Page 33 of A Chill in the Flame
The woman was close enough that he could see the shape of her eyes, the rouge of her cheeks, the cloud of her hair, and count the fingers that gripped the villager.
She’d been holding the man in an embrace until he fell limply before her. The man who’d come for her had withered, now mummified against the shards of ice and chilled seawater that lapped against her bare feet.
She looked up over the villager’s body as it floated weightlessly against the lapping waves. Her gaze touched Tyr’s.
By the time his wide eyes had absorbed the vision before him, her black hair had whipped around her in a cloud so beautiful and horrific that she may have been one of the terrible old gods made flesh.
He hadn’t advanced. He hadn’t raised his sword.
They did not look away from one another. His lips were still parted in a gasp. Her dark, glossy dress whipped around her in the winds, though her skin seemed unaffected by the sub-zero temperatures. She moved her head curiously. She wasn’t looking at him with predatory hunger, nor with fear. She was merely interested in the man who’d sprinted for the black sand beaches only to skid to a halt so far from where she stood. The woman held such a casual interest, he could see the glimmer from where he stood.
It was the sort of moment that one might excuse as a dream.
With an uncaring coolness, the young woman turned and walked into the frigid sea waters. Her head disappeared beneath the waves as if she’d never existed. If it weren’t for the floating body of the hollow man who bobbed and lapped against each cresting wave, he could have convinced himself that it had been a hallucination. Instead, Tyr knelt next to the wilted man and knew he’d come across a truly dark terror. This was the day Tyr became singularly possessed with the sort of dark magic that would scream for a man’s help only to suck her rescuer of its life force.
He’d heard of the succubae who could kill men, though even women cursed with such a power couldn’t do so with simply a kiss or touch as the witch on the shores had done. He knew of fae who could call to water. A common, helpful gift was the ability to warm oneself. He hadn’t actually met anyone who could breathe water, though the stories of merfolk had filtered through the centuries. What powers was this fae collecting that had allowed her to accumulate more than what came naturally?
He and his fellow Sulgrave fae had grown up around whispers of blood magic, though talk of such things had been forbidden. Access to unnatural powers was a mission in suicide, as it drew on one’s own life force to call to abilities that did not belong to you. The Reds who had served for decades were trained in the ability to access the groundwater of magic that flowed through life, but each time they did, their own blood cooled and struggled within them.
Many Reds died attempting to learn to call new powers.
But this… what if someone else could die in your stead? What if you could use the blood of another for your borrowed ability?
***
Finding her the first time had been an accident.
Locating her a second time would be an exercise in obsessive intention.
Tyr left the seaside Sulgrave outpost that day and had never returned. He would never again affiliate with the Reds or the missions of the All Mother, whether or not such a goddess existed. Abandonment wasn’t only immoral by religious standards and shameful within the community, it was illegal by the church and the laws of the Comtes alike. One did not simply abandon the Reds and live to tell the tale. If he was caught, he’d end up locked in an elaborately enchanted jail cell with no hope of redemption, if they chose to keep him alive at all.
Prayers had won him nothing.
Devotion was little more than a candle, and the All Mother would have needed the true power of a bonfire to convince him to stay.
Tyr was alone, but not without resources. He’d been trained as an assassin. He had been given the honor of serving as the All Mother’s sword and then taken his skills, knowledge, and power and spit in the face of their organization.
None of it mattered until they paid. None of it meantanything until he saw them burn with the cuts, the flame, the shadow, the torture that they’d shown Svea. If he couldn’t so much as conjure three moments of a secondary power without falling to his deathbed, what was the point? Why had he learned? Why had he joined? He’d find no justice with them, and he knew it.
The church and its frivolous dispatches. The laws and its meaningless words. The outposts, the structure, the blind devotion were all useless in a world where ruthless fae could grow their powers in the villainous shadows without the chains of supervision.
But where was one to start?
He used his gift to step into the space between things, disappearing in plain sight as he shifted into libraries, learned the lores of peasants, and studied the ancient tomes buried in pagan sites. Locating the beautiful, demonic creature a second time had been the result of years of skill, education, planning, entrapment, and cultivation. The stranger he’d seen on the waves was as slick as oil and as evasive as shadow, but he knew what he’d seen. He knew she’d taken more than what the goddess had given.
Knowledge was supposed to be a blessing.
The thirst for knowledge that didn’t belong to you was an all-consuming curse.
Seventeen
Tyr didn’t discover the Blood Pact. They had found him.
As it turned out, he was not the first outcast to abandon the church. Exiled from society, they were the men and women who lived in the shadows. They were the Reds, the assassins, the guards who’d deserted their posts and forsaken their titles, banded together with a new solemnity more serious than death.
Tyr had waited in the ruins of a temple to the old gods until after nightfall before he’d shifted into his resting state of visibility. He’d been squinting over the muddled words of an old text that had said the same three things he’d already come to learn in his research. What he knew was this: most powers had the ability to give. The world was given light, energy, water, air, wind, luck, love, joy, and all manner of skills through the lighted expressions of magic. Feared powers like consorting with the dead, speaking mind to mind, infiltrating one’s willpower threatened the world. Rarely, someone was born with an ability to take. Succubi, incubi, and any cursed with death’s touch had to be exceedingly careful in learning how to control their inherent skills.
Then there was the third kind of power.
