32. Chapter 32
Marcic was a thrashing silhouette through the leaping flames but then they were gone in a wink, leaving behind nothing except steaming metal. He would bake alive in there; the armor would be too hot for anyone to remove it—
His body will heal eventually, Remy muttered, as I climbed to my feet. Though I don’t know if his ego will recover.
The screams had drawn more guards, though none seemed inclined to rush to Marcic’s aid or do anything at all other than nervously eye whoever stood behind me.
I backed away from the smoldering wreckage, whirling around to meet the demon who had turned the guard into a pyre. His golden eyes had a watchful quality, amused and slightly cruel, and I knew instantly this was the brother a much-younger Remy had hidden from in the wood.
How can you tell?
Because I’d run from him too.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of his flames, which I was, or those sharpened canines that showed through his smile.
He was completely nonthreatening as he gazed down at me, hands behind his back, head ticked to the side as he stood there with a rapidly-widening smile.
His was an alarming sort of beauty. That terrible power and the almost sun-struck look of him beneath the monotonous gray sky.
His skin shimmered gold, as if he’d been rolled in slivered flakes of it, though even as I watched, his glow dimmed into a low luminosity.
Dark hair shining red at the edges in the light wreathing him, full lips a silken pink.
Eyelashes flashing black and gold as he blinked; they looked gilt-drenched on top but inky black beneath.
He held out a hand, which I was reluctant to clasp. Would he scald me, leave me with skin that looked like a crusted, burned glove?
His skin was hot when it met mine, as if he stood beneath an angry sun. “Finn,” he said. “Your name, my lady?”
I felt Remy roll his eyes so hard I rather thought they’d fly from their sockets.
“Des. How did you—”
“Find you? A happy accident. Valic lit a fire last night,” he said, as if I had any idea what that meant.
“I’ve only just got back. I felt my brother’s presence the moment I stepped into the meadow.
I notice nobody rushed over to help you fend off an unprovoked attack.
” Finn turned to the cluster of armored guards.
“Curious. Almost as if they’ve been warned off.
Maybe things have changed in my absence.
I thought the guards were meant to break up petty fights.
I suppose when the head of the guard is involved the rules don’t apply. ”
“He was going down to the In Between,” one of the guards piped up. “Likely getting ready to let loose another crowd of damned.”
“And yet the In Between appears unmolested.” Finn peered around me down the stone staircase. “I thought we’d been keeping it locked up tight since Remy broke it open? The ferryman’s been complaining far and wide about having to use a key.”
Nobody appeared to have much to say to that, which Finn seemed to expect. He turned his smile back on me, held out his hand. “Come,” he said as I took it. “I haven’t been home for months. Haven’t seen my brother in even longer.”
I took a quick glance around at the guards, but they all seemed too wary of Finn to stop me leaving.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. “They have no reason to detain you. Marcic probably told them to stand down the moment he spotted you wandering. He hates my brother.”
“Where are we going?”
“Elsewhere.” And when I still looked bemused, squinting up at him through his golden glare: “To Flame. I want into my apartments and out of these clothes.”
“She wouldn’t like Flame, Finn,” Remy said, our voices mingling.
“No? I wouldn’t let her burn.” Walking through the meadow now, the grass grading from emerald to parched, phlegmy yellow; Finn reached out with his free hand to pat every hellhound we passed. “I’ve come to quite like humans lately.”
“It’s not the flames, it’s the suffering,” Remy insisted.
“Afraid I don’t hold sway over the screams.” Finn squeezed my hand as if in reassurance, tipping down at me what he probably meant as a disarming smile.
“You’ll hear nothing from my apartment, though.
I would blink you straight inside if I could, but it doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. Security reasons.”
Through the gates and into the crowd-clotted antechamber, and Finn held my hand all the while. He was dazzling to behold, beautiful once you got over the general shock of him, a face made of angles and arches, a smile that looked somehow angelic and sinful.
I will vomit, Remy said.
He’s beautiful, I said reasonably, because there was little to argue with on that statement. And I’m sure you’re very pretty, too.
He scoffed at that, rustling around his cage. Flame isn’t exactly for the fainthearted, Des. It’s loud and bright. You can feel the screams beneath your skin.
