Page 50 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

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 drowning had 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 free hand 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.

The groundwater, they called it.

Dwyn knew a thing or two about water.

Rain continued flowing around her like a curtain as she maintained her control over the droplets that fell from the sky, until a gruff voice broke her concentration.

“Who did that to you, girl?”

She gasped in surprise, and that was all it took for her focus to shatter and the rain to drench her to the bone.

Icy droplets that fell from heights where snow still clutched the mountain peaks soaked the fabric of her dress.

Her hair became a sopping shell as it clung to her.

Her fingers flew to the evidence of violence against her throat as she looked to where a large, dark shape stepped out from the shadows.

She’d been so intent on the Reds within the church that she hadn’t listened for anyone else.

Their footsteps had been covered by the rain.

Drenched from head to toe, a late-in-years fae peered down at her.

“You seem young to have already mastered your gift,” he said. “What are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Dwyn croaked, surprised at the rough sound of her own voice. Her hand tightened around her throat as if it might alleviate the bruising.

The man gestured to a figure behind him, and a woman stepped up, shouldering a satchel. She flipped it open, allowing the man to rummage through its contents until he procured a small brown bottle.

“I’m Anwir. Let me make you a deal,” he said.

She eyed him warily. She didn’t care for the sound of deals with men.

“Swear to keep the rain off our heads until we finish our task for the evening, and I’ll have my friend Mitra here pass you this healing tonic here and now.”

Dwyn looked between the bottle in Mitra’s hand and the man. Her fingers tightened around her bruised neck. She shook her head slowly, saying, “I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself,” Anwir said. He beckoned for the others to move forward.

“Wait,” she breathed. She watched his face tense with curiosity as he awaited her response. “Does this have to do with the Reds?”

Mitra and the man exchanged looks. Voice cautious, he asked, “What do you know of the Reds?”

She blinked several times, raindrops clinging to her eyelashes and weighing down her lids as she sputtered through the cold.

Dwyn lifted a hand to help her focus her magic as she created a shelter for herself once more.

It wasn’t warm, but she would dry in time.

The others eyed her gift appreciatively.

“I know I want to do what they do,” she said.

Anwir chuckled. The sound was joined by the laughter of his companions. Unlike that of her peers at school or the cruel sounds of Rekyr thinking he’d won, this laughter was the low rumble of appreciation. They understood.

The man turned to the woman with a satchel. “What do you think?”

“I like her,” Mitra said.

“You know my name,” he said. “And you are?”

“Dwyn,” she responded. She regretted it in an instant, certain she should have offered an alias.

He nodded. He looked at Dwyn not like a man looking at a woman, but like a burglar eyeing a diamond.

“I like her, too,” he said. He straightened his shoulders and said, “Let me amend the terms, girl. Keep the rain off our heads, and I’ll do more than give you the healing tonic.

We know how the Reds do what they do. Hell, several of us were Reds once upon a time. What we want is more than they can do.”

“But they can do it all,” Dwyn said through a gasp.

“Nearly,” he said quietly. “Nearly.”

Her heart matched the quick, rhythmic pattern of the rain on the stones.

She was tired, cold, wounded, and scared, but the adrenaline that flooded her was something else entirely.

She got to her feet, wincing at the pinpricks of bloodlessness, and she’d lost all sensation in her legs in her hours spent in the alley.

She looked at the man and woman before her, who stood unflinchingly in the rain and glanced over their shoulders to the figures beyond, obscured by the downpour.

Dwyn flattened her palm and raised her hand to help herself focus as she stretched her gift, telling the water to bend around the alley so she might see everyone plainly.

“Nearly?” she repeated. “Then what is it that you want?”

His laugh was a single, dark exhalation as he answered. “Everything.”