Hands of Fire: Chapter Sixteen

Vic is going to die.

There is blood pouring from a gash along her right thigh, and her muscles scream in protest as she tries to push herself up off the ground.

Get up, get up, get up, get up.

The Prowler is closing in on her, tail thrashing back and forth, lips pulled back in a snarl painted red. The line she carved through its left eye isn’t slowing it down.

It lowers its head, leathery wings unfurling as it prepares to leap. In seconds it will be on her, claws raking through her gut, teeth buried in her throat. She is going to die, and then the beast will finish off Tav and no one will know what happened to them. They will die for his stupid plan, and they will never get married, and she will never wear her mother’s dress.

Her arms shake with effort as she pushes up, up, up. She just has to stand, just has to ready her hunting knife. If she thrusts her blade upward at just the right moment, she can hit its heart. She will die, but at least Tav might be safe.

But her arm gives out. Her body collapses into the dirt, weak from blood loss. Her ears are ringing, and it takes all her strength just to turn her head. She watches it crouch, watches firm muscle ripple beneath sleek black fur.

Vic decides that if she dies today, it will be while staring death in the face.

The Prowler jumps, claws outstretched. The fear she should feel is nowhere to be found, a strange acceptance taking root in its place. At least she will be with her father.

“I’m coming, Aman.”

But then a figure is in front of her—a boy with matching dark skin and eyes, with her face if she smiled more, with her body if the curves were replaced with sharp angles. The Prowler crashes into him, she feels his blood spray across her face like a fine mist, and she can do nothing but watch as it rips her brother apart.

“Someone save him,” she thinks desperately. Where is Tav? Why isn’t he doing anything? Why isn’t he stopping this?

The Prowler turns back to her, strips of skin stuck in its teeth, and a scream rips through her throat. Tav is not coming to save her.

No one is.

---

Vic’s head snaps up, the scream lodged in her throat, chest heaving. A cold bead of sweat trickles between her shoulder blades as she waits for her eyes to adjust to the gray light filtering into their hiding place. She hasn’t dreamt of Mahlri’s death in a while.

Tav is still holding her—his heartbeat a comforting rhythm against her palm and his forehead lowered to rest against her shoulder—and she’s grateful she didn’t wake him. In the first weeks after her twin’s death, she woke up screaming every night. The dark circles under Tav’s eyes from the sleep she cost him had been almost as hard to look at as his helpless expression.

Mahlri creeps into their hiding place to whisper in her ear. “Nightmares again?” The sudden cold against the left side of her face makes her shiver.

Unwilling to trust her voice, she just nods and leans her head against Tav’s chest a moment longer. She gives herself thirty seconds to breathe him in, to draw from his warmth. It’s more than she deserves, after everything.

Mahlri tilts his head as he often does, listening for something she can’t hear. “It’s safe now.” 

She wants to ask how he knows, but instead she presses her hand to Tav’s cheek and lifts his head. The sooner they can be on their way, the better.

“Sorry,” Tav murmurs, voice husky from sleep. He shifts as much as the tight quarters will allow. “Am I too heavy?”

Vic shakes her head and gestures toward the opening of the crevice they crawled into. “I think it’s safe to come out now. I haven’t heard anything from that . . . thing in a while. And the birds are singing again.”

Tav tilts his head, eyes closed as he listens to the sounds of the forest around them. Then he nods, pressing himself back against the stone to try to give her room to wriggle free. When his breath hitches as her hips brush against him, she ignores the heat that creeps into her cheeks.

She emerges into a world that appears unchanged. Squirrels dart through the trees along the edges of the riverbank. A family of deer stand on the other side of the water, watching her warily. It’s only when she turns to assure Tav the coast is clear that she spots it—a black handprint on the stone next to the entrance to their hiding place. The tips of the fingers are elongated like claws.

“It was real,” she whispers, brushing her fingers against the marking and half expecting her skin to come away stained.

Tav’s face pales when he sees the handprint, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he walks back to the treeline and easily scales a thick pine, scrambling to the top to figure out which way they need to turn.

“Septim’s Pass is that way,” Mahlri says at her side, pointing to their right.

“And how would I know that?” she asks with a roll of her eyes.

He shrugs. “Intuition?” 

Smirking, she crouches down to retie the laces in her hunting boots.

“You could always tell him about me,” Mahl suggests when she stands again.

“Because that would go over well. ‘We need to go this way, Tav. My dead brother’s ghost told me after he scouted for us all night.’”

“He was my friend too, Vic.”

Studying Mahl’s face, she sees a familiar V-shape pulling his brows together. “I know he was,” she says gently.

“But you haven’t told him.”

“He’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Or maybe he’ll be relieved,” Mahl protests, folding his lean arms over his chest. The movement pulls at the gaping claw marks across his torso, and she has to look away. “He thinks it’s his fault that I’m gone, Vic.”

