Burnt (16 page)

When he woke the next morning, he stared down at the girl in his arms with a numb disgust. He was supposed to say no. It wasn’t his Amorette he held. Not his girl on the hill. She was never his, was never supposed to be.

He wasn’t a good man. Kaie got that now. He wasn’t, even before he got Keegan killed. Ever since he let Sojun put that collar on for him. And now he slept with her, knowing that she would always belong to his heart’s brother, and that a child fathered on her would be stolen away. She deserved a husband who would give her beautiful things and beautiful babies. He could give them to her. He wanted to try. But it would all turn to ash, just the same as their life before. And he knew it. Bu
t he wasn’t going to tell her, because he wanted her to sleep with him again. That wasn’t how a good man would behave.

And he didn’t care. That scared him a little. But not enough. That scared him
, too.

Kaie slipped his arm out from beneath her head. He considered the stream and the icy water
there. But it was a long walk and for nothing. He was never going to feel clean again. So he wiped off the stink of sex with the tepid water they kept in the bucket and dressed in his spare set of clothing.

Not that there was much ne
ed. No work meant nothing to do; lockdown meant no visitors. He could spend the day nude if he wanted. Fucking Amorette until neither of them could walk, maybe. But he did it anyway, even going so far as to pull back the hide door and look at the world outside.

It was snowing.

Just a light dusting now, but the thick clouds overhead promised something more ominous for the day. Kaie watched it for a while, ignoring the cold leeching into his fingers and toes until the sound of Ren and Silvy starting a fire drew him back inside.

Amorette was awake. Their eyes
met for a moment. Kaie waited for love, for desire, for something. She scowled and turned her back to him as she tugged her clothing on. She was back to punishing him. He tried to be surprised. He thought about saying something, trying to recapture the feeling of the night before. But he saw the lie of it now and it just felt like too much effort.

He settled down in fron
t of the fireplace. Behind him she made noises intended to get his attention. Kaie wasn’t ready for her. He wasn’t even ready for him. It was easier dealing with arranging wood and kindling and coaxing a fire to life.

The knock on the wall brought him back to the world in a start.

Vaughan stood in the doorway, flakes of snow clinging to the boy’s long eyelashes, looking every bit as miserable as he was.

“What are you doing here?
” Kaie asked. “I thought East Field was on lockdown?”

The boy flashed the uncomfortable smile Kaie saw often. “It was. I mean, it is. I’m supposed to make sure your head is okay. Because it got hit?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, knowing there was more to the visit than that. If anyone was really concerned about the state of his much-abused head the healer would be sent the same day. And Vaughan came to visit almost every week on rest days, but the boy would never be mistaken for a resident of the East Field. It was bound to get attention of his neighbors. Unless Kaie completely misunderstood Josephine’s warning, that was the last thing he was supposed to be doing. So something else was going on. “I think I’m okay, though.”

“Have to be careful,” Vaughan admonished, leaning in to examine the cut above his eye. “Head injuries can be tricky. You should quit getting them. Obviously. I mean…” The boy shook his own head, visibly casting off some of the nervousness. “I saw Peren, before coming here.”

Kaie couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t want her to know about what happened with Amorette, but she probably figured it out all on her own. She likely even figured out a way to tease him through her brother with some words that cut right through him and made him laugh all at once. “Did she call me a fairy again?”

Vaughan’s smile took on a bit more truth. “She did. Right after she told me I’m allowed to say her name.” The boy leaned in close, making it obvious that his next words weren’t meant for Amorette. “She wanted me to make sure you remember what she said yesterday.”

He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, resisting the urge to scratch at his head. “Yeah. Tell her I remember. Tell her I haven’t stopped thinking about it. That should make her feel better.”

Despite their hushed tones, Amorette clearly heard the exchange. She made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat, and then stormed out of the shack.
Kaie considered going after her. She wasn’t supposed to leave the shack. They were on lockdown. He was even a little concerned her light clothing would result in her getting sick. It didn’t really seem worth it, though. It would only mean facing her, probably fighting her, and he just didn’t care that much. So, after a minute he turned back to Vaughan.

Who was staring at
him.

“What?”

“Is she going to be okay out there?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I think,” he answered honestly.

“You don’t even seem to care.”

He shrugged. “Today I don’t.”

