Hands of Fire: Chapter Ten
Kaith and Rhyssa find themselves caught in a storm.
Kaith sets a grueling pace, a relentless march through trees that only thicken. During the day, he allows them to stop only when the sun reaches its peak and the temperatures are too hot to continue safely. At night, he gives her a few hours to sleep before he wakes her and they set off again. And through it all, he makes her practice.
That is what Rhyssa resents the most.
She carries a handful of twigs in her hand, each no bigger than a matchstick. Kaith’s instructions were simple—light a twig.
“Pretend it’s a candle,” he’d suggested. “Light the wick, then put it out.” He says if she starts small, with tiny, controlled flames that she doesn’t let get out of hand, she’ll have easier control over bigger uses of her magic. And because Rhyssa has never spoken to another magic user—not since her mother’s death and Grandfather’s estate became her only world—she has no theories of her own to disagree with him.
And so she walks, and she focuses on the twig clenched tightly in her fist, and she furrows her brow and wills it to light, and through it all she fights back the urge to curse Kaith and his insistence that she start to take control of her magic. Most of the time it ignores her. Sometimes it just smokes. Other times a flame roars to life and engulfs her makeshift candle, nearly singeing her hand in the process.
Kaith says that’s why she has multiple sticks.
When she wants a break, she tries in vain to distract him, usually in the form of asking him countless personal questions. He plays along more so than their dreadful first day of hiking, but only for a few minutes before he informs her it’s time to keep practicing. This is how she learns about her companion. Little by little, question by question, one moment of patience at a time. This is how she learns he likes music and used to sneak into concerts performed by the Royal Orchestra, how she learns his father taught him to shoot but not to make an honest living, how he has a softness for sweets and wants to visit his mother’s people in Earmuk someday, when his debt is paid.
He rarely speaks of Amara, or the ridiculous amount of gold he supposedly owes her, but Rhyssa doesn’t mind. There’s a heaviness that settles over him whenever his master comes up—a sharp V that forms between his brows, a muscle that clenches in his jaw, a slope to his shoulders—and she’s found she doesn’t like reminding him of the contract that binds them together. Or of the man they killed, the one who said Amara will never let him go.
Rhyssa doesn’t like reminding him of that at all.
They make it four days before the storm hits. One moment sunlight filters in through the tree canopy, leaving dappled spots on the ground in front of them, and the next, wind whips the trees back and forth like river reeds. Thunder rumbles overhead like the groan of a great beast, and rain falls in thick, stinging drops. Rhyssa follows closely behind Kaith, using his broad shoulders as a windbreak, but in the few minutes it takes to soak them both through to the bone, it becomes clear they can’t continue like this.
Kaith stops abruptly, raising one arm to shield his eyes from the rain, and scans the area around them. Rhyssa wraps her arms around herself, already shivering. When he points at something to the distance, she doesn’t hesitate to follow him.
He leads her deeper into the trees, the landscape indistinguishable from anything else they’d seen on this journey, until they come across the crumbling remains of a small structure. Most of the wood is half covered in a thick layer of ivy, nature reclaiming what it lost. Pillars of stone stand at the four corners of what Rhyssa thinks was once a cottage. The stone floor, lined with deep cracks like the palm of a hand, whispers a picture of what used to be. For a moment she can imagine it—the slanted thatched roof, the fire crackling merrily in the hearth, the little bed tucked in the corner with a patchwork quilt draped over the mattress—and she wonders if whoever lived here had been happy with their quiet life.
But the image fades, and she’s left with only crumbling walls and no shelter.
She turns to Kaith and shouts over the howling wind, “There’s no roof!”
If it weren’t for the thunder, she’s reasonably certain she could have heard him roll his eyes. Instead of replying, he circles around to the back of the dilapidated structure where two heavy doors are set in a square of stone a foot off the ground. He heaves them open to reveal a set of stairs leading into darkness. A cellar.
Rhyssa doesn’t hesitate to descend, realizing only after she reaches the bottom of the steps and sees how dark the room beyond is that anything could be lying in wait in the shadows. But before she can turn back, Kaith pulls the doors shut behind them, and what little light they had disappears.
Kaith’s boots shuffle down each stair until she feels his solid warmth behind her. “Now would be a really good time for some of that fire magic, princess,” he murmurs in her ear.
“There’s a very good chance I’ll burn us both alive,” she replies, telling herself the shiver that runs down her spine is just from the cold.
“I’ll take that chance.”
