Page 52 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

“The answer is here somewhere,” he said, eyeing Dwyn. “She took the boy’s blood. It’s what we’ve looked to do for decades.”

“It’s not,” his second said tersely. “She’s a murderer. We’ve all killed. It unites us more than any vow or the ink of our tattoos.”

Dwyn looked down at her soft leather pants.

Beneath them was the still-healing scab of a large spiral tattoo.

With it, she’d been bound to them. It had made sense in the moment.

There were no drawbacks to the bond, they’d promised.

It kept everyone in the Pact safe, as it was impossible to harm one another.

“What do you know of gangs, girl?” Anwir had asked.

Without thinking, Dwyn had regurgitated the only thing she’d heard her mother murmur. “There’s no honor among thieves,” Dwyn said, reciting the platitude older than ice or snow.

Anwir had agreed, dipping his needle in ink. “It’s true,” he’d said. “The best way to ensure trust is to alleviate the possibility of betrayal. It makes our family safer and more loyal than any on the continent. After all, a house divided cannot stand.”

She’d heard these words before but wasn’t sure where.

Mitra had answered her question before she’d had the chance to voice it. “He’s quoting the church,” she said. “Anwir was a Red in his day. Many of us were.”

“Were you?” Dwyn had asked the woman.

Her amused laugh had been short and terse.

“It’s how we learned to access the groundwater of magic that unites us all. The church taught the Reds, and the defected Reds have taught the Pact. Calling to power isn’t the hard part. Reds do it in the name of righteous sacrifice. For us, it’s attempting to survive that call that does us in.”

“Has anyone figured it out?” Dwyn had asked. “How to call on the groundwater without falling ill, that is?”

Mitra had shaken her head. “It’s blood magic. All magic comes at a price. For secondary abilities, that price is your blood. If you call a third or a fourth, your wish will be granted at the expense of your life.”

For the next three years, they hunted for answers.

Dwyn was well liked, at least in the beginning.

She was clever, beautiful, and useful. Her ability to call to water was excellent not only in storms or in times of thirst, but was exceptional at killing people where they stood, even before she’d learned to call on the groundwater.

Once she understood how to tap into the magic of the earth, she became peerless.

She figured out how to call on the water in her blood and faster than most and quickly worked her way up the ranks of the Pact.

In no time, she rivaled the spot for Anwir’s second.

She fell ill like all the others when she called on the groundwater as she tested fire, wind, weather, emotion, lust, pain, and fear.

She played with danger and suffered the consequences.

Unlike the others in the gang, Dwyn came with an advantage.

Chalky, sweating, and knocking on the All Mother’s door, she urged the water in her blood to move.

She stood by as they held thieves’ funerals for others in the Pact as brothers and sisters fell to the powers they stole.

She watched the dripping, pleading final moments of life as those who’d bound themselves to her in vows and ink took their final breaths and left the mortal plane to join the All Mother after calling on their stolen powers.

She held their hands. She watched them sweat, and writhe, and blink.

She pressed her fingers into their necks as she’d seen the others do, just as she’d done to her sister without understanding why.

Their hummingbird pulses fluttered erratically in the moments before their eyes rolled back.

Their clammy hands went limp, unclenching from the panic, the fear, the regret in those final moments.

When Dwyn’s time came, she had nothing and everything to lose.

She’d called on the earth and broken the stone itself, cracking the ground in two as she’d saved the Pact from capture.

The world splintered as the elemental sinkhole had swallowed their enemies, forcing all who remained to retreat.

Anwir had scooped her into his arms as they’d laid her to rest for what might very well have been her last goodbye.

He’d barked orders for cold cloths, for soft pillows, for a comfortable farewell to the bruised girl in an alley who’d given her life for the Pact.

But Dwyn had something the ghosts who haunted their gang hadn’t.

She wasn’t a healer and knew little of medicine, but she understood water.

When her heart began to skip and thunder, she recognized the erratic beats.

The rapid thrum was something that only belonged to the wings of insects, the trill of birds, and the final beats of the dying.

Anwir squeezed her hand, and she closed her eyes and asked the water within her to slow.

She knew the dying were clammy, that their blood still contained whatever price they’d paid.

The water responded, each beat going slower and slower than the one before.

The water in her blood moved lazily from her heart to the parts of her that filtered poison.

She pictured the illness within her as a tangible metal and asked the water to push.

She wasn’t sure if she could manipulate this water enough to separate good from bad, but the worst that could happen was to fall prey to an inevitable demise.

Instead, Dwyn fell asleep.

When she awoke, the blush had returned to her cheeks.

Her hair curled near her temples where salt had dampened it with her sweat, but her heart and breathing were normal.

The others clapped and hooted and celebrated as if her survival were a miraculous breakthrough, and she bit down on what she knew to be true.

She held a piece that the others did not.

When she was strong enough to sit up, Anwir grabbed her head as if she were a beloved child with a fretting parent and pressed a rough kiss into her head.

He pumped a rough fist into the air as he said, “No one’s survived an ordeal like that without greenstrike blood!

” He was unable to keep the grinning joy from his bits of vital knowledge.

While she knew she was supposed to be ill and on a miraculous return from the brink of death, she couldn’t let go of his innocuous words.

It was a piece of information that he hadn’t known he was giving her.

The greenstrike—a tropical, leaf-colored creature that looked remarkably like a stick—lunged toward would-be prey, burrowed beneath their flesh, and engorged itself on its new host’s blood.

Anwir had never mentioned it before and never spoke the words again.

Entirely separate blood could intercede on behalf of that which had been poisoned.

Six months later, Dwyn was brave enough to test her idea.

And when she did, she succeeded.