A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Thirty-nine

Thirty-nine

“Do you want to play a game?” Dwyn asked, sweat dripping from her head onto her tawny horse.

“Not even a little bit.” Tyr was too tired for her games on the best of days. This was not the best of days. The unwashed scent of dirt, travel, fur, and animal joined the thick, distorted quality to the air as visible heat undulated around them.

Each word came out with burned, sluggish exhaustion as she tried to rally their spirits. “Over there? In the distance? Let’s play a game where we guess whether that lake is a mirage or an oasis. Whoever wins has to tell the other a secret.”

“It’s a mirage. They’ve all been mirages. This is the fourth time we’ve played this game.”

“Four? No. It can’t already be four.”

He glanced at her to see if she was wilting from heat stroke and winced at what he saw. Her forehead and cheeks had taken on a sizzling, tomato quality. He didn’t want to be empathetic but couldn’t help the uncomfortable feeling at clear signs of suffering. “How are you holding up over there? Am I losing you to the sun?”

She blinked her eyes hard, perhaps trying to summon moisture. “Well then, why don’t you guess mirage and win the game? Then I’ll tell you.”

He sighed. It was his fourth day in the desert, and if they ran out of water, their bones would soon join the drifting sand. Every once in a while the hot, dry wind would pick up, flinging the sand against any exposed bits of skin, stinging them with the force of hundreds of tiny glass daggers. He’d love for it to be an oasis in the desert, just as much for Knight as for him. There was so little water left, and if they didn’t find a fresh source soon, well…

He wasn’t sure he could handle his horse dying in the desert because they’d gone on a fool’s errand after a princess who didn’t want to be found. He tried to swallow, but there was no saliva left to soothe his throat.

“Fine. It’s a mirage.”

“And I guess oasis.”

“How do you have the energy to talk? Can’t we just shut up and die in peace?”

He expected another wise retort, but Dwyn didn’t respond. They wandered toward the glimmering silver in the distance, allowing their horses to plod forward at the slowest of paces. They couldn’t risk their mounts expending any unnecessary energy. So they pointed them toward the distant, metallic shimmer and clung to whatever remaining drops of hope sloshed in their nearly-empty waterskins.

Forty minutes later, he didn’t have the energy to be disappointed that he was wrong. He was thrilled to be wrong. Excitement bubbled through him the moment he realized they were in fact approaching a watering hole dotted with fresh vegetation. It filled him with the sort of unspeakable joy that one gets to experience only a few times in one’s life. He jumped off of Knight’s back, immediately taking care of his mount so that it could wade into the pool and cool itself.

Dwyn appeared proud of herself but too tired to properly gloat. She didn’t bother to take care of her horse first, which was precisely the behavior he expected from someone so selfish. Tyr’s disapproving scowl became a permanent fixture as he tended to her mount while she waded into the water.

“You’re such a bleeding heart,” she said from where she knelt on the banks of the pool, hair dripping from the water. Tyr still hadn’t made it to the water’s edge as he busied himself unsaddling the horse she’d abandoned. She began to strip at the water’s edge, dropping her clothes in a pile on the bank as she dove into the pond.

He wanted to roll his eyes at her, but he was too relieved at the sight of water, and genuinely eager to do the same. It was Dwyn who cried out in surprise as he pulled his shirt over his head and began to tug at his pants. He’d expected her to use the opportunity to express disgust, but she was something of a nudist, and too sun-touched at present to antagonize him.

One moment later, he jumped into the small lake, grateful for its cooling waters. They gave each other a wide berth while their body temperatures lowered, enjoying the healing sensation of the pool. He gulped directly from the pond, savoring sweet relief over his burning throat.

Eventually, he found a place where the pond was both shallow enough to stand and deep enough to continue covering most of his chest. The bottom of the pond was hard and compact, which made standing easy.

“How did you know it was an oasis?” he asked.

She looked at him deviously and wiggled her fingers.

His jaw dropped open. “No.”

She took a mouthful of water and spit it at him.

“But you’d guessed oasis so many times! You were always wrong! You were…” He let the realization hit him. She could sense water. Of course. “You were hustling me.”

“You owe me a secret.”

“You goddess-damned bitch.”

“A bitch owed a secret.”

He dunked his head under the water, shaking it like a dog when he reemerged. At least Knight was happy. Their mounts had cooled themselves and now rested comfortably on the banks, looking to all the world like they’d died as they napped beneath the shade of a tall, thin tree with odd, fanning leaves clustered at the top.

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

She considered her price and kicked up from the bottom of the pond, floating on her back and looking into the sky. “What will you do with the power if you get it?”

He deflated, heart heavy. Of course, this was her question. It could have been worse. It could have been any number of things that he’d been less willing to answer. All things considered, it might feel good to get this off his chest.

