He was faster than me and uninjured. He edged closer. I wove back toward the street, but his breath coated my neck.
He slammed his whole body weight into mine, sending us both sprawling to the ground. I screamed and kicked, bit and struggled to get up. Hot tears ran down my face as I batted his hands away from my shoulders so he couldn’t force me down.
“Stop it! Tornadoes! Gabby, knock it off!” He pinned me to the ground with his knees around my hips, straddling me the same way Felix had. A fury I didn’t know I possessed surged.
The storm inside broke.
“Get off!” I shoved him hard, fire exploding out when I touched him. He sailed backward, the orange flames licking over his black clothes without hurting him. I didn’t wait to see if he got up.
I ran again, past dark houses, lit torches, and everything in between. I ran and ran, focusing my breathing and letting the caged-in feelings fly away, the way I used to in the forests of Crylon.
I fled into the flat expanse. South of the city, the plains held very little snow, but plenty of frost and ice crystals. I flinched with the cracking noises as I ran. When I looked down, I found the ground freckled with blood.
Sharp pain stabbed into my right foot. My shoeless foot. Pain flared through my leg, but I couldn’t stop. Cornish still loomed behind me, and the plains offered no protection.
I hobbled now, tears coating my cheeks. After a few more minutes, I went down a slight decline, spotting a line of trees to my left. They did little to delay the wind, but I ducked behind a thick trunk, thinking I could stop for just a minute.
That minute turned into five. My right foot was a mess. Thick, dark blood pooled over the mangled flesh from toe to heel, too much to cauterize. Hating myself for being weak, hating Adam for being a sentry, I hung my head and cried, cried out every last bit of the furious storm swirling inside.
Five minutes became ten. Finally, I ripped a section of my robe into thin strips, and then a square of cloth from the bottom. I wrapped my foot twice over with the square and secured it with the strips around my toes, heel, and ankle.
I tried to stand, and if I kept my weight on my left side, I could manage a sort of hobble-step. I looked toward Cornish, but the rolling hills hid it from view. To the south, the unforgiving plains stared back. I looked up into the starry night—which was partially blocked by the tree limbs.
“Up,” I whispered. The lowest branch hung above my head. I leaped, my fingertips barely brushing the rough bark. Pain exploded in my wrapped foot when I landed. Pain so severe, bright spots of fire danced before my eyes.
I ground my teeth together, and jumped again. I caught the branch this time and scrabbled with my good foot against the tree trunk.
I started to fall. But in my desperation, I held on too long. As gravity took control, my face scraped against the trunk, and the branch chafed my hands before I let go.
I landed in a heap on the cold ground, my new wounds leaking blood and sparks. I faded in and out of consciousness. At times, the biting breeze felt very real against my exposed neck and face. Other times, everything turned dark, including the pain in my foot and the throbbing in my back.
Several times I sat straight up, scrubbing my face and chest. Anything to get the unwanted touch of Felix’s hands out of my skin, the wisps of his breath off my neck. I scoured my body, unthinking, irrational.
Finally, thankfully, the darkness stole me away.
An angry voice pierced the black drape engulfing me.
Hanai.
He touched me, running his chilly fingers over my cheeks, collarbone, and wrists. He murmured a healing chant in his native tongue.
Another set of hands probed my body, alighting on my face, my neck, my chest. Every touch hurt, no matter how light.
Shrill noise echoed around me, and I realized I was screaming. I tried to quiet my emotions, but the pain was unbearable.
“Gabby?”
Adam.
A fiery storm ignited in my blood.
“You do it,” Adam said, his words growing distant.
“Gabby, you’ve got to calm down,” Hanai said. “Hold still, honey. Can you hold still for me?”
I hadn’t realized I was moving. I searched for a way to control my body, but the sheaf of darkness clouded my head.
“I’m going to give you a shot, okay? It will help with the pain. Man, she’s burning up. I can barely touch her.”
“Watch her hands, they spout flames—ow!” Adam said. “Just give her the medicine. I’ll do something about this wind.”
