FrostFire (31 page)

“Ion Constantin.”
It was my lips that moved, but the words came out as a high-pitched, ululating wail, a mixture of human and beast.

I bent my knees and leaped. The earth cracked and dimpled as my feet left it. I caught hold of the top of the rampart with both hands and swung up effortlessly, patterns of ice swirling across the stone as I stood. The hill guards who had been holding Ion released him and stepped back, expressions awed.

“Ion Constantin,”
I repeated, my voice a wolf pack in full cry.
“This time, you will pay for what you have done.”

He didn’t cringe back. Stiffly, as if it cost him a great effort, he bent his head and spat at my feet.

The saliva froze instantly. My boot crushed it as I caught Ion around the neck. The shards of ice on my fingertips pierced him; blood spurted and then solidified like red flowers around the wounds. I lifted him up so his feet scrabbled uselessly.

“Go on, if you’ve the belly for it,” he said between gritted teeth. Ice blisters crawled across his skin where I held him, and he writhed with pain, but his taunting eyes never left mine. “Go … on!”

It would only take the tiniest squeeze, just a flex of my fingers, to crush his neck. To close that wicked mouth forever. My fingers began to tighten.

The door to the rampart slammed open behind me. I heard running footsteps.

“Wait!” It was Luca’s voice. “Don’t kill him! Not like this!”

“Pleading … for mercy … for your big brother? How … touching,” Ion rasped.

“Frost, Arian told me what happened to you in the fire,” Luca said. “He forced me to listen, even when I tried to ignore him. He was so proud of you. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Ion’s not worth it, not when you fought so hard to tame your wolf.”

Ion struggled weakly in my grip. The blisters covered more than half his face now, scalding the skin yellow and bright red, like a burn. “Great gods … you’re … spineless. No brother of … mine.”

“You don’t have to do this. Please, Frost,” Luca begged. “He just wants to hurt you more, damage you more. That’s all he’s ever wanted. To see people suffer. I realize that now.”

“Snivelling …
coward
.” Ion’s hands came up to claw at my fingers as if he couldn’t stand it any more. He screamed as his hands stuck to the ice coating my flesh. “You’re … nothing now … do you hear me, Luca?
Nothing!
”

My fingers opened. Ion dropped heavily to the rampart, blood oozing sluggishly from his neck and hands. He stared at me in disbelief.

“Luca is something you could never be.” My human voice emerged from the Wolf’s howl as I spoke. The ice on my skin cracked and drifted away like snow. Icicles fell from my hair, shattering on the stone with musical noises. “He is something you could never understand. Luca is loved.”

I turned away from him into Luca’s arms.

“Farewell, my love, our time has come,

Long though I might to stay;

Our time has come, my one true love,

The world calls me away…”

The candle, even protected by the bubble of glass in my cupped hands, flickered and danced. The wind rose and the trees that surrounded the cairn of white stones stirred.

“Goodbye, my love, remember well,

My shadow on your door;

I leave my heart, my love, farewell,

And pray you cry no more…”

The sound of the leaves nearly drowned out my voice as I finished the song. Carefully, I wedged the base of the candleholder between two large stones, watching as the flame stretched long and thin, and then went out. Above, the stars were slowly surfacing from the dark water of the sky.

After a while, my back and knees began to ache from kneeling for so long. But I didn’t move. I was waiting.

It had been nearly a month since the battle at the rebel fortress. I didn’t know much about what happened after I passed out on the rampart. The Wolf’s overwhelming display of power had drained me completely, and by the time I woke up again, I was on my way down the mountain, tucked into a hastily constructed litter, with Livia to look after me. Another group had followed behind, bearing the bodies of the dead hill guards.

We had come back to the old camp and buried the fallen. Arian’s body had been given the special honour of this cairn in the clearing on the edge of the site. In Uskaand, they burned the dead on wooden pyres, so that their ashes were carried away on the wind. Watching, dry-eyed, as they had covered the shrouded form of my friend with stones, blocking out warmth and light and air forever, I had wanted nothing more than Luca’s arms around me.