Her throat feels tight, heat already spreading from her hands up the length of her arms. She grips the now wet twigs in her hands so tightly that one of them cracks.
Kaith’s hands settle on her shoulders. “What do you do for fun?”
“I—what?”
“Fun. You do know what that is, don’t you, Princess?” Even without seeing his face, she knows he’s smirking.
“Of course I do,” she replies, blinking away the bead of sweat that rolls into her eyes. Light, light, light.
“So tell me. Or is your definition of fun attending dinner parties and practicing the perfect way to hold a fork?” As he talks, his thumb rubs slowly along the base of her neck, and the motion is oddly soothing.
“I had a garden,” she finds herself saying.
“Had?” he asks, repeating the motion.
She sighs, leaning back a little into his touch, her grip loosening ever so slightly. “Plants don’t tend to survive being lit on fire.”
“What did you grow?”
“Flowers, mostly.” She can feel her power slowly receding, the chill from her wet clothing seeping back into her skin. “I wanted to start an herb garden, maybe grow some medicinal plants but . . .” She trails off as he starts applying pressure with both hands, gently kneading the knots that have formed between her shoulders over the last few days.
“But?” he prompts.
“But Grandmother didn’t think it was proper for a lady.” The last word has barely left her lips when a spark flies from her fingertip, and a small flame lights the tip of one of the twigs, casting a faint orange glow over the room around them.
She looks over her shoulder at Kaith, eyes wide, and finds he looks positively smug. “Anyone ever tell you that you think too hard, princess?” he asks, dropping his hands from her shoulders. She misses their warmth immediately, and her body starts to shake with tiny shivers.
The cellar is sparse. A few shelves line one wall, covered in dusty and often broken jars of gods only know what. There’s a straw pallet shoved against one wall, threadbare blankets piled on top of it, and a square table with a few candles resting on its surface is tucked into the far right corner.
“Try to get one of those lit,” Kaith says with a nod to the candles.
Rhyssa cups her hand around the small flame she’d made—now dangerously close to her fingertips—and quickly moves to the table. She lowers the flame to the wick of the first candle, dropping the twig and stamping out the flame when the candle catches.
The problem of lighting solved, Rhyssa knows now they need warmth. “Should we make a fire?” she asks. “The table isn’t very sturdy. We might be able to break it down to use for wood.”
Kaith shakes his head. “There’s not a good way to vent the smoke without leaving the cellar doors open, and Amara will still be looking for us. I don’t want anyone to be able to just walk in here.” Opening their pack, he takes out what’s left of the game he’d caught and cooked earlier in the day. “We’ll wait out the storm here and use the blankets to keep warm. Hopefully by morning it will have died down.”
Her teeth are chattering now, but she still eyes the blankets warily. They look more like nests for rats than blankets. He holds out her share of the food, and she lets him drop it in her open hand. Even taking small bites and chewing slowly, the meal doesn’t last long.
“We should get some sleep.” Crossing the room to the pallet, Kaith picks up the blankets and shakes them out, beating them against one of the stone walls to dispel the dust and any critters that might have lingered. He tosses one to her, then sets the other on the pallet before grabbing the hem of his shirt with both hands.
“What are you doing?” The question comes out more like a shriek as he lifts his shirt over his head.
“It’s freezing down here, and we have no fire,” he replies. “Wet clothes aren’t going to keep us warm.” He turns to drape his shirt over the table to dry, and she can see the lines of scars running up his arm more fully. Her eyes trace the breadth of his shoulders and along the muscles of his back, and she knows she shouldn’t be staring but she can’t make herself look away either.
Why is her mouth so dry?
“Didn’t your grandmother teach you not to ogle naked men?” Kaith asks without turning.
“I wasn’t—I didn’t—I’m not ogling you,” she splutters, clapping a hand over her eyes.
He snorts. “Sure you weren’t, princess.”
Rhyssa huffs and turns away, folding her arms over her chest and staring pointedly at the wall. “Well surely someone taught you not to undress in front of unmarried women.”
“Strangely enough, Amara skipped my etiquette lessons. And I’m pretty sure none of those rules apply when we’re on the run from an angry blood mage, soaking wet and freezing in an abandoned cellar.”
She can hear the faint rustling of fabric, the thud of his boots hitting the floor, and the crackle of straw as his body settles onto the pallet.
