By the time the last glint of daylight faded, the storm had found them in earnest. Wind screamed down from the high ridges, carrying shards of snow that stung Lain’s eyes and scoured her cheeks raw. She could barely see Mallow ten paces ahead – only the dark of his coat, the flash of his hand when he motioned for her to follow.
They’d spoken little since the river. The silence of what she’d done filled the space between them.
All the while she thought of how she could clear this storm, reach out to other wyrms – that was what they were, she knew that now – and call them to her aide. But she’d seen the cost twice with her own eyes, and would not pay it again.
“Up here,” Mallow called, barely audible over the gale. He pointed toward a ledge where a line of boulders broke the worst of the wind. “We can rest –”
The rest of the words were devoured by the sudden crack of hooves on ice, the metal hiss of a drawn blade.
Lain spun. Shapes emerged from the storm: three riders forcing their mounts through the drifts, cloaks snapping behind them. At their head rode the Tracker, his pale eyes catching what little light remained.
Mallow swore under his breath. “Keep climbing!”
She ran, snow dragging at her legs, ice clumping in her wool as the snow gathered up her slacks. A shout tour through the storm. The guards dismounted to race after them.
Mallow unbound his sword from its cloth. “Go!”
“No!”
He turned on her sharply. “Lain, move!”
She obeyed, though every instinct screamed to stay. He’d taken down two Brighthand already. He knew what he was doing.
She scrambled up the incline, hooves slipping, hands raw from the cold. Behind her came the clash of metal, the thud of boots, a strangled cry.
The storm came thick as wool, and swallowed everything in suffocating white.
She called Mallow’s name once, twice. No answer. Her own voice sounded small and wrong in the blizzard’s throat.
She stumbled forward, half-blind, half-panicked. The snow blurred the horizon and the earth until there was no up or down, no path, only the pulse of her body urging her to move.
She spotted movement. A shadow in the white, wrong-shaped.
The Tracker stepped from the storm as if born of it. His hair was wet and strung with ice, his leather darkened by melt. His clouded, sightless eyes locked on her with terrible certainty.
Lain stumbled back, but the snow was deep and soft beneath her, stealing her balance. The man moved with inhuman surety, each step precise, his blade drawn but low.
“Kelthi,” he said. His voice was almost tender.
She ran.
In the storm emerged still shapes – trees, pillars that formed a building of some kind, something made of stone, something very old. She dove toward it, found a doorway half-buried in snow, and clambered inside.
The darkness was blinding until her night vision took hold, pupils widening. She had stumbled into an ancient shrine, frost webbing over the carved figures that lined the walls. Stone serpents coiled in relief along the altar, their eyes filled with ice.
She glanced around for a place to hide. There was nothing –
But looking up, she saw rafters. She got close to the wall and jumped, snagged a beam, and pulled herself up, her hooves pressed against the stone for leverage. She scrabbled further up the beam and held on for dear life, the roar of her heart so loud in her ears she thought it must be echoing off the walls of the room.
She waited for a long while, breathing deeply, trying to get control of the fear that raced through her like a frightened rabbit.
The silence stretched on, the only sound the storm outside.
She was considering climbing down, leaving to find Mallow when a shadow filled the doorway.
Her ears strained for the familiar sounds of Mallow, her nose twitching for the scent of sword oil and the salt of his body.
But the thing below smelled wrong. It smelled like iron, and something old and sour, like a lemon gone soft.
It stepped into the room.
It was the Tracker.
Snow gusted in with him, whirling in the dark like ash. He filled the doorway, shoulders broad, blade low at his side. His breath came white and easy.
“Kelthi girl,” he said, his voice sickly sweet. “Kelthi girl.” he stretched out the words, humming in a near sing-song. “I know you’re in here.”
She clung to the rafter, trying to control her breathing so he wouldn’t hear her.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You think the storm hides you?” His voice came quiet, almost pitying. “I can feel you burning from across the valley.”
He walked further into the room, swinging his sword about almost playfully. He turned in a slow circle. “I can smell you.”
He paused, only a few feet from her rafter, and sheathed his sword. He put up his hands in mock surrender. “Come, Bellborn. I won’t harm you. Let us speak.”
Lain’s palms were so damp with sweat despite the cold that she thought she might slide from the rafter. He moved again, passing just beneath her.
He froze.
She clenched her eyes shut. Go. Just go.
He looked up with his white eyes, and grinned.
“Ah. There you are.”
Before she could move he jumped, grabbed her by the leg, and pulled her down. She yelped in dismay and he let her tumble to the floor, her shoulder and hip knocking hard into the stone.
She leapt up, her heart racing so fast she thought it might kill her. Lain took several steps away. “Stay back.”
He eased closer. “Your kind were made to sing for the gods, weren’t you? To warm them when they slept?” His tone softened, almost reverent. “I can feel that warmth on you even now.”
The Heat surged at his words, cruelly timed. Her skin prickled; her knees went weak. She could smell him – leather, iron, the musk of sweat – and her body betrayed her, trembling, breath caught between terror and something worse.
