Page 96 of Shadows of Winter

He did. A few seconds later, they reached the back of the castle, and Crenoch surged through the open gate into the courtyard.

Black smoke billowed out the kitchen windows and choked the air, stinging Kaylina’s eyes. She could feel the heat too, a sharp contrast to the cool air.

Flames licked at the edge of the high pantry window, and Kaylina wondered if someone had come up from the catacombs to start the fire. But why? The Virts couldn’t blame her or Frayvar for the men and munitions they’d lost down there, could they? As far as she knew, none of the men she’d seen—and who’d seen her—had survived to talk about it.

Vlerion sprang off before Kaylina could dismount and landed with his sword in his hand. Maybe he also believed someone other than the curse had been responsible for the fire.

He reached the doorway before her, calling, “I’ll look for your brother,” over his shoulder. “Stay outside.”

She ran to the well house and drew up a bucket of water but feared it would do little against a fire that had already grown large.

“Help!” came a pained cry from inside. Frayvar.

Kaylina almost dropped the bucket but kept it as she charged through the kitchen doorway, water sloshing over the edges. The smoke made it hard to see inside, and she almost tripped over pots and pans on the floor.

Heat roiled off flames burning tapestries, curtains, and the wooden cabinets. They also licked at the ceiling boards. She hadn’t realized there was so much flammable material in the stone castle.

A cry of pain came from the floor between the island and the pantry. That was why pans littered the floor. The huge wrought-iron pot rack had fallen, and Frayvar was pinned under it, a broken piece of the travertine countertop on top of it, adding to its weight. The rack was too heavy for him to move. It would be too heavy for Kaylina to move, too.

Vlerion shoved aside a cast-iron pot to crouch beside the rack. He touched the metal, jerked his hand back at the heat, then removed his shirt. He wrapped the material around the edge of the rack and, with a great flexing of his shoulders, heaved it upward.

Kaylina rushed forward, afraid Frayvar had broken bones and wouldn’t be able to move.

“I told you to stay outside,” Vlerion said, his voice raspy from the smoke, his back and arm muscles bulging as he held up the heavy rack with both hands.

“I told you I wouldn’t obey you.” Barely glancing at him, Kaylina grabbed her brother and pulled him out from under the rack.

“Exasperating.”

“As we’ve established!”

Frayvar groaned in pain, and Kaylina worried she was hurting him further, but she had to get him out of there and kept pulling. As gangly as he was, he was still tall and weighed a lot to her. Coughing from the smoke invading her throat, she struggled to drag him toward the door.

As soon as her brother had cleared the rack, Vlerion let it fall. He leaped toward them and lifted Frayvar in his arms.

“Out,” he ordered Kaylina.

With tears streaking down her eyes, and smoke curling up her nostrils, she had no reason to disobey this time. As she ran out after Vlerion and Frayvar, she glanced at the pantry, lamenting that her mead might be destroyed. The charred door stood open, several shelves burning. The mead was down in the root cellar, but the heat might ruin it. The fire might even have started down there.

She shook her head, gasping in fresh air as she ran into the courtyard. Frayvar was alive. That was all that mattered for now.

The fire wagon had arrived—sort of. The horses pulling it had stopped forty yards up the trail along the river. They and the men looked at the castle with concerned eyes, the horses because of the fire, the men because of the curse.

“Come closer,” Vlerion ordered as he lay Frayvar on the ground outside the stone wall of the courtyard. It provided protection from the fire and heat. “Get the hose out.”

“Let the cursed castle burn!” someone watching from across the river called.

But the firefighters either recognized Vlerion or were trained to obey orders, because they brought the wagon closer, then leaped down. Two men pulled the hose toward the courtyard, and another set up a pump to draw water from the river. Vlerion joined them, pointing out the well as another water source.

Kaylina wanted to help, but she had to make sure Frayvar was all right. His skin was red and warm, his eyes glazed, and soot darkened his sweaty hair.

“Are you okay?” She knelt beside him and pushed his shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “I’m so sorry things keep happening to you every time I leave. I’m going to kill that plant.”

Frayvar dragged a sooty sleeve across his watering eyes. “I don’t think it was the curse.” His voice was even raspier than Vlerion’s had been. “I heard something below. Not way below, like the clinks from the catacombs, but it came from the root cellar.” He coughed several times and wiped his eyes again before he could continue. “I grabbed the fireplace poker, opened the trapdoor, and went down. There wasn’t anyone there, but some of your mead was missing, and someone had left a lantern. The arsonists had to have come in from below.”

“Why would the Virts burn the castle? And steal my mead?”

Maybe they’d wanted their staging area back. And to drive out the pesky witnesses working in the castle.

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