“Maybe I can dry our clothes,” she says quickly, not daring to turn to face him. “With my magic. I could use fire to dry them faster and—”
“And burn them to ashes? So we have nothing to wear?” He chuckles. “If you want to see me naked, princess, there are better ways to ask.”
She whips around only to immediately cover her eyes at the sight of his bare chest. “I do not want to see you naked!”
“Rhyssa, I can see you shaking from here. Take off those wet clothes and get under the blankets.”
Her whole body is trembling, in fact, and her hands feel like blocks of ice. “I’d sooner freeze to death.”
“If that’s what you want,” he replies. “Sleep well.”
After a few minutes of silence, she peeks between her fingers and sees he’s turned over to face the wall, one of the blankets drawn up under his chin. His shirt and pants are laid out on the table, boots lined up neatly on the floor beneath them.
Crossing to the table, Rhyssa holds her hands over the candle’s small flame, trying to absorb the little heat it gives off and willing her body to stop shaking. If she’d practiced more, if she had better control of her magic, she could keep them both warm. She could dry their clothes instantly and heat the entire room, even without a fire. She could make magelights for them to see by, and cook their food to perfection, and heat the small ponds they’ve crossed into steaming bath water.
But the reality is that she has no idea what she’s doing when it comes to her magic, and if she doesn’t find a way to warm her body soon, there’s a good chance she’ll get sick. She doesn’t think Kaith would leave her behind if that happened. She hopes he wouldn’t. But if he stays, it will be that much easier for Amara to catch him, to drag him back to Nofsinhar and his life as her slave.
And Rhyssa refuses to be the reason he can’t escape.
Before she can think about it more, she tugs her wet shirt over her head and lays it out beside Kaith’s. Then she unties the length of fabric she had twisted into a belt and rolls down her pants. She’s not bold enough to remove her undergarments, but they’re dry enough that she doesn’t think it will matter.
When she turns back around, Kaith is still facing the wall, but he’s laid out the second blanket behind him. Rhyssa lays down quickly, her back to him, and pulls the blanket tightly around herself. Her heart is pounding, and her teeth are chattering so hard she’s afraid she’ll bite through her tongue.
The pallet shifts as Kaith moves, and then his arm snakes around her waist, drawing her firmly against his chest.
“What are you doing?” she whispers breathlessly.
“I can’t sleep when you’re shivering like that,” he replies, his voice a low grumble in her ear.
She tries to squirm away. “We shouldn’t—”
“I’m not going to do anything.” His grip tightens. “Just go to sleep.”
She knows she should protest. She should push him away, throw his clothes at him, steal the blankets, sleep on the other side of the room.
But his body is warm against her back, and her shivering is subsiding, and she’s so, so tired.
“Sleep, Rhyssa,” he whispers, like he can hear her thoughts. “You’re safe with me.”
And maybe she’s a fool, but she believes him.
The first thing Rhyssa notices when she wakes is the quiet. The wind has stopped its screaming, the trees no longer groan in pain, and the only sound is Kaith’s soft, rhythmic breathing in her ear. His chest rises and falls beneath her arm, steady as the tide. She nestles further into his warmth, her face pressed against the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, and she can feel the stubble on his cheek scrape lightly across her temple as his arms pull her closer.
Her eyes fly open.
She’s not sure when she turned to face him during the night, or when she burrowed her way under his blanket, but she knows his legs are tangled with hers and his lips brush her ear with each breath and there are not nearly enough layers between their bodies to be considered proper.
Grandmother would die on the spot if she saw them.
And his skin is softer than she expected.
There’s a gap between the cellar doors that lets in a single shaft of light, barely enough to see by. Rhyssa tips her head back and studies his face. His lashes are longer than she realized, and there’s a slight curve in the bridge of his nose, like someone broke it long ago. From a distance she never noticed, but up close she can see a pale line that bisects his right brow. And in sleep, his lips don’t pull down at the corners in his perpetual frown. They’re relaxed, peaceful.
He’s handsome, she realizes, and once the thought takes root in her mind, she wonders how she never saw it before.
As if he can sense her scrutiny, Kaith stirs. She feels his fingers grip her hip a little more tightly before his eyes peek open. He stares at her for a long moment, that relaxed expression still on his face. Then he blinks the last vestiges of sleep away, and she sees the recognition set in.
She holds her breath as he raises his hand like he’s about to brush her hair from her eyes. Then he pauses, his fingertips hovering just above her skin. “Did you know you drool in your sleep?”
Rhyssa shoves against his chest, pushing herself off the pallet onto the cold stone ground and failing miserably to untangle herself from the blankets.