But he was not there.

“You don’t have to worry about him,” Livia had said. “He was tired and grieving and upset but – but he was himself. You brought him back. He wanted you away from that place so that you could recover.”

But he didn’t want me with him.

Messages came frequently to the camp from the absent hill guards, the ones who had stayed on to secure the House of God and the captured rebels. Livia read the letters to me. The prisoners – including Ion – had been escorted to Mesgao and handed over to the small army garrison there. They would be marched to Aroha to stand trial before the king and reia. The freed Rua were taken back to the villages and farms they had been stolen from.

There were no messages from Luca.

After a fortnight, more hill guards began to trickle back into camp, their tasks completed. Then Rani arrived, bringing all the surviving and wounded hill guards with her, including Hind, who had joked that she was half cat, and was sure she still had three lives left. Rani also brought the news of Luca’s imminent return.

“Arian,” I said to the stones. “Arian, I don’t know what to do.”

“He’s not here, you know,” a familiar voice said from the shadows.

I started to my feet and then faltered, a wave of dizziness sweeping over me. Strong arms caught me before I could fall. The scent of sunshine and honeysuckle teased my nose.

Luca’s hands were very warm against my back, making me aware of how chilled I had become. In the starlight, all I could make out of him was the gilt gleam of his shaggy hair and the bluish-gold of his eyes. There were no bandages on his face.

I made a restive movement, and immediately Luca’s arms dropped away. I could have cried out at the loss, but it was too late. He was already stepping back.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I shrugged, words clogging in my throat.

“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long,” Luca said tonelessly. “Would you sit down with me? For a little while?”

I knelt again. Luca followed suit. We both stared at the cairn. I waited for him to speak, but the only sound was the rustling of the leaves in the rising wind.

“What did you mean?” I asked, after a moment, unable to stand the awkward silence any longer. “By saying that he’s not here?”

“I meant … that this place is for us, not him. Warriors, great-hearted men and woman, are embraced in the Holy Mother’s mantle of flame. He’s with Her now.”

“He’ll like that.” I stared down at my hands.

There was another uncomfortable silence. It felt unreal. We had never been like this with each other. It was as if we were more strangers now than we had been when we had first met. There was so much pain, so many bad memories between us; I had no idea how to fix it.

“You miss him a great deal, don’t you?” Luca asked softly.

I turned my head to look at the pale blur of his face in the darkness. “Don’t you? He was your brother.”

“He was more than that to you. He was my friend and my brother but he was your … your…”

I sighed. “Luca, it wasn’t like that.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations,” he said, voice strained. “I’m so sorry for the way I reacted before. It was unforgiveable. You never made any promises to me, and—”

“Will you
shut up
?” I demanded, my voice coming out so like Arian’s that it brought a lump to my throat. “Arian kissed me twice. I let him twice. That was all. Put whatever else you imagined out of your mind. It’s unfair – not just to me – but to him. He knew that I loved you, and he accepted it.”

Luca hesitated. When he spoke again his words were so unexpected that it took me a moment to understand. “Do you … still? Can you feel anything for me after what I’ve done? I tried to kill you…” His voice cracked. “I broke every promise I ever made to you. Even if you could put up with this face, I’m not exactly a good bargain any more.”

I took a deep, slow breath. I had thought we’d put this behind us in the courtyard at the House of God. But I had to remember that even if Luca was better now, he was still a changed man. A man who had been broken and had put himself back together again. He would never be the reckless, care-for-nothing risk-taker he had been before. Caution had been burned into his flesh.

Maybe he would never take anyone’s love for granted again. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

“When I first met you, Luca, you guessed that I’d been alone for a long time,” I said slowly, feeling that the slightest mistake, a single wrong word, could break something irreplaceable. “I had. I’d been in darkness nearly all my life, and you brought light into my existence for the first time. And maybe that’s the reason why I started to … to have feelings for you. You seemed like a dream. Perfect and golden and good, and sure of everything. You made it too easy to believe that you would always be strong, always have all the answers. I think you believed it yourself. But that – that’s just infatuation. Hero worship. It’s not real. I’ve learned a lot about love over these last months. And part of what I’ve learned is that you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head. Neither of us could have lived that way.”