Vaughan stared for a little while longer, clearly wrestling with some comment or observation. The boy seemed to think better of sharing it. “Alright…well…Peren says that she is taking your avoidance as a yes and that if you don’t like that you have to tell her so yourself.”

Kaie laughed real laughter,
the kind that yanked him out of the numbness and made him a person again. The girl was damn odd and it never stopped being entertaining.

When he caught his breath, he actually felt kind of good. “So are you going to tell me what you’re really doing here?”

“Spying,” Vaughan answered lowly. “I’m the only one who can come and go, and who’s got a valid excuse to be here. If anyone shows up in your house, I’m to run and get Boss Josephine. You’re terribly hurt, by the way. I’m going to need to see to your care for at least a week.”

“Oh.” Well that made sense. And it meant at least a week of being cooped up in the shack. If he was supposed to be that injured, he wouldn’t be
allowed to go to the stables or to have lunch with Peren. “I guess this means plenty of time for our lessons on the Empire.”

Vaughan nodded. It was a routine they started in the boy’s earliest visits. Lady Autumnso
ng’s son taught the boy to read and often lent books as gifts, which made Vaughan easily the most educated slave on the estate. Perhaps in all of Lindel. Thoughts of escape were becoming less pressing with each day but Kaie knew that understanding the world he was snared in would be necessary if he ever wanted to try. The boy just seemed to enjoy speaking to someone. He was a decent teacher.

“So, since that point, Uraz has been a matriarchal society. It actually went really well for a long time. Decades or centuries. I don’t really get access to the histories, so I’m limited to what I’ve been told. But at some point, probably due to a drought or blight of some sort, their resources became too strained to support the population. So the Empress turned her eyes to her neighbors. No one seems to know what the
name of that first country was but everyone says their military was without equal.

“People
say it took a full fifty years and half the populace of both countries before Uraz turned the war in their favor. I don’t have any idea what they did, but they did in a day what they hadn’t managed in all the rest of the 50.

“That acquisition eased the strain on the resources. For a while. But Uraz had a taste for conquest. So I can’t imagine it was long before they went at it again. And now, some 400 years later, they control th
e whole of Asperan, Ysil and Bordoc. All that’s left of Lindel is a few isolated cities and a handful of tribes. Then I expect the Empress will go after Jorander. It won’t be long before the Urazin Empire stretches from one horizon to the other. Then maybe it will turn on itself and fall to pieces. Just like the Empire of Ancients.”

Kaie paid attention with half his mind, but the rest was weighing the choice before him. He considered his next words carefully, still not sure he really wanted to say them. “Peren told me you’ve seen Sojun. The one who took my place.”

Vaughan’s eyes dropped like rocks thrown into a pond. They locked on a spot in the fire and refused to budge. “Of course you know.” He sighed. “She wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Why not?” He should probably be angry about it, but in truth Kaie was just curious. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted to feel about Sojun being alive. The numbness he felt about almost everything was firmly in place and he didn’t really see a need to dislodge it. Not yet. Peren’s words snuck in sometimes, when he allowed himself to think about what that numbness meant, but he wasn’t going to do that now.

“He’s not your friend anymore. Not really.” Vaughan answered slowly. “He’s her creature now.”

Kaie considered this information carefully. “I want to see him.”

The other boy shook his head. “No. You don’t. I know, whatever you want from him, you think it’s important. But he can’t give it to you.”

“Who says I want anything?”

Vaughan flashed one of his quick smiles. “Of course you do. You want to set things right. That’s who you are.”

He shook his head. “There’s no setting things right. Not between us. Not anymore.”

Vaughan chewed his lower lip. “You’re right. But you don’t really believe that, do you?”

Kaie thought about it. Did he? “I don’t know. Maybe. I just want to see him. I’ll figure the rest out.”

The other boy fidgeted, rolling a stone between his fingers the same way Kaie always did. He wasn’t sure if he was flattered by the imitation or irritated. He didn’t get the chance to decide, because before Vaughan said anything more Amorette returned.

Her cheeks were ruddy from the cold. He could see gooseflesh up and down her arms that she wrapped around herself for warmth. Her strawberry hair, only starting to get a bit of length to it, floated around her head like a halo of light. Her eyes flashed vibrantly. His heart climbed up into his throat at the sight of her. Not the empty thing he held in his arms that morning, but the girl he loved returned from the dead. Just like the night before.

“Do you love me?”
she asked.