“I. Do not. Drool,” she snaps, finally clawing free and hurrying to get to her feet.
“You do,” he replies, rolling onto his back and interlacing his fingers behind his head. “And your feet are like icicles. You kept shoving them against my shins to keep warm, I think I have frostbite.”
Her feet may be cold, but her cheeks are on fire. “Well, you snore,” she retorts, hands on her hips. “Loudly. I thought you were going to bring the ceiling down on our heads.”
Kaith smirks as he looks up at her, eyes trailing lazily over her body, and that’s when she remembers her clothing is across the room and not, in fact, covering her.
Rhyssa throws the blankets over his head and snatches up her still damp clothes. “You’re insufferable.”
And for the first time, she hears Kaith laugh. It’s a full, deep laugh; the kind that shakes your body and hurts your sides. When she looks over her shoulder, she sees his head thrown back like a child’s, and she can’t help but stop and stare.
“What?” Kaith asks when he stops laughing long enough to notice her gaze.
“You’re laughing,” she says quietly. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
By his responding silence, she wonders if maybe Kaith hadn’t known he could either.
They dress in silence, too, but somehow this quiet feels lighter.
When they emerge from the cellar, blinking in the sudden brightness, the forest is quiet around them. Branches are strewn across the ground, knocked loose by the storm, and the leaves make a soggy carpet beneath their feet.
In the light, Rhyssa finds she’s not sure where to look anymore. When she looks at Kaith’s back, she remembers the lean muscles hidden underneath his loose shirt. If she looks at his face, her hands twitch and she thinks about tracing the scar on his brow with her fingertips.
The worst part is that Kaith seems completely unaffected by their night together. While she shifts her weight from foot to foot and reties her braid just to give her hands something to do, Kaith walks in a wide circle, stooping to pick up sticks. You’d think he sleeps next to half-naked women in cellars all the time. And what if he does? The realization hits her that she still doesn’t know this man, not really.
He didn’t do anything, she reminds herself sternly. He kept her warm, yes. He poked fun at her. But when it mattered, he’d been a gentleman. She’s met noblemen who aren’t half as trustworthy.
Sleep, Rhyssa. His words from last night rise unbidden in her mind. You’re safe with me. She’d felt it, there in his arms, for the first time in . . . gods, she can’t remember how long.
Kaith taps a stick against the top of her head, making her scowl. It’s impossible to stifle her groan when he hands the rest of them to her, but she notices he’s careful not to touch her.
“You have to keep practicing,” he says before she can protest. “This kind of simple magic should be second nature for you.”
Like she isn’t already aware of her shortcoming as a mage.
“I managed it last night,” she reminds him.
“With my help.”
“You didn’t help me, you distracted me.”
“Exactly.” Kaith starts walking, and with every step she sees the playfulness fade from his expression, replaced by the watchful focus she’s used to seeing. “I think that’s your biggest problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re in your head too much,” he says, ducking under a low-hanging branch, eyes constantly sweeping the forest around them. “You’re focusing on holding your magic back. Maybe the key here is just to let it go. Focus on directing it instead of stopping it all together.”
“It’s not that simple,” Rhyssa replies. “Directing it doesn’t do me any good if I can’t at some point stop it. Lighting a candle is fine, but if I can’t put the fire out, eventually I’ll burn the house down.”
Slowing until he’s in line with Rhyssa, Kaith grabs her arm and tugs her to a stop. “Why are you afraid of your magic, Rhyssa?”
She looks away. “Because I know what I’m capable of.” She tries to pull away, but he doesn’t let go.
“Which is what? What could you possibly have done that was so terrible?”
Part of her wants to tell him. Part of her wants to talk about the men in the woods and the way their skin melted like candle wax. Part of her wants to remember the lives her power burned away, to admit she still dreams of them every night and the smell of smoke makes her nauseous. Part of her wants to hold up her sins and beg him to carry them for her so maybe she won’t have to be afraid anymore.
But there’s another part, a voice that sounds like her grandfather, whispering to keep those secrets close to her chest, no matter how deep they burn her.
That’s the voice she has to listen to today.
“How much farther?” she asks, still not meeting his gaze.
His hand falls away from her arm. “We’re close. And we won’t need to push too deep into the Unclaimed Lands, just far enough that no one will want to—”
Kaith screams, lurching forward a step before he falls to his knees.
That’s when Rhyssa sees the arrow in his back.