“What does that mean?” he asked quietly. He was twisting towards me – trying to see my face. “What are you saying, Frost?”

I turned, letting the starlight fill my eyes. “I don’t want you because I expect you to swoop in and rescue me and make everything all right. I don’t want you because you have all the answers. I don’t even want you because you’re beautiful. None of that matters. You could never be a bad bargain to me, because … you’re Luca. And I love you.”

I heard the sharp intake of his breath. Then his arms were around me, his heart thundering against my breast as if he had just crossed the finishing line in a life or death race. I felt warm tears streaming down my cold cheeks, and I didn’t know or care who they belonged to. I held onto him with everything I had. I would never let go again.

Finally, Luca drew back a little, holding me against him with fearful tenderness. His eyes were great, dark pools, as warm and filled with happiness as they had ever been. I lifted my hand and laid it on his cheek, where the scar marked his skin, and he did not flinch from my touch.

He said, “I didn’t know if you could forgive me for everything I put you through, for causing Arian’s death. I didn’t know if I should even ask you to.”

“You didn’t cause Arian’s death,” I said, thumping him lightly on the arm. I had a feeling I would have to repeat these words many times before they really sank in. Luca was too used to taking responsibility for other people to relinquish guilt easily. “Ion shot the arrow, and Arian chose to save us. He would never have blamed you, any more than I would have blamed him if you had died in his place.” I glanced at the mound of stones. The candle was alight again, its tiny flame flickering blue and purple and green. My breath caught.

I whispered, “You’re the one who taught us both that we had choices. Arian made his. All he ever wanted was for the people he loved to be safe and happy.”

“If you stay with me, then he’ll have his wish,” Luca said. “I think … it might take some time for me to … to be who I was before. I might still be mad for all I know. But come what may, I’ll always love you, Frost.”

Then he kissed me, and I tasted honeysuckle sweetness and the bitter saltiness of tears on his lips. I tasted his sorrow and his love. I tasted frost and fire.

I tasted forever.

I
t seems to me that life’s difficult experiences divide up into two categories. The first is for situations and challenges which seem unbearably hard, even impossible, at the time – but which, looking back, make you smile and think, “Hey, it wasn’t all bad.” The second is for times so unpleasant that you
avoid
looking back on them if at all possible, and do everything in your power not to repeat them. Writing
FrostFire,
and then completely rewriting it when it turned out not to work, was certainly one of life’s challenging experiences for me. But thanks to the following list of people, instead of giving up writing forever and running off to Tibet to herd yaks, I can now smile wryly and say, “Well, it wasn’t too bad.” My deepest thanks go out to:

My editor, Annalie, and my agent, Nancy, who managed to catch me before I could book passage to the Himalayas, and persuade me that I was much better cut out for revising than animal husbandry.

The members of the Furtive Scribblers Club, who kept pace with the dizzying changes to my “work in progress” and kept cheering me on, even when they had no idea what gender any of my characters were, or who would live or die.

All the wonderfully talented crew at Walker Books, who make me realize every time I meet them that I really am working with the best publisher in the world.

My crew of Twitter pals, including my adopted mothers Emma Davies and Vivienne Da Costa, the lovely Liz de Jager, Sarah Gibson and Lynsey Newton, Elle and Kate, not-really-stalkers Ashley Benson, Misty Braden and Enna, and fellow writers Kaz Mahoney, Cat Clarke (Ha! Next to each other again!), Jackie Dolomore and Lee Weatherly. And many more, who were always willing to exchange rants or war stories.

My adorable “Dear Readers”, who make running my blog and website worthwhile. Special thanks go to Alex, Isabel and Megha, who can be counted on to respond to everything I write with such enthusiasm that I become convinced I’m a genius, for thirty seconds at least.

And finally, to my parents. Just because.