“I’ll return to Sulgrave and use ice, shadow, and flame to kill three men.”

Her eyes widened. “What? You’re doing this for…three people?”

He nodded, not bothering to elaborate.

“Come on.” She moved the water slightly in his direction, not quite splashing him. “There’s a story there. Three gifts, three men, a trip across the continent, an unhealthy obsession with a stunning young woman. I’m referring to me, of course.”

He chose not to nibble on her narcissism. He was doing his best to get on her…better side. Gaining her favor might be out of his reach, but perhaps they could hate each other a little less. “There is a story, but your bet was for one secret, and you got it.”

“These are three specific men, right? You’re not just attracted to the number three and have an itch for the murder of your people, correct?”

He closed his eyes before he could roll them, lips twitching in a half smile. He could tell from her quiet chuckle her taunt was intended to make him laugh. She grinned at the success of her joke. “Yes. These are three specific men, with three specific powers that deserve to be used against them.”

“It’s for the woman, isn’t it? The one you refuse to talk about?”

Tyr said nothing.

She made a low, appreciative sound to revel in the tension. “Well, next time I make a bet, I know what I’ll ask you.”

He chuckled. “You think I’m going to fall for the same hustle twice?”

She dunked her head once more, splashing upward with more exuberance than the occasion called for. “I have other tricks up my sleeve.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Their bickers were so commonplace, it nearly passed for kindness. “Can I ask you something?”

She turned and began walking toward the shore, now cool enough to enjoy eating the provisions in her saddlebag. He averted his gaze with some irritation that she insisted on being so blatantly immodest.

“That depends. Can you stop being a prude? It’s just a body.” She wrung the water droplets from her hair and reached for the saddle that had been left to dry out on a fallen member of the peculiar, thin, branchless trees. She chose a handful of dried figs and began to pop them into her mouth, relaxing in the shade with her toes still in the water. “You want to know how I learned to drain people?”

He ran a hand through his wet hair. “Well, yes, everyone does, but it’s more than that. Why do you need Ophir’s power if you already take whatever you want?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you not in the room when Ophir was yelling at me and kicking me out of her life? Apparently, none of you think I would make a very good All Mother. It’s hardly your fault. Why would mice ever love a lion?”

He bit down on his tongue to block his retort. Once the first wave of irritation passed, he said, “I’m not asking why you want a royal heart. I’m asking about your end game with Ophir. If you were going to kill her, you would have done it already. So, if you aren’t going to finish the job, what are you doing with her?”

She frowned at a small piece of stem that had stayed in her date, picking it out of her mouth with her thumb and forefinger and flicking it into the pond. “Figs are a little too sweet, don’t you think? They’re more like candy than fruit.”

“I take that as a no, you won’t answer my question.”

“You won’t like the answer.” She popped another one in her mouth, grimacing at the overpowering sugars and washing her mouth out with the freshly refilled waterskin.

Now that was intriguing. “What could you possibly say that could make me like you less than I already do?”

She winked. “You make a good point.”

Tyr joined her on the shore. She made a bored look at the space between his legs, then looked up at his eyes, unimpressed. It was a joke, sure, but a good one. She was excellent at getting under people’s skin. “So?”

She sighed, chewing on the answer more than she had on her food. She offered him a fig, and he took it, always surprised when she extended him simple courtesies like food. Her answer would win her no favors, but there was no reason to put it off any longer. “The same reason Anwir doesn’t care who gets the prize, so long as one of us does. The same reason I won’t hurt her. The same reason you won’t kill me.”

He turned his head to look at her, mouth open in a mixture of surprise, admiration, and disgust. His eyes shot to the tattooed vine that crawled from her knee to her hip. From where he sat, shirtless and dripping, it nearly looked as though the ink on her hip ended where the markings on his bare chest began, as if they’d been woven together with ink. He knew she was brilliant, though it was a truth he held with both resentment and disdain. She was clever and resourceful and patient and tenacious and so fucking awful. He studied her now in the heat of the late afternoon as the fanning leaves overhead filtered their shade over her prone form. She really was pretty and probably could have done any number of things with her life. She was talented and witty and… “You really are a bitch.”

“Yes, but, if you’re going to be a bitch, you might as well be the best at it.”

***

The city smells of hot food and unwashed bodies and refuse hit them long before they entered the Tarkhany capital of Midnah. Tyr had always hated cities. Getting in undetected would be impossible.

“Well, shit.”

Dwyn sucked in the hot late evening air with a steading breath. “I’ll handle the city folk, just like I handle everything .”

“Pull your hood up,” Tyr said, eyes darting nervously at how impossible it would be for them to slip through the city unnoticed.

“It’s hotter than the goddess-damned sun!” she protested. She muttered to herself about how much she hated how sweat collected around her sternum and pooled in the center of her back, saying something or other about how she was much more comfortable naked.

