Chapter 1 #2
“It’s been almost six years to the day since I vowed to remove it. Do you remember? Do you remember what that hand did?”
“I—”
“Of course you don’t. But I remember. And I remember my promise the night I gave you that scar.
” Talwyn steeled herself against the feel of his skin under her fingers, about to drag a nail down the faded white line on his swollen hand.
She stopped short, swallowing and flexing her fingers.
Instead, she asked, “Why did you finally decide to sell me out? Why now? What changed?”
“Bitch!”
A third dagger met the meaty flesh of his thigh. When his pained howls ceased, she leaned close. “Don’t be brave now. You’re going to die anyway. The question is how quickly I send you to the hells.” She gripped the leather handle of her weapon, a mischievous tilt to her mouth.
He panted, eyes squeezing shut. “They want you.”
“Who?” Her eyes narrowed. She shook the dagger a fraction, and Pochette cried out, straining in the chair.
“Apparitions! Faceless copies!” he yelled through clenched teeth.
“Copies of what?” Talwyn spoke each word carefully.
“Mages. That’s all I know. More powerful than anything this kingdom can handle. They come from nowhere. They can’t be found until they find you.” Pochette’s face turned red as he stumbled over his words. A vein bulged in his forehead.
“We’ll see about that.” Talwyn paced the small room. “Why me?”
“A red-haired woman.”
The hair on the back of her neck prickled. She resisted the urge to touch it. He couldn’t possibly know she dyed her red locks.
“I know. I know you hide your true identity,” he continued. “The elixirs and dyes you purchase from the alchemist—you’re not as secretive as you think.”
“What of it? Anonymity is the only way to survive in these slums.” Talwyn bit her lip.
Dealing in the docks made many enemies, and her unique features would be a dead giveaway even in darkness, never mind daylight.
She often cursed the gods for giving her hair the color of the setting sun and eyes brighter than a gold coin.
Once a month, she drank an elixir to keep her eyes dark and soaked her hair in a dye that stunk of rotten plums. She made the alchemist swear to secrecy in exchange for a hefty bag of coin, and he’d promised the best formula she would ever find.
Pochette chuckled darkly. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there Little Fury?”
She didn’t bother arguing with him. It didn’t matter that he knew she had elemental magic, let alone that he had correctly guessed she was a Fire Fury. What concerned her was how he knew and who he already told.
“Don’t tell me you believe the rumors. Fire Furies all but died out long ago.”
“You think you’ve kept yourself hidden. But I know what you are. When they asked for the red-headed woman, I had prepared to give them whomever. But my men saw you in the woods. They saw what you can do and that blazing hair of yours to match.”
Talwyn clenched her jaw. She’d been careless.
Two weeks ago, a bounty that had been particularly troublesome lured her into the trees and attacked her from above.
After chasing the man for hours, her patience reached its end.
She flicked her wrist and set him aflame.
The fire consumed him in minutes, but she cursed herself for the extra time it took to hide the body and scorched earth.
Pochette smirked. “Even now, I can see the red peeking through. Did you forget to color your hair this week? I’ll bet it’ll be as red as the Pyrie before the week’s end.”
She exhaled a breath to calm the building rage within her.
When Talwyn learned that Pochette planned to sell her out, she threw herself into controlling her magic.
With each session, she further reined in her fury and started burning through her elixirs.
By that night, one treatment only lasted a day or two.
She clenched her eyes shut, willing them to remain dark brown.
“No red. No gold. No fire,” the memory echoed in her mind.
Pochette laughed. “They’re going to find you and sell you off.
And this name you’ve made for yourself at the docks will vanish.
Your pets will be slaughtered without you to protect them, and you’ll be used up, locked away in some dungeon until they have need of you.
Perhaps the young king is looking for a fiery redhead to fulfill his fantasies. ”
In a movement faster than his eyes could follow, Talwyn wrenched a dagger out of Pochette’s forearm and held it to his throat.
“They will never touch me,” she seethed, heat warming her chest. She’d been keeping it at bay up until now, but he knew exactly how to get under her skin.
Her fury raged to be set free, pounding against the walls she’d built around it long ago.
It uncoiled past her core, down her limbs, and made her fingers twitch.
