Chapter Fifteen
The Blazing Rose
Fischer took a swaggering step over the threshold, and though I faltered instinctively back I held his eye as though his intent might be read there.
Caelan had ceased all attempts to call my attention, and was now just ramming heavily into the door.
Fischer shot a slow, deliberate glance in the direction of the deafening racket.
“Got yourself in a bit of trouble there, have you?”
“Yes, I–” At the gleam in his eye, the words inexplicably caught in my throat. I had to swallow before I could try again, my voice thinner this time. “I need help.”
Fischer threw his head back and laughed, that awful hacking noise that still made my skin itch.
“I’d say so, Miss Rosaleen. Who’ve you got back there, the Captain?”
Something splintered in the door behind me, and the thudding changed cadence.
“Y-yes.”
Fischer sucked his teeth, gave a reluctant shake of his head.
“Shame.”
Then he dug into his scabbard and unsheathed a small but wicked dagger.
I clamped down in the same moment that my magic reared from the depths, starving myself of breath for fear that my Flame would engulf me as I recalled all of Fischer’s disgusting anecdotes.
How he’d bragged about the Serpents he’d caught, encouraged his brothers-in-arms to cut off their tongues, their ears.
Skinned more of those slimy fuckers than I can count.
My heart burned, my Flame screamed, the door splintered. I moved at the same moment that Fischer started forward, scrabbling back several steps with every slow deliberate one of his. Bit by bit, I placed myself between him and the door – between him and Caelan.
“What are you doing?” I heard myself snap, jolting at the weight and authority of my own voice.
Fischer waggled the dagger playfully.
“Skinning myself a Serpent.”
I could barely register the thrash of wild and searing magic in my chest before the lock finally gave way beneath Caelan’s body and he burst into the room.
He took several purposeful strides toward me, and perhaps I drifted for him too, because he was within arms reach before he finally graced Fischer with his attention.
His former deputy gave a lazy nod. “Captain.”
“Fisch,” he returned in that same bored tone. He didn’t look at me, but I could have sworn he wanted to. A vein jumped in his tensed neck, and beneath his stiff and pissed off stance that last ember of my Flame within his chest strained for me.
“What’re you doing here?” He drawled.
Fischer leered.
“I came all this way to hunt a Serpent, I wasn’t giving up that easy. I’ve been back for weeks. Wasn’t hard, you never changed the rotation times at the border.” He waved the dagger at Caelan like a disappointed parent might wag a finger in your face. “Sloppy.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Fischer.”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He barked out a laugh, and with his shaggy head thrown back it was only too easy for Caelan to take another sideways step toward me.
“I saw Brennan marching them all off like a troop of snub-nosed schoolboys. Thought you’d get to hoard all the glory, did you?
Collect her skin on your own and win His Majesty’s favour as some beast-slaying hero? ”
I had been watching Caelan intently, warring with my Flame.
Despite the fear and anguish weighing on my heart, the tears now drying on my cheeks, I knew that whether I decided to or not, I would unleash that fire without a second thought if Fischer and his dagger got within an arm’s length of Caelan’s skin.
But then those three words hit my ears belatedly; Collect her skin. I whipped around, tearing my eyes from the Captain for the first time.
“You think I’m the Serpent?”
Fischer didn’t even look at me, but it was Caelan’s silencing hand held up in my direction that had my jaw giving way. He smirked, and I could only gawk in shocked silence.
“How in the hell did you figure it out?” said Caelan.
Fischer held up his palm. It was thick and scaly, brown against the ruddy pink skin of his wrist. He was still healing from where he’d tried to choke me, where my magic had flared protectively – back when it still had the inclination to do so.
“Little bitch burned me with her venom.” He lifted his chin and dragged the tip of his dagger around his hairy neck in a crude demonstration. “The females have glands in their throats. Here and here.”
That didn’t sound remotely true.
“You can’t possibly be this stupid,” I spat at Fischer. “I am not a Serpent.”
I was so busy glaring at him that I didn’t notice Caelan move until it was too late.
He took those final two steps towards me and then his arm was tight around my waist, and I could do nothing but thrash and scream myself hoarse.
I tried desperately to dig my elbows into his solid stomach but he just yanked me tighter against him.
“Stop,” I shrieked, the plea ragged in my raw throat. “Fischer, I’m not the Serpent. It’s not me.”
