled into a permanent, disgusted disapproval. He watched her wave prettily at a commoner in simple clothes while he stood with his arms crossed, watching from the space between things.

He hated this. He hated her. He hated himself.

Navigating Farehold with the distinctly foreign features of Sulgrave fae made it difficult to remain inconspicuous. Tyr didn’t struggle, as he could always slip undetected to be one with the air, but it would leave the rather peculiar sight of a saddled horse sauntering unattended. Instead, he hung back while Dwyn closed her approach on a man tilling a garden, feigning the need for directions. Moments later, a papery husk remained where the healthy peasant had been. She’d expressed certainty that she would need at least three stolen lives under her belt before she’d be ready to enter town. She left the garden and let herself into the farmhouse. There was a brief shout of confusion at the intruder, followed by a second, louder voice who called out in terror. Then silence.

He didn’t enjoy watching her do it, both because it was wrong, and because it was frustrating that she’d found a way to drain and channel blood long before anyone in the Blood Pact. It was a secret she would not share.

She returned a few moments later. “I’m ready.”

He fought an unwinnable war with his expression. It was impossible not to glare at her. “Get in, get the supplies, get out.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. And keep yourself scarce. No one wants to see you.”

“Fortunately, staying out of sight is my gift.”

She painted her face with existential exhaustion. “I’m aware, phantom.”

Dwyn insisted that their plan was both simple and foolproof, which had made him uncomfortable. “Foolproof” was the sort of word you used when you were ready for the universe to make a fool out of you. She’d explained that she would use her first borrowed blood to call upon the power to shape-shift, wielding the gift to disguise her features so that she could pass for a Farehold commoner—someone pretty enough by Farehold standards, but with the rounded eyes of the southern kingdom, pinkish skin, and colorless hair. Next, she’d spend her second stolen life using the gift of persuasion to get a vendor to fill a sack with traveling supplies without requiring coin in return. The third was her margin for error. She never knew if she’d need to call on an additional ability, she said, and didn’t want to risk pitting her back against the wall and needing to draw on her own blood.

“Because that’s how you die?” he asked.

She pursed her lips. “Don’t sound so hopeful.”

“I’ll be here,” he said quietly as she turned to go.

“Please don’t be. I won’t need you once I have supplies and a tracker’s power.”

A growl colored his words. “Are you implying that I need you more than you need me?”

“How sweet, to hear the dog learn to speak. You followed me here from Sulgrave. That’s some flattering obsessive behavior, Tyr. I know you need me more than I need you, because I don’t need you at all.” He heard the change in her pitch before he saw her shift. The woman’s voice belonged to someone else. Her hair lost its nightlike quality, rippling into something hay-colored and wavy. Rosy, freckled cheeks and rain-blue eyes looked back at him.

“Then get rid of me,” he said to the strange face Dwyn wore.

“Don’t you think I’ve been trying? Off with you. You’re bothering me, and you’re going to draw attention. Let the master work.” Dwyn, wearing the face of the blond stranger, lifted her hood as she entered Henares on foot in search of a manufacturer.

Hostility throbbed within him. He did need her, and he loathed it. She’d unlocked the secrets of blood magic and made it look so damn easy, like siphoning water from a spigot, redirecting it from its intended source to her. She was a parasite, but a dreadfully clever one. Even if he could have killed her, he wouldn’t. He needed her alive to teach him how to access her abilities.

If it weren’t for the motherfucking bond.

He’d love to torture it out of her. He’d fantasized about strapping her to a chair and playing with a variety of tools and weapons until that psychopathic bitch loosened her lips. He still might. He thought perhaps his demonstration with withstanding the fire was the first time she could see that he might be able to take pain without flinching. He hoped it made her worry. It should. Maybe he could cut her open and pick her apart and withstand what it would do to him.

But no. She had no interest in sharing—and why would she? Spying had proven useless. He’d seen her flex her witchcraft countless times and had no inclination as to how she was doing it. He’d followed her. He’d stalked her. He’d despised her. He’d attempted to copy her. And none of it had worked.

For now, they remained at a stalemate.

The sounds of grass crunching underfoot faded as he watched her walk away. His mind drifted to the game of hearts she played with the princess, and his shoulders slumped at the thought. Cutting was easy. Hacking, slashing, and being violent for the sake of violence, thoughtless, sloppy, and required little by way of cunning or intelligence. Perhaps this was the real lesson Dwyn was teaching him without even trying. Maybe she needed to possess a royal heart for the power she craved. And maybe if he had any hope of learning her secrets, he’d have to find a way to win hers.

***

Tyr thrust a hand to the empty horizon. The tendon in his neck strained as he swallowed his urge to yell. “There’s nothing to the south, Dwyn.”

“I’m telling you,” she responded calmly, clipping the bags together and draping a blanket over the horse’s back before saddling it. “She’s southwest.”

“And I’m supposed to trust, what, the farmer’s wife’s blood that you stole so that you can play the role of tracker? She wasn’t even fae.”

“Any life, for any power. I don’t expect you to understand” came her irritated reply.

Tyr remained firm. “We got supplies for the road. We didn’t get supplies for the goddess-damned desert.”

“You keep saying we . There is no ‘we.’ Stay here. Live in Henares. Find yourself a good wife and settle down. Have little invisible babies. Or get eaten by a wolf. I don’t care. I’m going to Tarkhany.” Dwyn shouldered her bag and put her foot in the stirrup. She’d managed to persuade more than just food, clothes, a broad-rimmed veil to shield herself from the sun, and healing tonics from the vendors of the market. Her charm had been so effective that despite having no money, she was now in possession of a tawny mount, two weeks’ worth of provisions, and enough water to keep her alive for at least the next several days. Her horse wouldn’t love the weight of her supplies, she knew, but the mount would have to adapt. At the very least, her acquisition of a steed meant that if they were to travel together, they would no longer need to share a saddle.

“Bye, dog,” she said as she swung into the saddle.

“There’s no way she’s in Tarkhany!” He balled his hands in his hair from where he remained on the ground, shouting after her. “How would she have gotten to the desert kingdom! Why would she go there!”

Dwyn didn’t need to raise her voice. She called back in mocking singsong. “She’s a manifester, Tyr. She can do whatever she wants.”

His heart turned to stone. “And once you get her…”

“I’ll be able to do whatever I want.”