Page 107 of A Chill in the Flame
Ophir hadn’t realized a hand had unconsciously gone to her chest. She fought to reconcile the thorn protruding from her heart with the facts laid before her. She brushed at her sternum as if her fingers might snag against the thorn and pluck it free. She looked at Tyr, then quickly away. She shouldn’t be feeling this way, reacting this way, looking at him with this well of pain in her eyes. So what if he didn’t care about her? So what if he loved someone else?
“Ophir—” Tyr moved toward her, but Dwyn put herself in his path.
She stared him down, teeth bared like she was Ophir’s guard dog. “I’ve known for months that you came for someone else. You need three powers to avenge the woman you love. You’ve said so yourself. This entire fucking mission for you is for ice, fire, and shadow. Tell her! Tell the princess you’ve been toying with her, and stop playing games with her heart. Remain in Midnah, do what you have to do, learn what you have to learn, but cease your cruel charade.”
The underlying implication was clear to everyone in the room. Dwyn may as well have said it out loud. The words left unspoken were:She’s mine. Leave her to me.
If Ophir had looked up, she would have seen the rage that poured from Tyr with a thick, near-tangible stickiness. It was a fury as dark and horrid as the black, tar-like blood they’d witnessed from Ophir’s monsters. If Ophir had opened her eyes, maybe she would have seen how victoriously Dwyn crossed her arms, or how Tyr looked like he was ready to rip Dwyn’s head from her body.
Ophir felt the thorn in her heart grow as each new pulse forced it to bleed. The unmistakable wound throbbed with every breath. She’d been foolish. She’d been betrayed. She’d been so stupid.
Tyr wasn’t denying it. The man’s silence was as good as a confession. He remained seething from halfway across the chamber. If Dwyn was claiming possession, he was declaring to the room that it took everything within him not to murder the siren.
After an infinitely long pause, he spoke.
“She’s not a person.”
Ophir looked at him then, face scrunched. “What?”
“No! Not you, I mean…” He closed his eyes, pinching the place between his eyes. Hatred still radiated from him like a physical heat. “Dwyn, you’re an absolute cunt. Have I told you that lately?” Tyr sucked on his teeth as he tried totake several other calming breaths. She’d never seen him lose his temper. Even now he was angry, but he had a handle on it, even if it was clearly a struggle not to tear her tongue out from where it rested between her teeth. He opened his eyes and lowered his hands. “Dwyn is right about one thing. I’ve spent years looking for three powers. I need flame, ice, and shadow, that much is true. I need to kill three men using the same powers that they used against Svea.”
The thorn tore at her once more with another woman’s name on his lips. “They killed your partner?”
He rubbed at what might have been a budding headache, then looked at her with deadly seriousness. When he spoke, his voice was grave but was free from its hate. “No, Svea wasn’t my partner. She was my family, my best friend, my everything. I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re going to think. And honestly, I understand how it sounds. I’d had her for six years, and it was she and I against the world. And I had no skills, no powers when I needed to defend her. I was so weak. I was just a teenager, and they were so cruel. I…”
She scoured his face, seeing only his pain.
“Svea was my dog.”
Dwyn’s jaw dropped open.
Tyr looked at his feet. “She was not just a dog. She was all I had. She deserved the world. She was smart, perfect, and loyal, and innocent. And those bastards deserve so much more than what’s coming for them.”
Ophir’s eyebrows shot high, shoulders straightening.
Cord-taut silence strung between the three.
Dwyn’s eyes and lips mirrored one another in near-perfect circles of shock. “There’s no way…”
His lips pulled back in a sneer. He spun on her. “Shut your goddess-damned mouth, you absolute bitch. You want to play with fire? Try me.”
Ophir reeled. “You want the power because…”
He pressed his eyes together as he thought about the best way to respond. He looked at her finally, choosing honesty.“Vengeance fuels a lot of us, princess. Spite is as good a reason as any, don’t you think? Because I don’t think those men deserve to draw breath. The psychopaths who held me down and tortured and killed a dog for no reason other than fucked-up cruelty? They deserve to meet the fate they doled out. They’ve sealed their fate, and I’m on a mission to deliver it. Don’t you think the people responsible for Caris’s death deserve the same?”
“I do, but…”
“I don’t have a sister,” he said. “I don’t have parents or siblings or anyone I care about. I don’t have a community. I had a dog, and she was my goddess-damned world. Yes, that’s why I want to be able to do what your stupid witch does. And no, I don’t talk about it. I don’t think my vengeance is Dwyn’s, or Anwir’s, or anyone’s business. They shouldn’t get to determine whether the men deserve to die. I know they do. She’ll be avenged. I want to be the one to do it. I want to look in their eyes when they die the same way they killed her.”
“For your dog?”
His challenging glare remained. “For my dog.”
The silence that stretched was one of the single most uncomfortable pauses in the history of the written word. Ophir didn’t know how to categorize any of the information she’d been given. She knew why Dwyn had tried to alienate her affections for Tyr—the girl was openly possessive. That part didn’t shock her. What did surprise her was the way the thorn had dislodged, healing itself as if it had never been there in the first place. The idea that Tyr loved another woman had injured her more than she’d been able to absorb. The knowledge that his murderous rage was fueled by man’s best friend was…well, she knew neither what to think nor how to feel.
“Say you’re sorry,” Ophir said quietly, looking at Dwyn.
Dwyn swallowed, lips twisting off to the side as if fighting the urge to argue. She balled her fists at her side, visibly struggling against whatever it was she wanted to say.