I tried to shift away from Adam’s voice, but something strong held me in place. A stab of heat entered my arm, and cool water rushed in, quenching the fire threatening to consume me from the inside out.
“Finally,” Hanai said, his voice dripping with relief.
“I’m going to help you, Gabby.” Adam’s lies always sounded so smooth. I didn’t believe him, but the delicious water reared and washed me out into a sea where it didn’t matter what I believed.
A soothing chant entered the endless darkness, painting reds and blues into a shocking violet. With the color and sound came an inviting smell. Smoke—and sunshine.
Like rising out of deep water, I ascended toward Hanai’s voice. It grew louder and more distinct with every passing moment. I broke through the restraining surface of darkness, inhaling a delicious smoke.
I breathed it in again, feeling my aches ease, before opening my eyes. Hanai sat in a chair next to the bed I lay on, his eyes closed, the chant unbroken. He wore his blue Council robes—clean Council robes—and jeans. His long, black hair was secured at the nape of his neck. The candlelight flickered on his brown skin.
“Hanai?”
His eyes flew open, but he didn’t stop chanting. The tight lines around his eyes smoothed. A moment later, the chant ended. “You okay, Firemaker?”
I tried to sit up. Pain flared from my core outward. Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Don’t move,” Hanai said. “You’re cut pretty bad.”
I lay back against the pillow, panting. My foot hurt the worst. Sharp barbs of pain stabbed into my knee and thigh.
“What?” I managed to ask through clenched teeth.
Hanai cleared his throat. “Well….”
I closed my eyes until the pain subsided. Then I glanced down at myself, shocked to find my entire upper body covered with a thin icing of gauze. Underneath, dry scaly scabs caught the fabric with even the tiniest movement.
“What…? What happened?”
“Your shoulder is almost healed,” Hanai started. “Adam changed the dressing and seemed relieved there was no infection. He put some nasty-smelling ointment on it and re-bandaged it. Your foot….” He glanced to the end of the bed, where my foot dangled in an apparatus six inches off the sheets. “Well, it’s pretty mangled. The healer bound it the best she could, but there was hardly any skin left to stitch. And….” His gaze swept over my chest and shoulders. Even though I was covered by the gauze, the dirty feelings brought on by Felix’s attack surfaced.
Hanai knelt next to the bed, tears streaming down his face. “I couldn’t find you. You ran, and your spirit was broken. I’ve never felt such crushing desperation to find someone. Good thing Adam is such an exceptional sentry. The only reason we found you is because he found the trail of your bloody footprints. You were bleeding….” He pressed his eyes closed. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”
His voice cracked, and he touched his forehead to the blankets. His shoulders shook with sobs.
“Your face and both hands are pretty torn up. Your arms, your shoulders, your chest, your stomach, you’d rubbed them raw with ice. Adam says the skin will re-grow fast enough. He slathered you with that ointment, and we covered that with gauze. I couldn’t…couldn’t feel your soul for so long.”
I looked at my wounds again, remembering the unyielding bark and unclean feelings.
“I thought I lost you.” Hanai stroked his fingers across my forehead.
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I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still feel his hands on my body, taste his breath in my mouth. I clenched my teeth and willed the tears to stay dormant.
Minutes passed in black silence before the mattress shifted. I opened my eyes as Hanai gently slid his arm under my head and held me close, the chant already vibrating in his chest. He pressed his lips to my forehead.
“I’m sorry I ran,” I whispered, feeling so broken. I inhaled deeply, finding a fire burning in the room outside the door.
“Don’t bring that in here,” Hanai teased. “Some of us can’t breathe through all that smoke.”
Something like a smile formed on my face, but it felt twisted. I took one last lungful, and pushed the smoke away.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. “Is your gunshot wound okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “It’s not completely healed, but enough.”
I sighed. “I’m glad.”
“I love you.” His mouth came softly on my forehead again. The fire simmering under my skin awakened into a rolling boil. Heat spread from his lips to my bloodstream. Down my throat. Through my whole body.