“Look around,” he insisted. Many citizens had covered the exposed parts of their skin. Hoods were the norm. The sun was more like an oven when wearing thin, flowing cloaks, and head coverings. Its rays sizzled like a frying pan when they hit exposed flesh. The oven of cotton cloaks and clothing was hot, yes, but it was more sustainable than the bare-skinned alternative.

“Disappear!” she commanded.

“I’m completely in the open right now,” he hissed back at her. “I can’t vanish while people are looking at me. It defeats the purpose.”

While Tyr and Dwyn had gilded undertones darker than the average pink skin in Farehold, they were ashen compared to the rich dark browns of the citizens of Midnah. There’d be no chance of maneuvering through the streets undetected.

They’d barely stepped foot into the city’s outskirts before he knew they were out of their depth. From the burbling conversation of the public to the signs above shops, neither he nor Dwyn had any idea how to make sense of their surroundings.

He’d been a fool to assume anything about the tongues of the desert kingdom, regardless of how adept he’d been at learning languages in the past. Those from Sulgrave had the luxury of never choosing to learn the common tongue, should they desire. While it was spoken in Raascot and Farehold, the Frozen Straits created enough of a separation to keep the continent’s citizens from stumbling into their kingdom. Education was abundant, opportunities were available, and life was long. Most of Sulgrave’s citizens learned the common tongue as a fun hobby of sorts, enjoying the peculiar way that vowels and consonants rolled on their tongue, tasting new words, and lording superiority over any monolingual peers.

They hadn’t expanded their linguistic studies to other parts of the continent. He’d never met anyone from Tarkhany, or the Etal Isles. Information was surely available, had he sought it out, but ignorance was much like a blind spot. It was challenging to know what you were missing when you’d yet to see it.

Dwyn slid off her horse and approached the first person who made eye contact. Their eyes widened, bewildered at her appearance, but she flashed a friendly smile as she gestured to the alley. It took her a moment to step just out of the public eye before she left a husk in her wake.

“And now, I’m an omnilinguist.” She stuck her foot in the stirrup and swung herself back onto her fawn-colored horse.

“And a murderer,” he murmured disapprovingly.

“Oh, but such a cute murderer!”

“Can you be cute in a better disguise? I can easily slip out of sight, but if we get caught because you stick out…”

She looked at him with steely disapproval. Dwyn tugged at her hood, pulling it so it covered more of her face. “Isn’t that always the case? Someone chastises you for killing a person and then it’s ‘ Oh, Dwyn, can you please murder someone else for me in order to make disguises? Feel bad about it, though, so I can maintain my superiority complex.’ ”

“That’s a terrible impression of me.”

“It was spot on, and you know it.”

“Could you expand your power, if I didn’t have the ability to step into the place between things? Could you shape-shift both of us if you needed to?”

She sucked in a thoughtful breath. “I’ve never tried to do it to someone else, but probably. It’s not a good idea, though. We can’t pick miscellaneous civilians and take their identity. We don’t know who they are, or their reputation, and we’re on a specific mission to get close to a princess. It was fine in Henares when I just snagged the closest village girl’s face to get supplies. It wouldn’t serve us if we become commoners who are no better off than we were before. At least if we’re ourselves, maybe we’ll get dragged to whatever authorities as intruders, who’ve probably seen a very pale princess wandering their streets. All that to say, yes. I could. I can do anything.”

“It’s amazing how you manage to stay so humble.”

“It really is, isn’t it?”

He tugged on Knight’s reins, bringing them deeper into the shadowed alley. They’d need to wait for nightfall before moving around if they had any hope of remaining undetected.

“Do you still have your tracker’s ability?” he said quietly, looking over his shoulder as he dismounted.

“What do you think?”

“Well, how are we supposed to find her?”

Dwyn rubbed her temples. “Can you do me a favor?”

Tyr frowned, resting his elbow on his horse’s saddle from where he stood. Knight shook his hide, swatting his tail to remove a stray fly that tickled him. He patted Knight twice on the neck before returning his look to Dwyn. “Name it.”

“You’re either in, or you’re out. Get on board with my brand of blood magic right now, and be appreciative with my usage, or don’t get on board, but then never, ever ask favors of my magical abilities.”

He sucked on his teeth. She was right.

“You know what I think?”

He looked at her, equal parts exhausted from the sun and her company. “What.”

“I think your problem with me is a reflection of your own journey. You want Ophir. You want her power. And obviously you want revenge. Those are fine goals, Tyr, but do you know what they don’t align with? Your self-righteousness and bleeding-heart bravado. Either you’ll do what it takes, or you won’t. And at the end of the day, you’re here because you will. It’s time for you to let your perception of self catch up with reality.”