Even facing death at his hand, I couldn’t bring myself to point him toward Caelan. The words burned in my throat like swallowed bile; they simply would not come. It didn’t matter either way. Fischer just sneered, and Caelan went on as if I’d never spoken.
“Fine,” he said, grunting as I struggled against his hold. “We’ll share.”
He unsheathed his sword.
Panic speared through me at the sound, at the hungry look on Fischer’s face, and still my Flame would not rise. Not with Caelan’s arms around me. Not even with the edge of his blade hovering at my neck.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
The scream was trapped in my throat like my Flame in my chest, but I was sobbing, stomping at Caelan’s toes the best I could, knowing that if I moved too much I’d slice my own throat open. I needed to breathe – I needed to think. I needed my fucking Flame.
Please.
But the only response I got was that strange new voice within, repeating the only thing it had ever said; Mine.
Fischer’s dagger glinted evilly, preceding him as he moved across the floor like a predator on the prowl until his feet were almost flush with mine. I could see my own eyes, practically black with fear, reflected in the shining slash of his dagger.
“Open wide,” he said, in a voice like a lover’s.
I spat in his face, and Fischer laughed with something close to delight, before licking it from his lips. He raised his dagger with renewed glee, beady eyes roving my lips longingly.
“Hold on,” said Caelan. Fischer lowered the blade with an impatient snort.
Caelan turned his face into mine, his nose nudging possessively along my cheek before he inhaled deeply. I wanted to scream when my Flame glowed with warmth at the gentle touch, betraying me for him even now, even as it refused to come forth and protect me.
You can’t hurt me, Rosie. You know why.
But if that were true, how could he do this? How could he hurt me?
“I have a question, before you lose your tongue,” said Caelan softly.
I threw my head back, hoping to connect with his nose, but he ducked the blow and brought his lips to my ear once more.
“And before you answer, sweetheart – do remember that I have a fucking blade to your throat, won’t you?”
I stopped moving. Not because of the blade at my throat, but because I could have sworn I felt a flicker of warmth between my shoulder blades. That the ember of heat in Caelan’s chest was reaching for me.
You can’t hurt me. You know why.
Ghostly warmth smoothed up my back, in just the way that Caelan often soothed me as I fell asleep in his arms. What was he doing?
He nodded at my silence.
“There’s a good girl. Now, talk to me. I can’t for the life of me figure out how you did it.”
Fischer’s voice echoed my own thought, just as begrudgingly curious. “Did what?”
I felt Caelan’s chin move across my shoulder, his gaze shifting.
“Any of it. How did she get to the drunk old farmer on Yule, when we’ve got witness statements exempting her as a suspect?”
Fischer shifted, but Caelan didn’t seem to notice; he’d turned his face to mine, grazing my cheek again as he considered me. Reassuring warmth crept up my back once more, a contrast to the cold sneer in Caelan’s voice.
“And she did it again not long after, with the potato farmer.” He huffed out an unfamiliar laugh, something much closer to Fischer’s awful hacking.
I hated it. “Not that it really matters, I suppose, collateral damage is always inevitable in a Class X hunt. It’s just rather impressive, don’t you think?
We’ve always thought serpents weren’t all that bright.
Perhaps little Miss Rosaleen is the exception. ”
Fischer gave a vicious snort. “She’s not smart. Serpents aren’t fucking smart, Captain, don’t let her fool you. She’s just surrounded herself with people even stupider than she is.”
“What d’you mean, Fisch?” Caelan drawled, not bothering to look at him.
“I’ve been hunting her a while now, trying to learn what I could from those mouldy raisins we always saw traipsing in and out of here.
The old drunk wouldn’t say a fucking word about her one way or the other.
Wouldn’t tell me where she was from, who her parents were, how old she was, fucking nothing. ”
Tanner.
My ears were humming with static, my mind struggling to make sense of his words.
Tanner. Tanner had died protecting me, without even knowing why.
He had never known what I was, but… he’d always talked about the plight of the ‘magic folk’.
He’d never thought it fair, how we were hunted and monitored.
So when it came down to it, he refused to risk a single word about me to this beast of a man, no matter how innocuous.
“I wrapped my hand around his throat – told him he could breathe again when he agreed to talk – and he declined, which is pretty bloody stupid if you ask me. So I decided to have a chat with his skinny little friend, and I found the potato farmer snooping around his house instead. Now that was unfortunate. Don’t know that he had that much to tell, but–” Fischer sneered. “Collateral, right?”