She stared into his beady eyes, her fist hovering over his mangled one.
“A promise made is a promise kept,” she whispered and opened her palm to release her fury.
The orange glow of her flame shone on his face before he registered the pain. She watched his smug grin fade to horror as his gaze darted to his melting skin. He writhed in the chair, eliciting an ear-piercing howl.
Talwyn sneered, her hatred leaving her devoid of any remorse for the man whose touch had haunted her since she was nineteen.
Her fury consumed his hand until nothing but a charred husk remained, and Pochette collapsed in the chair.
With an effort, she snuffed the flames, gritting her teeth against the tide still pressing against her defenses.
“No more,” he whimpered. He begged again and met her gaze. Pochette’s jaw dropped. What color was left drained from his face. “No,” he gasped, “no, it’s not—It’s not possible! Your eyes! You’re—” His own widened further. “You’re her. That’s why they want you! They know! They know who you are!”
Talwyn blinked in confusion. “They know nothing,” she muttered, wiping her blade on a handkerchief. “I am no one.” She pocketed the cloth and replaced the weapon in its sheath.
He howled madly. “You’re a memory, a whisper on the wind! They’ve found you.”
Irritation flared alongside her fury. She found no enjoyment in ending a man lost to madness, but Talwyn could no longer hold back her magic.
She retrieved her other two daggers, eliciting a momentary shriek from Pochette before he returned to his blathering.
She wiped his own blood on his shirt before returning her weapons to her belt.
“You were dead, and they’ve found you!” he crowed.
“Then I’ll see you in the hells.” She clasped both hands around his neck and released the inferno raging inside her.
He choked on his manic laughter once, twice, and then coughed up black smoke that reeked of melted flesh.
A moment later, his head shot back, a wall of white flame erupting out of his mouth, his eyes, every orifice on his body.
Talwyn watched him, hands still on his neck, the flames licking her face in a gentle caress, until his convulsing stopped.
She walked out of the Kiln without a backward glance to the pyre behind her.
Her boots splashed through a large puddle, and her attention flicked to the mirrored surface.
Her hands, clenched at her sides, were untouched by the fire.
Even her hair remained unaffected despite the blaze that washed over her.
The familiar warmth of her fury-heated leather jacket embraced her.
She remained untouched by the flames save for the bright glow in her gold eyes.
Glass shattered somewhere in the tavern.
Talwyn stared at the table before her, lost in thought while she sipped ale in a dark corner.
An imperfection in the metal cup scratched the skin along her thumb.
It did not bode well that Pochette knew her secret, and Talwyn couldn’t understand why his likening of her to the Fury of legend grated on her nerves.
Fury was rare magic, and some humorless gods thought to gift her with control over the element.
“You’re brooding.” Carrick dropped two new pints on the table, sliding into the seat across from her.
She waved the metal cup away. “The fool spouted nonsense.”
“Did he tell you who brokered the deal?”
“Mages, that’s all I know.” She shook her head. “Did you find anything?”
Carrick pinched his thick lips into a thin line, his focus on the door.
“Egan found no trace. None of us did.” His forehead wrinkled.
Carrick had been outraged when he learned that Pochette planned to betray them, though Talwyn herself had expected it to happen years ago.
His boyish face contrasted the rest of him.
The muscles covering his upper body flexed as he sat stiffly in the chair.
His knee bounced under the table, bumping Talwyn’s own.
“The pouch held five pieces of the king’s gold. ”
Talwyn stilled. “You’re sure?”
Carrick nodded and slid one toward her.
She dragged it across the table until it fell into her waiting palm.
A flaming willow tree witnessing two crossed swords shone in the low tavern candlelight as if the fire on the coin itself flickered.
“So, our new cloaked friends may not be from outside the kingdom after all.” She pocketed the coin and took a large swig of her drink, making a face.
The liquid had gone warm during her musings. “He called it an apparition.”
Carrick swore, scrunching his button nose. “What in the hells is that? And why would Pochette negotiate with one?”
Talwyn hesitated. She wondered this as well.
Thanks to its lack of resources and poor state, the kingdom had gone unnoticed by the outside world for the last twenty years.
If they believed Pochette, the apparition connected to something that could spell danger for the docks and Meladair as a whole. “Any word from the coven?”