Kaie almost laughed.
It seemed everyone wanted to know how he felt about Amorette all of a sudden.

Vaughan cleared his throat, the very image of awkwardness, and climbed to his feet. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Amorette snapped, turning her intensity on the unsuspecting boy. “I want you here. Sit down.”

Vaughan did as he was told. He always did. Amorette turned back to Kaie, waiting his answer as though they were never interrupted.

He answered. Honestly. “Sometimes.”

She didn’
t react. She probably knew that answer already. She knew him so well. “And the others? Do you hate me those times, Kaie?”

He shook his head. “No. Only myself.”

Amorette ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to get warmth back into her flesh. He wanted to help her. To pull her into his arms and hold her there until she was comfortable. Until she was soft and happy. But he didn’t.

“But you don’t care about me, in those times, do you?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not really.” Maybe he should leave it at that. He got the feeling it would be kinder. Now that he saw his Amorette back in her eyes he was almost overwhelmed by the love of her. Now was one of those times and he needed her to understand. “I can’t. You only talk to me when you want me to sleep with you. Otherwise it’s just grunts and sighs. Last night was the first time you’ve really looked at me since we’ve been here. I know what all that means, and it’s not that you love me. I don’t blame you. But every time you cry I hate myself more. This morning, knowing what I did, I hated myself more. There’s no room in me for much else when I’m feeling that.”

“You’re going to hate me too
eventually, aren’t you?”

He rubbed his eyes, wishing he didn’t need to answer that. Wishing he never thought about it, didn’t know the answer. “Probably.” Unless he stopped caring, like he was trying to do. Like Peren told him not to.

She nodded. None of this was news to her. None of it seemed to touch her. “There’s room for that girl when you’re busy hating yourself. Peren. Isn’t there?”

Kaie blinked. That surprised him. “
What?”

“Do you love her, Kaie?”

Vaughan drew in a slow breath. Kaie tried to sort out what was unfolding. “No.”

Amorette laughed. It wasn’t the husky sound he loved so much, the one that always sent ripples of longing through the pit of his stomach.
This one was hard. Brittle. Then he understood for the first time. This was not the girl he loved. It wasn’t the girl with the dead eyes either. This was some other creature using her as a shell. His girl, Jun’s girl, she was gone. “You will. You’ll love five women with a passion that will never leave you. I always knew I was the first. Even when we were six. But she’s supposed to be the second. That stupid, ugly girl is supposed to take away everything I want. Ruin it all.”

He swallowed hard against a host of questions that
weren’t important, choosing carefully the one that was. “What have you done?”

Amorette smiled. It was lopsided and unnatural. Like something painted on. Then, slowly, she unfolded her arms. Something fell from in between them. It clinked as it hit the dirt.
Kaie stared down the strange round, reflective thing without comprehension.

Vaughan was up in an instant, moving with more ferocity than
Kaie knew he was capable of. “That’s Peren’s mirror! What did you do to my sister?”

“Nothing,” Amorette answered. But it wasn’t her voice. It was high pitched and cracked. Nightmarish.
Even if he was able to stop caring again Kaie was certain the sound of it would still send a chill all the way to his bones.

Neither boy waited to hear any more of that voice. They raced to push through the blanket and into the snow.
Kaie fell in behind Vaughan without a word, not knowing where Peren lived but sure her brother did. Not thinking about Keegan or the lockdown. The snow, falling since morning, seemed to turn against them. The light dusting was fast transforming into a real storm.

They headed west, opposite the stables
. In minutes they were cutting through fields of wheat into a group of houses both completely new and utterly familiar. The same wood, built into the hill just like on his side, even an identical well. But here there were those personal touches so lacking on the other side. Bright colors, flowers, vegetable gardens. He could hear the faint sound of laughing children and maybe even music. Mostly, though, he heard the sound of his own breath coming in bursts and someone crying.

Vaughan led them straight to a house with bright yellow flowers surrounding it, pushing through the blanket door without slowing. Kaie was right on his heels.

It took him a moment to take in the scene before him. Whatever he expected to find, the brute from yesterday was not part of that. He needed several seconds to find Peren, collapsed into a tiny ball at his feet. She was where the soft sobs were coming from.

