Page 85 of A Frozen Pyre
Dwyn took another step and slipped on algae-slick stone. She tumbled into the river, sister in her arms, and as she fell, a scream tore from her belly. The cry broke something primal within her, and the river responded. The water flew up on all sides, solid walls of liquid blowing upward and drying the riverbed as she howled. She and her sister dropped to the slick stones as she continued to wail. She didn’t bother to look at the way the water bent to her will, answering her in her time of need. She saw only the chalky pallor of her only friend in the world.
She had been too little to understand how to pound on someone’s chest if water was in their lungs. She’d never been taught that she could offer her breath, should theirs falter. She knew only that her sister should be breathing, but she wasn’t.There was no flutter to her lashes, no blush to her cheeks, no pulse in her neck. Dwyn grunted against their waterlogged weight as she hauled her sister out of the empty pit of the river and rolled her body onto the riverbank. The water collapsed around them and resumed its white-capped journey south while Dwyn wailed on the shore. She’d screamed and shrieked and begged and pleaded until her father had appeared in the distance.
He’d yanked Dwyn off and tossed her to the side as if she were a bloodthirsty tick flicked onto the earth as he breathed and pumped and prayed. Dwyn had screamed that he was hurting her, begged him to stop as the loud pops of ribs breaking joined the splashing and tumbling of the river. When she cried out for him to leave, the river made it so. It flung out a mighty arm to knock the man from her little sister’s side as she threw herself over the body once more. She protected it like a rabid animal as her father blinked up in pain, horror, and disgust.
While the magic that protected Sulgrave kept it from being subjected to the backwater norms of winter, summer, spring, and autumn, time passed with snowmelt from the peaks, with age, with the development of a woman’s body, with classmates, with afternoons that stretched into the long shadows of evening by her sister’s grave, with cruel lessons, with church, and with the unforgettable distrust in her father’s eyes.
They’d remained in their house by the river, but it was never again a home.
Her mother carried on dressing her, making dinner, and ensuring that she was in her bed each night, but she never again looked at Dwyn with gentleness or love. Her father avoided her at all costs, as if their youngest child had been stolen from them by Dwyn, rather than the river. The time to explain her role in the events came and went while shock still rested heavily on her heart. She hadn’t been able to speak the awful truths into existence. She hadn’t defended herself asthey’d yelled or talked back as they’d begged. Her silence had bled into the passing years until the time came for Dwyn to see her second dead body.
“Pretty horses,” came a voice from over her shoulder.
Dwyn dropped her hands, and her crystalline herd fell from the air, splashing back into the swirling rapids as if it had never existed at all. She whipped around to see Rekyr step from the tree line. She knew the others found him handsome. He was tall for their age, already possessing the chest and shoulders of a man. Though only sixteen, he’d already cultivated a reputation for unattainable desirability. The more the others wanted him, the harder he set his sights on the only person who didn’t.
She had no interest in playing this game.
“I’m not looking for company, Rekyr,” she said. She turned her back on him as she looked at the waves, hoping he’d leave. It wasn’t the first time she’d spied him prowling the riverbank on the off chance that he’d catch her alone, but it was one of the only times he’d succeeded.
“You’re never looking for company, Dwynie,” he said, plopping down beside her on the bank. She recoiled at the familiarity with which he bastardized her name.
“I mean it,” she said quietly, angling her body so her back remained to him. She cast her gaze upstream to where the river bent around the base of the mountain. Fifteen minutes away, she’d find her home. Thirty minutes from there, she’d reach the territory’s edge. She was told that if she continued to follow the river, she’d find a winding, bending path where the devout went to meet the All Mother. She’d never been devout.
“You don’t have to keep your hackles up,” Rekyr said. “No one’s around to see the show you put on. The cold, impenetrable Dwyn. Friend to no one, foe to all.”
She bristled with every passing word, hating the truth in them.
She’d returned to school in the weeks following her sister’s death to whispers. The rumors of her role in the drowninghad ebbed and flowed, but she’d heard them like the ocean lapping at the beach. They’d seeped into her as she saw the same blame in their eyes she recognized in the dark, hardened gaze of her father. If they wanted her to be a foe, then a foe she’d become.
Instructors had no patience for her smart mouth. Bishops had tried to beat the obstinance from her, though her family had never been particularly religious. Her father had suggested they continue attending the lessons in godliness, but her mother had decided she couldn’t have the blood of two daughters on her hands, even if the eldest was a monster. She was a feral animal in a world of stupid, docile creatures plumped for slaughter, and all she wanted was to escape her pen.
The boy made a wet, smacking sound with his lips as he lifted his fingers, brushing the hair from her shoulder. She reacted with speed and intensity in equal proportions, slapping him away. Her eyes widened as she bared her teeth at him. Glad to have her facing him, he took their nearness as a challenge.
