Page 68 of A Frozen Pyre
She blinked as if he’d sprayed water in her face. She hearda small noise from Dwyn on the other side of the room.
“Then it’s true,” Ophir said. “We died, and this is hell.”
His nostrils flared slightly as he pushed out an irritated breath. “I don’t have to like her to know she’s right, Princess.”
“She’s not right!”
Tyr remained firm. “She is.”
Ophir called out for her hound, searching for the only thing in this world who would take her side.
Sedit leaped onto the settee from the cottage floor and nuzzled into her. She stroked her fingers lightly along his scalp and ran them down the protruding knobs of his spine as she would with any dog. He relaxed, his many eyes growing heavy as his breathing slowed. She smiled sadly at her beast. He was the best thing she’d ever made.
He’d been waiting on the edge of the forest, sitting still as a cloaked sentinel in the pine shadows just beyond Gwydir. They were nearly on top of him before he’d stepped tentatively into their path. Dwyn had gasped as the gloom came to life in the shape of one of Ophir’s first intentional acts of manifestation, but Ophir had melted into a puddle of relief and joy. Her stony façade had fallen away in that moment as tears broke through. Sedit had crashed into her with the exuberance of a child, and as she’d thrown her arms around him, she had wept. The tension, the remorse, the panic, the uncertainty had drained from her as the dam had broken over the hellhound.
“We need to get Sedit someplace comfortable to sleep tonight,” Ophir had said.
Tyr had attempted reasoning with her. “He’s been alone in the woods—”
“Don’t remind me what a terrible mother I’ve been.”
Tyr had dropped the issue. He’d made no secret as to his disdain for her abominations, animal lover though he was.
“You can make something, Firi,” Dwyn had said quietly.
Dwyn’s energy had hung over them like an impending storm. Her spirits had reflected the thick gray clouds thatclotted the sky as they rumbled in with their threats of ice and water. The fiery, irreverent, beautiful siren was never subdued. In their time together, she’d never known Dwyn’s shoulders to slump, her words to falter, or her eyes to look at the ground before her. Dwyn’s transformation into a damp, near-silent traveling companion was every bit as terrifying as the ag’drurath Ophir had unleashed on the castle. Ophir had nurtured her feelings of suspicion and rejection toward Dwyn until a small, spiteful fire burned steadily within her.
She may have resented the fact that it had been Dwyn’s suggestion, but she’d agreed. She had the ability to make them some place to stay. Ophir had focused her resolve and tried to picture a home. She’d attempted to see wood and windows and cornerstones, but her mind had flashed to tombs and blood and anguish. She was a monarch. Between her life in Castle Aubade, her time in the Tarkhany Palace, and her new residency in Gwydir, nearly every moment had been spent in luxury. She’d realized the only true homes she’d entered had been with the intention to kill or be killed. From the tragedy in Lord Berinth’s manor and the farmer slaughtered in the woods to the merchant she’d killed outside of Henares, she’d never walked in or out of a house without the loss of life.
The house that had burst forth was built on a foundation of cracks. Death had rippled through the soil before the logs piled one on top of the other. Windows had tilted, the door had darkened, and the roof had slumped as if carrying the weight of terrible secrets. The three had quietly frowned, but now, as the weather of the Raasay Forest soured and the evening grew cold, they didn’t have much room to argue.
Dwyn and Tyr exchanged looks. Their attempts to keep their disappointment discreet did not evade Ophir.
“You want something better? Make it yourself.”
“It’s not that, Firi,” Dwyn said, speaking for them both. Still, her soul hung heavy, as if someone had snatched her spirit and left only her body behind. “The settee is nice, butmaybe we could try beds? Blankets?”
Ophir grumbled like a scolded child. She knew they were not at fault for her unresolved issues of inadequacy. They’d been more or less supportive throughout her journey, from her royal life in Aubade, to her first taste of blood in Henares, to the baking sands of Tarkhany, to the cold, dense forests beyond the royal city of Gwydir as she’d fled. The more she put them through, the more she resented herself.
She thought of soft, rabbit-fur blankets, of cashmere scarves, of goose-down pillows as she closed her eyes. She opened them to a mysterious pile of sooty cloth that seemed to be part gauze, part cobweb. She winced in frustration as she turned away from the evidence of her failure. She felt the sting of silence when Dwyn said nothing. Ophir hadn’t realized how heavily she’d relied on Dwyn’s external affirmation until the moment it no longer came.
They were a party of secrets and silence, no one speaking as they fetched what they could from the fabric on the floor and took to their corners of the structure.
Rain froze into icy pellets before it pummeled into the ramshackle cabin. She could see her breath crystallize in the fading light but was too hurt to attempt a fireplace or hearth, certain it would result in her shelter going up in the smoke and flames of her failure. Ophir closed her eyes in the cold, dark room and hugged her knees to her chest. She leaned her head against the wall as the sound of gravel over tin filled the space until there was no room left for her thoughts. She didn’t fight Tyr as his arm settled around her, scooping her to him. She didn’t fight as he brushed the hair away from her face, looking at her with sad, kind patience, and planted a soft kiss on the crown of her head. She didn’t fight Dwyn as the siren perched silently in a corner. She could no more change their emotions than end the sleet that coated their shack.
Somewhere between the steady pounding of the late-season storm and the rise and fall of Tyr’s warm chest, she fell asleep. When the storm ceased, the absence of noise stirred herfrom a tumultuous dream of wings and fangs and pretty sisters who deserved so much better than they got. She peered into the scarcely discernible shades of black and gray for evidence of the moon, or dawn, or stars, but found nothing. The only break in the sooty darkness belonged to the pale slivers of flesh that Dwyn had left exposed to the air.
Maybe it was her newly awakened state that kept her from feeling the heaviness and pain of the day, but concern seeped into her as she blinked at Dwyn’s limp form.
Ophir slipped away from Tyr’s arm. He remained sound asleep as she shifted to her knees and crept to Dwyn. Worry ticked up within her as she closed the small, blackened space. She gasped when her fingers brushed skin so cold it might have belonged to a corpse. Dwyn jolted beneath the touch, teeth chattering as she looked up. Dwyn’s face was moon pale against the night.
“Have you slept?” Ophir whispered.
Dwyn tucked herself in tighter as she shuddered.
Ophir clicked her tongue for Sedit, sandwiching Dwyn between herself and her hound as she conjured a ball of flame. Ophir’s mouth parted in surprise as the fire illuminated blue lips and chalky cheeks. Sedit relaxed happily into Dwyn, and she accepted the blood, skin, and pressure of the beating heart beside her as she cuddled into the vageth.
“Dwyn,” Ophir breathed. She shook her head in disbelief until she felt her loose hair tickle her neck and shoulders. The light sensation stirred her to her question. “Why would you stay over here alone? Are you that mad at me about the ag’drurath that you’d let yourself freeze to death rather than sit beside me?”