“I told him it wasn’t,” she replies. “Multiple times.”

“And then you broke off your engagement,” he points out helpfully.

Her jaw clenches. “It was unrelated.”

“Does he know that?”

Before she can respond, Tav’s legs reappear from within the tree’s branches as he lowers himself carefully back to the ground.

“It’s that way,” he says, pointing to the right and directly at Mahl’s smug face.

And when he starts walking, nearly walking through her brother’s translucent form, she has to stifle a laugh even as her heart aches.

---

The next day is one spent with their heads always turned to look over their shoulders for red eyes and silhouettes. They sleep in shifts that night, and only for a couple hours each before they decide to move on. Vic is grateful to be moving.

On the third day, she sees her first sign, a single set of distinctive tracks through a rare patch of bare ground. She drops into a crouch when she spots them, comparing the size of the prints to her hand and tracing the deep gouges where claws pierced the soil. She’d know these tracks anywhere. She’s been following them for nine months. The Prowler was here.

“Tav,” she says, and all it takes is the change in her tone for him to unsheathe one of the knives strapped to his thigh, muscles tense.

His nostrils flare when he sees what she’s looking at. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” she huffs.

“We’re not going after it.”

“These tracks are recent,” she protests, dusting off her hands as she rises. “I just want to take a quick look around. Maybe its den is nearby.”

“We have a job to do,” he replies, returning his knife to its sheathe.

“You promised you’d help me.”

“And I will. After we finish this job. That was the deal, Vic.”

“Look at where the tracks are leading,” Mahl says from behind her left shoulder. 

She follows the trail with her eyes until it’s out of sight, and it takes a moment before she realizes what Mahl is trying to help her see. “Tav, wait.” He’s already a few feet away, back stubbornly turned to her. “Tav, would you just look at this for a minute?” Jogging forward, she catches him by the forearm to yank him to a stop. “Those tracks are leading toward the edge of the forest, not deeper in.”

“It will turn around eventually,” he says dismissively. “Beasts like that don’t leave the Unclaimed Lands.”

“What’s the harm in tracking it for a little while? If we can find its den, we know exactly where to come back to after the job is done.”

“The harm is that we have a full caravan of merchants waiting for us at the Pass,” he says through gritted teeth, shaking of her hand, “and we don’t have time for a delay.”

Vic darts forward to put herself in his path, Mahlri hovering just behind her left shoulder. “Just give me an hour.”

“No.” Tav crosses his arms over his chest, blue eyes hard as stone.

She frowns. “Why not?”

“Because, Vic, it’s not going to be just an hour.” He shakes his head, gaze flitting over her face before dropping to his feet. “It starts as an hour, but then the trail gets fresher and you insist we keep going. And then you lose the trail, and you almost give up, but you pick it up again half a mile away. And one hour becomes half the day, and half the day turns into nightfall, and then we’re stuck up a tree, three miles off course and nothing to show for it.”

Something sharp and ugly twists in her chest. “I knew you wouldn’t help me,” she mutters, turning away from him. “You’ve never wanted this like I do.” 

“Never wanted this?” Tav grabs her arm, his grip tight. “Who went with you to find what was left of the body, Vic? Who helped you drag him back, and redid your stitches when you tore them open?” He shakes her a little. “Who went into this forest with you every day trying to help you find that monster? Me, Vic. I did that for you.”

“You didn’t do that for me,” she hisses, ripping out of his hold. “You did that for yourself, to try to get rid of your guilt!”

“And what guilt is that?” he demands.

“You know exactly what guilt,” she scoffs, looking away.

“No, Vic, I want to hear you say it.” He steps closer, close enough that she can see the sheen of angry tears in his eyes. “I want you to finally say what we both know you’ve been thinking.”

“Fine.” Planting both hands on his chest, she shoves him away from her. “I’ll say it. You’re the reason Mahl’s dead. It was your idea to take on the Prowler because you thought it would make our route safer. You underestimated how strong it was. You didn’t let us run when we had the chance. And you weren’t strong enough to take it down when it came after him. My brother is dead because of you.” Her hands are shaking now, her eyes stinging, her voice cracking. “And I wish it had been you.”

“So do I!” he shouts. “No one wishes that more than me!”

Her jaw falls open. His eyes close.

The world around them is quiet as a held breath.

And then he turns away.

“I meant what I said,” he says without looking at her. “I’ll help you with the Prowler after we get this caravan through. But if you want to risk the lives of more innocent people chasing that thing, go ahead. If you want to get yourself killed over revenge, go ahead.”

“Tav—”

“Just do what you want, Vic.” And then he walks away from her, deeper into the trees, never once looking over his shoulder.

And Vic does not go after him.