My skin prickled with a thousand tiny teeth before erupting into an uncomfortable itch. Furious heat enveloped us. Or maybe just me, I didn’t know. I was aware that I reached up and wrapped my hands around his neck, matching my lips to his, clinging to him through the raging inferno.
In that kiss, there was no pain. No loss. No betrayal.
Just Hanai and me, me and Hanai.
The fire boiling inside exploded to the surface. Hanai yanked away, his moan filled with pain. “You’re—magic alive! Gabby?”
My eyes were welded shut. Bright orange light beamed through the darkness. Waxy smoke coated my lungs—this wasn’t normal fire.
Status: I’m on fire.
My thought was confirmed when Hanai said, “You’re on fire!”
An intense heat filled my lungs. The smoke I normally found so comforting choked me. The prickling in my skin increased until razor-sharp teeth skated over the surface.
Crackling noises echoed around me, so fire-like and so terrifying at the same time. Because I knew it was my skin burning. My head sizzled, and an uncomfortable sensation pulled along my scalp.
“Shh,” someone whispered. Fingers entwined with mine. Shallow breath washed over my cheek. “Gabby, quiet, shh.” Hanai’s voice held a healing quality all its own. He smelled of wood and cold air. I breathed him in, eliminating the place in my mind where nightmares lived.
I sat up, expecting the debilitating pain to sweep through my shoulders. It didn’t.
“Magic alive,” Hanai breathed.
I tried to focus on his face, but he lingered in a halo of shadow. He leaned forward, and I found wonder in his eyes and love curling his mouth.
“Hanai.” I said his name like he could save me from myself. I wanted him to, oh, how I wanted him to.
“You healed yourself.”
My skin stretched, creamy and white, down my torso and under the blankets. I snatched the slightly charred sheet and pulled it to my chin. “Clothes—I—”
He held a bundle toward me without removing his eyes from mine. He left the room, trapping me with my own thoughts. After pulling on a pair of jeans and a soft shirt, I tucked a knife in my belt loop. I sat in Hanai’s chair and ran my hands over my arms, feeling nothing but silky, smooth skin.
Hanai stepped into the room and locked the door behind him. “We’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” I took the sentry knife he handed me, tucking it into the waistband of my jeans.
“Away from here. Cornish doesn’t harbor Elementals, and several Elemental refugees from Tarpulin have arrived.” He yanked up the window, and a blast of icy air flooded the room. “And now that everyone in the United Territories knows that Alex is a woman, well, let’s just say that Davison has gathered a lot of help.”
“The attack against Alex is starting,” I said. A loud banging echoed from the front of the house.
“And we want to make sure we’re on the right side.” Hanai gestured me forward. “We don’t need the Cornish guards interrogating us unnecessarily.”
I crawled out the window awkwardly, landing on frozen earth. Claws of chilly air robbed me of heat from my Element, and I actually shivered.
Hanai dropped next to me, reaching for my hand. “Pull up your hood. We don’t want—” He cut off, staring at my head.
“What?” I reached up and felt…my hair. It fell beyond my shoulders in waves, just like it had before the false accusation of arson in Crylon. That life seemed light years away, as if someone else had lived it.
“Well, maybe you won’t need the hood. You look…like a girl.” Hanai sounded like he’d never seen a girl before.
“I’ve always been a girl,” I said, gathering my hair into a low ponytail, marveling at its sudden regrowth.
“Yeah, but now, now you look like one.”
I slid my hand into his in response. Angry shouts filled the graying morning. We stayed off the roads, which made our trek through the southern wilderness long and tiring. There were a few patches of dirty snow, but most of it had melted. Low brush dotted the landscape, making our trail a wandering one.
A few trees loitered on the horizon to the west, but they were too far away for us to use as cover. At least the ground was mostly flat, if not rocky. We walked until the sunset drew a dark curtain over the sky.
I was just about to ask Hanai if I should build a fire when a wolf howled.