“Don’t,” she said, voice breaking. “You don’t understand what I am.”
“Oh, I do.” He took another step forward. “You’re a goat, walking on hind legs.”
He lunged.
She threw herself sideways, snow exploding under her weight as she landed in a drift beneath a section of broken roof. The blade missed her ribs by a breath. She rose, gasping.
The Tracker turned, moving with eerie calm, his head cocked as if following sound rather than sight. “You can’t hide your scent from me,” he murmured.
She backed away, her spine striking the altar.
He reached out, fingers brushing the edge of her hood. “You burn like a hearth fire. Show me how.”
She flinched away, but the movement only pressed her further against the wall. The air closed in. The Heat pulsed, confusing every signal of fear and revulsion until she couldn’t tell which was which.
“Please,” she whispered.
He caught her wrists, the contact searing. He groaned with the transmission of her Tuning, her fear and Heat reverberating through him, his excitement and pleasure circling back to her. The Heat betrayed her nerves, confusing terror for want. She hated the sound that escaped her throat, an unwilling moan, a sound that belonged more to him than her.
“See?” he whispered, pressing closer. “You can’t help it. You were born to sing, to answer when you’re called.”
“No,” she gasped. “That’s not –”
He leaned in, breath hot in her ear. With one foot he edged her legs apart, then brought her hands over her head. “Lie if you like. I can feel the truth in you, Kelthi.” He grabbed at her hood, tearing it back to reveal her antlers. “Oh look, how timid and small. You have been resisting, haven’t you?”
He grabbed her by the antler and she yelped with the shocking pleasure of it, imagining him taking her, hating herself for it, in turns shifting between the Heat’s want and her revulsion.
“You resisted, even with that sellsword traveling by your side? What a sweet Kelthi you are, play-acting as human. But we both know the truth. You’re only a slewfoot.”
She slammed her antlers into his face.
Through the Tuning his pain roared, then his shock. Next came a sadistic sort of joy at her resistance, her willingness to be violent. In a strange cold detachment he palmed her shoulder, driving her down. The world tilted; her back hit the frozen floor. She tried to push him off, but her arms wouldn’t obey, every muscle gone to ice beneath the rush of Heat, Heat like terror, Heat like a flood. All at once she knew that by some ill logic her fight had given him a reason. He grabbed her antler again and yanked her head aside.
“Let me hear it,” he hissed. “The song that killed my brothers.”
She twisted her head, breath ragged, staring at the carved serpent above the altar. She could feel the Tracker growing hot on top of her, the press of his belt, the stiff leathers against her chest. “Mallow!” she cried. “Mal –”
He threw a hand over her mouth. Her Heat clawed for it, desperate for more of his control, her Tuning absorbing his rising desire and need to dominate. Lain hated how much she liked it, her eyes brimming with tears that were a roil of conflicted wanting not wanting. As she panted through her nose and the hot air rushed over his hand, she felt it as if their positions were reversed, so sharp and clear was her Tuning.
His other hand dipped under her shirt.
Lain kicked in resistance. Her tail lashed against her leg.
The Heat arched toward him.
He clawed the scales at her side.
Lain closed her eyes, shook her head.
The Heat mewled in pleasure.
He fumbled at his belt and muttered cruelties against her face.
Lain left her body. Freeze, came that command from the fawn inside her.
The Heat stayed.
He parted her legs.
A crash split the dark.
The Tracker jerked, shifting his weight. He reached for his sword. Mallow burst through the doorway like the storm itself, blade already swinging. The first blow struck the Tracker across the shoulder, sending him sprawling sideways, his arm blooming red. The second caught the bracer at his wrist before he could unsheath his sword.
“Get away from her!” Mallow cried.
The Tracker lurched, bleeding and furious, but Mallow drove him back with a third strike, gouging into his collarbone, his neck, separating flesh in a wild flare of red.
The Tracker hit the wall. The frosted eyes of the carved wyrm fixed on him as he slid down, blood darkening his white skin and gray armor and pooling in his lap. His colorless eyes fluttered twice, more in confusion than pain, before all his features relaxed in surrender.
For a long moment, only the wind moved.
Lain stared at the shine of his blood, glittering in what little light her eyes stole from the room.
Then Mallow was there, crouching between her and the Tracker, harried and furious and panting with concern and the hard labor of slaughter. A smear of blood – someone else’s – speckled across his jacket.
“Are you hurt?”
She stared at him, considering. “No. I.” She turned her head. “I.”
Her eyes glassed over. Nothing made sense.
He made an inexplicable sound before gently tugging her clothing back into place. He brought her hood over her head.
“Okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He lifted her the way he had when he’d saved her the first time, when the fawn in her had taken over, the first time her body had ever forced her to freeze. She was surprised that after all these days so little had changed.
He carried her out into the storm. The snow swallowed the shrine behind them until it was only another shape among the white.