Rekyr’s hand was on the back of her head in an instant, forcing the space between them to close. The boy was quick, but she was faster. The moment he lifted his palm, she responded with her own. Her hand arced not for him, but for the river. She called to the waters, and they answered with arctic, soaking force as a column of cold, powerful water shoved him to the side. He was sent sprawling toward the trees as Dwyn scrambled away, but with her defiance, she’d changed the stakes.
He was no longer attempting to taste forbidden fruit. Now, he had a wounded ego and something to prove.
Rekyr lunged for her and succeeded in wrapping one large, callused hand around her ankle. She yelped in rage and surprise as he yanked her toward him. This time when she called to the river, her eyes widened in horror as she watched the water arc in a protective dome around him. His freehand flexed, and she understood that she had not been the only one to unlock her abilities. His jaw flexed as his shield pulsed, rebuking her water as if it were little more than rain over a tin roof. He jerked her closer, and she kicked like a foal with a rope around its neck. Her thrashing seemed to only amuse him.
The river came to her each time she called, as if the water itself felt every bit of panic that coursed through her. It had helped her when she’d lost her sister, and it was desperate to aid her now. It continued to beat uselessly against Rekyr’s shield as she cried out, kicking and scratching, but he had excellent control over his ability. His free hand dropped until both hands were on her, their powers remained locked in a silent war, the assault within the shrouded veil raging with more anger, ferocity, and hostility than any of the magic beyond.
He leaned his weight into her as he pinned her down by the throat with one arm, using his free hand to yank her dress over her knees, past her hips, higher and higher. She clawed into him, leaving long, bloodied streaks across his face. Her gasps, her gnashing teeth, her disgust and anger and fury only emboldened him as he looked at her.
With a sickeningly evil growl, he said, “Your water can’t save you now.”
“No,” she choked, “but yours can.”
Before she understood how, or what, or why, she called to the water within him. She screamed for his blood to rise, and it obeyed. Her fist yanked away from him as a thick red mist escaped his mouth. His eyes widened in panic as his shield dropped. With it came the rush of river water and the abrasive, soaking cold of snowmelt as it washed her free of his touch and his violence. She sputtered away from the wave as it soaked the grass, dripping down the bank and returning on its lazy stroll to the Straits as she rolled as far from Rekyr as she could. She was prepared to run when she realized she wasn’t being chased.
Dwyn coughed, hand flying to the searing pain on her larynx, to what she knew would be purple and red handprints on her throat. Her coughing continued. Each abrasive push of air felt like flesh dragged over hot, broken glass. She tried to swallow again and again as she struggled to understand what she was seeing. It wasn’t the muscles of a sixteen-year-old boy or the healthy body of a fae. She took a step closer, then another as she examined the strange, shrunken form of skin stretched over bone, trapped forever in a silent scream. She straightened her skirt as she took another step closer and kicked him with her shoe. The skeleton rolled like a dehydrated trunk rather than a man.
She saw her father’s face. The faces of the bishop, of her peers, of the teachers. She didn’t even realize what she was doing before she summoned the water to wash Rekyr away. It pulled him into its clutches, sweeping him from the grass and carrying him on the rapids.
Dwyn didn’t go upstream to the mountains. She would never return to her cabin home again. Instead, she walked into the city. She walked for three hours until she understood where her feet carried her. She was well into Territory One before she saw the tall arches of the cathedral and knew exactly why she’d come to see the house of a goddess she didn’t worship. She hated the church and everyone within it. They did, however, have something she didn’t.
Dwyn settled into an alley and stared at the windowpanes of an upstairs loft that rested above the sanctuary’s atrium. She caught a flash of silhouettes followed by a subdued blast of color. She tucked herself against a wall and watched the shapes move as day turned to night. She fell asleep with her back upright and head against the wall that first night, hidden behind a cylindrical wooden barrel and a dusty rainspout. Rain blew in on the second day, but she asked the water to fall around her, and it complied. Her dress and hair remained dry as she watched the shadows move, knowing it was the Reds who trained in secrecy.
Whispers of the Reds had been one of the only reasons Dwyn had willingly accompanied her parents to church week after week. Her mother had perhaps hoped that her soul would be converted, and she’d have one daughter who might yet be saved. Her father had doubtlessly counted on the bishop to beat sense into her. But it was the glimpse of crimson fabric and the hushed secrets of an elite force the All Mother had gifted with incredible gifts that truly captured her attention, knowing it was within anyone’s grasp, should they dedicate themselves to the goddess. It was said that in exchange for their devotion, she allowed them access to the magic that flowed through the universe.