What am I supposed to do? I asked as his brother led me through arrhythmic arteries of the damned. He just saved us, he hasn’t seen you in years—shall I dig in my heels and refuse him? You can block my hearing, can’t you?
“How are you finding Hell?” Finn asked, once the din from the antechamber receded and we found ourselves in the hallway leading off to the apartments where Remy’s room was. “Have you had the grand tour?”
“Not exactly. Sort of.”
“Sort of but not exactly,” he repeated, in a way that made me feel even sillier. “Maybe we ought to remedy that.”
“I don’t think I should be running loose all over Hell. The Frost regent probably wouldn’t like it.”
“No?” His gold eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t aware she liked much of anything.”
I had little argument for that. Through the torchlit hallway, faceless apartment doors flashing past us on both sides. Remy leapt from his cell and into my skin, wrenching my hand from Finn’s, who blinked down in fond condescension as if he’d felt the switch.
“Yes?”
“What do you mean, yes? We’re not going to Flame, just meet us back in my room if you want to talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you; I already know you and you annoy me. I want to talk to her.”
“Then do it in my room,” Remy said, pulling me up short in the middle of the hallway.
“I don’t want to. I’ve been gone for months.
I want to rinse the travel off me and flop on my own bed.
” And when Remy didn’t move: “I thought you’d be interested to hear what I’ve been able to turn up.
” Finn must have found hesitation in my face, because he laced his fingers through mine again, the trace of a smile on his lips. “Let her back up.”
With ill grace, Remy complied.
Finn measured my hand against his as we walked, curling his fingertips over mine. “You all have such small hands.”
“You’ve been holding hands with humans?” Remy seemed unable to restrain himself. “Even the men?”
“Well, no, not the men. I suppose I could have asked, though. I think humans think me an angel. It must be my skin. They all look so fearful at first but it isn’t long before they find me dazzling.”
I was familiar with the phenomenon.
Traitors wind up in Frost, you know.
I don’t believe you’d let me freeze.
To that, Remy had nothing but a noncommittal grunt, but when the echoed screams reached us as we approached the staircase, I felt him straighten from his slouch.
“Screams can’t hurt you,” Finn said when I stiffened, his pace solicitously matching mine as we descended. The light from the fires of Flame washed over us, setting his skin alight. “It’s just howls in the void. It does make conversation difficult, though.”
Why did you run from him, when you were young? I asked, because I’d rather have Remy’s voice in my mind than the screams.
His fire was frightening. He had a lot of control over it, even as a child. He’d twist it into shapes of animals, dragons and phoenixes and horrible lumbering bears. They’d chase Valic and I like they were alive, the dragons belching this flame at our backs—
He wasn’t worried about hurting you?
The fire didn’t always burn. It didn’t burn the wood but sometimes if it caught us it would singe our hair, our clothes. You never knew when it might do damage so just the sight of it was terrifying.
You don’t like him, then?
I love him, he said, then added dryly, that doesn’t absolve him of being an asshole.
Remy had to be muffling the screams because I heard them only peripherally, as if they came from floors away. How did you do that to Marcic’s face? I’ve never seen you freeze anything before.
I don’t know. I’m not great at accessing any Frost abilities I might have. I spent most of my time training with my father, my uncle. My mother always wanted me to stay with her, ruling Frost, but I hated it there.
You called for her outside. There was a cautious little edge in my voice. I didn’t want him to think I was indirectly calling him a coward. Did you really think she could hear you?
Sometimes I think she can hear everything. I wondered if the ice at your ankle would let me speak to her. Brace yourself, now, he said as Finn and I stepped onto the landing of Flame, it’s hot in here.
And then he robbed me of my hearing completely.
I walked into a wall of breathtaking heat, the atmosphere wavy and shimmering around gaping pits of flame in every direction.
It was like another planet, a blazing mineral inferno that spat and sputtered, gushed and guttered, and the demons here were bright as any flame, red and gold and amber figures wending through the pits.
Black paths snaked around and between pits in some kind of lunatic maze; they looked as if they led nowhere, or in circles.
Stakes in varying degrees of height were plunged into every pit, and I tried avoiding the gazes of those strapped against them, but I couldn’t.
Faces twisted in wordless agony, cheeks blistering, showers of sparks bursting from lips like raw meat.
Had I been able to hear I’m sure it would have been a blood-swaying harmony of shrieks loud enough to bring me to my knees.