Vaug
han launched himself at the man and was tossed aside with nothing more than a shake of his arm. Pulling up short just shy of the exact same thing, Kaie watched as the large man landed a kick into Peren’s back with a casual brutality. There was no time to run and get help. One look at the small girl made it clear she was fading fast.

Her only response to the new abuse was to
roll across the dirt from the power behind it. Her cries were those of a broken animal, past awareness of what was being done to it. But he was still no match for the brute in a direct confrontation. No matter the strength his work in the stables was giving him, Kaie was quite conscious of the fact he didn’t possess any of that rippling muscle Peren was so fond of. Yesterday’s lesson drummed through his mind and the cut above his eye.

So he made a different plan.

The brute was focused on Peren, only granting Vaughan attention when being directly attacked. Exactly the way the man focused on Keegan. Kaie still wasn’t getting any notice. His years of wrestling Sojun – who was both bigger and stronger than him – finally paid off for more than just a false arrogance. Letting out a low breath of air, filled with a wordless prayer to any god that might be listening he dropped his head and charged forward.

He aimed himself for the brute’s legs.
The sole advantage in a confrontation with a man as large as this one was his center of gravity. His victories over Sojun were false, he recognized that, but that didn’t make all his tactics poor ones. Some of them, he felt certain, were legitimately effective. Effective or not, they led to only a few debatable wins against a much smaller man. And Jun held no desire to do him harm. Both those thoughts screamed in his head in the split second before he collided. But Kaie didn’t let himself hesitate.

He hit hard. The sma
ck into the back of the man’s very solid legs made his head ring. For one awful second, Kaie thought it was going to be as ineffective as Vaughan’s attack. Then the brute toppled backwards. He rolled out of the way at the last second, avoiding being crushed by less than a breath.

For all that he seemed shocked by his new position on the ground, the brute was swinging the inst
ant he hit. Only one connected as Kaie scurried out of reach but it was enough to make his entire shoulder go numb.

A quick scan around the room confirmed what he saw earlier: there were no more weapons in this house than in his own.
It was bigger, with no divider sectioning off the place for a second resident, but that offered no advantage he could think of. He needed to figure out something. The brute would only be down another second or two. Then the gravity advantage would be gone. Without it, Kaie’s only chance was fleeing through the fields in the hope the other man would tire before he did, which seemed unlikely, or that someone else would intervene, which seemed even less. So, with nothing else to do, Kaie plunged his hand into the fireplace and wrapped his fingers around the first burning log they found.

He felt the kiss of heat up along his arm, but no pain flooded through his system. There was no time to wonder about it. Kaie swung as hard as he could, bringing the wood down across th
e man’s head. There was a crack and the smell of burning hair filled the small room in an instant, but no scream came. The man just dropped back down and went limp.

Kaie dropped the log and blinked down at his hands. The
left, the one he swung with, was perfect. The brute was hurt. Maybe dead. And there were no burns on his hand. No marks. Only the numbness in his right shoulder.

Peren cried again. It jerked him out of the haze his mind was threatening to get lost in. He shook his head free of it, stepped around the brute, and dropped down to her side.
He was afraid to touch her. He didn’t know where she was hurt but was certain it was bad.

“Vaughan!”
he shouted.

There was no need to call him. The boy was right behind him.
He spared Kaie the quickest of glances, just enough for him to notice the small trickle of blood leaking out from beneath the white blonde hair. Then he wrapped his hands around her shoulders.

Kaie recognized the hold. He saw it with Sojun and felt it himself. He knew what Vaughan was doing. But he saw nothing. Felt nothing. The boy felt the old magics on him, but Kaie was blind to it. He could do nothing but watch
and hope that something was happening.

After a few agonizing and endless minutes, the crying stopped. She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t react to them, but she seemed to be sleeping rather than unconscious. Worried he might be interrupting something important, Kaie risked catching Vaughan’s eye again. “Is she ok?”

The boy glanced up for just a moment. “Yes. I couldn’t fix everything… not all at once. It took so much of the
Jhoda
to keep your hand safe.”

“You…” He shook his head again. Of course. “You should have saved it for her.”

Vaughan frowned and ran a finger through her blood-soaked hair. “I know.”

Kaie’s hands twitched with the same need to touch her; to be sure she was still there. Still vital. But there were other things to do. “I have to go.”

Vaughan nodded once. “I know that, too.”

“Are
you guys going to be ok? With…him?”

“Go. Set this right,
Bruhani
. Or I will.”