Hanai’s step faltered, as did mine. “Fire,” he whispered.
He didn’t need to tell me twice. Using my fist as a torch, we went on for a few steps to a grouping of low brush. I dripped flames onto the waiting limbs, and they caught the fire.
“Adam should be back soon,” Hanai said. “This will have to do until he can rescue us.”
“Adam—back—what will have to do?”
Another howl ripped through the night.
“Safety first,” Hanai said. “I’ll tell you everything, but not if I’m in bite-sized pieces.”
“Okay, fine.” As the brush cradled the flames, Hanai and I gathered rocks and built a circle about ten feet across. Any loose branches we could find went on top of those, where I then poured my fire, encouraging it to burn hot and long.
Just as I finished the ring, a pair of yellow eyes caught the glow. A hint of bared teeth followed.
“Aren’t we too far south for wolves?” I asked as I settled next to Hanai on the sooty ground. Every few years, a wolf would carry a child out of the communes in Crylon, but my old home lay much further north, right on the edge of the wild.
“No,” Hanai whispered. “The wilderness is full of wolves.”
We huddled together through the darkness, heat, and silence. The third time Hanai’s chin drooped to his chest, he didn’t snap it back up. I carefully laid him on the ground before patrolling the circle, re-banking the weak spots in the fiery fence that kept the animals out. Several pairs of shining eyes mirrored my movement beyond the flames. Then I settled next to Hanai, keeping one hand on his shoulder just to assure myself that he was there, and alive.
I awoke to a morning sky full of golden rays of light. I rolled over to find Hanai crouching near the edge of the ring, unmoving. Unblinking. His chest didn’t rise and fall. One hand stretched toward the fire, which had burned down to only a few inches of flame.
A wolf—a very large, very furry, very black wolf—was poised on the opposite side of the barrier. It didn’t blink either. Dragging its belly along the steaming ground, it shuffled forward an inch or two. A whine came from its closed jowls.
Fear rose through me; I wanted to leap up and torch the animal before it could clamp its jaws around Hanai’s skinny neck. He raised his free hand to me, palm out. Don’t, he was saying.
The wolf inched forward again. Still Hanai didn’t move. My heart hammered in the back of my throat. Seconds became minutes.
Then,
with a lurch, the wolf leaped, its mouth rearing open. A deep growl washed over me, followed by a sharp bark.
In a fluid motion, Hanai stood, gripped the flying wolf around the neck and twisted. A yelp issued from it, immediately before my own strangled cry.
Hanai knelt again, holding one hand over the wolf’s body, chanting. A tear ran over his nose and dripped onto the matted fur. His lips moved in a silent ceremony before Hanai stood and dragged the wolf to the center of the circle.
“Bank up the fires, please. I’ll make breakfast.” He said it so calmly, but the tension in his shoulders and the tightness around his mouth broadcast his worry, his hunger, his pain at killing the wolf.
I moved around the ring, pouring flames to ensure our safety. The fire didn’t look so merry, so comforting, in the daylight. Now it represented a blazing barrier I couldn’t cross.
“Your knife?” Hanai asked. I handed it to him and quickly scurried away from the dead animal, trying to find comfort in the smoke. At least six wolves paced a few yards beyond the fire line. One howled. Then another. They trotted closer, their beady eyes trained on their fallen companion.
Hanai built a small platform of rocks and asked me to heat them before placing the wolf on top.
I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes when he asked me to use my Element. I let him direct my hands as the fire poured out. We waited. Only the crackling flames broke the silence. Eventually, the smell of roasted meat filled the air, making my mouth water and my head light with hunger. Sweat ran down Hanai’s face, but he didn’t complain.
When the sun hung directly overhead in the crystal blue sky, Hanai asked me to tame the flames under the rocks. He chanted again, his words rumbling together in his native tongue. They warmed me, comforted my aching heart.
Then we ate.
I licked my fingers, thinking wolf didn’t taste nearly as gamey as I was expecting. “About Adam….”