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TAINTED| CHAPTER 9

When Fire Touches Snow

Winter’s chill pushed through the thick wool of my jacket as Arianna opened the door to her cottage. The cold bit deeper than it should have, dragging the memory of the night back with it.

Snow.

Powder white and merciless as it slammed into my face again and again, Arianna hammering me into it like I was some prisoner in Siberia. Even now I could still see it, still feel it burning in my lungs. It had been brutal.

A shiver ran down my spine, settling deep into my boots at the thought. Pushing past it, I stepped in behind her, eager for the heat of the fire.

The living room felt compassionately warm as the door shut behind us. Valentina’s scent drifted toward me like a morning greeting through my exhaustion, polite, yet affectionate all the same. With us gone for hours, her aroma had settled fully into the space, undisturbed. Even Arianna’s citrus scent couldn’t penetrate my senses as thoroughly as hers did.

My gaze followed the scent to her body, lying exactly where we had left her. She was curled into a tight ball beside the hearth, white curls spilling down her back. Valentina looked effortlessly peaceful in her sleep—no worry creasing her brow, not even the faintest frown tugging at her features.

It could have been because Arianna had cast a sleeping spell over her, just in case she stirred while we were away. I hoped it was the latter, that she had truly found some peace. It was frightening how much Arianna’s magic worked like that of a witch.

A pang of jealousy stirred in my chest as I looked over Valentina’s form. I was beyond exhausted. We’d been up all night with no reprieve. The only time I had gotten even an ounce of rest was while they were going over form. Even without knowing how long their night had lasted, I found myself looking forward to dawn breaking.

Arianna sauntered out of sight without a word of encouragement, disappearing down the back hall. My legs drifted tiredly toward my makeshift pallet. Within minutes of my body touching the floor, I was out. There was no negotiation between my body and my mind as sleep took me under.

The moment my eyes closed, vivid images erupted behind them.

My mind had carried me back to the tree line of the field. The twin moons were gone, no shimmering aurora lighting the sky. The sky was fogged with a pale blue haze that bled beneath impenetrable gray clouds, offering little light. Even the air felt wrong, stiller than the night itself. No wind moved through the currents, leaving the cold stiff and unmoving.

The stillness crept through my skin like a warning. Someone was watching me. That awful sixth sense twisted in my gut again, coaxing me forward into the open field. Every instinct urged me to move, but a quieter, more composed part of me held my ground and watched.

The calmer part of me won just as a Vanderwhirl kicked sleet into the air. Just ahead, a man draped in black appeared, mist and wind twisting around him like a whirlpool. His hood was low; face tilted toward the ground, completely covered.

My nose instinctively searched for a scent as the figure solidified, but it caught nothing, only damp wood and the rot of old trees deep in the forest. The absence unsettled me. Smell had become one of the first truth tellers in this strange new body of mine, the sense I trusted when my eyes played tricks on me. Without it, I felt strangely exposed.

The figure’s hands stretched slowly apart, rising above his head. They were pale, devoid of rose or gold, like death itself had claimed the skin. As his fingers spread, the air split between them. Fierce cobalt lightning crackled to life.

A deep, somber voice rolled across the field in a language that felt ancient, heavy with the weight of a spell. With each word he spoke, the lightning brightened in his palms, swelling higher and higher until it towered nearly twenty feet above him.

Snow melted around his feet into slick puddles as the temperature surged, yet the man himself remained perfectly still. The pulse beneath my skin quickened as the scene played before me like a moving picture. What was he saying? What power lived inside those words?

Something about him drew me in—deep enough that it brushed against my soul like the first spark of a candle being lit. The lightning was beautiful. Terribly beautiful. Its brilliance burned a violent cobalt, far removed from the reds and oranges of ordinary flame. This was no simple anger made visible. It was rage made manifest, deceptive in its beauty, but pure torment in its nature.

The figure’s head tilted back toward the sky. For the briefest moment his face flashed in the cobalt light.

His features were unfamiliar to me, and yet not entirely.

What struck my core raw was the warm shade of brown that fell past his right eye. The sight sent a jolt of recognition through me. Even the arch of his nose reminded me of someone I didn’t want to think about. Mark. What told me it wasn’t him was the jagged burn stretching across the man’s left eye. Before I could study him further, his gaze lifted fully to the sky.

Above him the already blazing stream of cobalt lightning surged hotter, sending a violent wave of heat through the air like a sonic boom. A blast of warmth reached me seconds later, steam rising from the melting snow beneath my feet. Fire burst from the lightning he had summoned, shooting upward toward the clouds as if probing the dark sky itself.

Following his gaze, I watched the clouds blacken and swell around us. Flames flickered within them, casting a burnt orange glow across the land. The atmosphere thickened, heavy with storm light. I could only watch in horror as the entire field darkened beneath that fiery glow, the land itself bathed in the color of burning embers.

My eyes drifted to the figure as the beacon of lightning finally ceased. The energy collapsed inward, sucked into him like a tightly wound coil. When he exhaled, the sky seemed to breathe with him, tearing open with violent streaks of lightning. Bolts slashed into the forest around us, and within seconds, flame and smoke began rising through the trees.

From the bristling steam, I could feel his eyes on me. I couldn’t see them behind the shadowed hood, but the weight of them raked over me, etching me into his memory. The intensity pouring from him pulsed in my direction, begging me to step forward and witness him fully.

As irrational as it seemed, something deep in my soul wanted to save him from that fire. All the anger that had collided into the atmosphere needed release. Without thinking, my boots crunched into the sleet, carrying me forward.

Fire crackled around us as chaos pressed in every direction. The air blurred with the stench of rotting wood and bitter ash. The darkness of the sky seeped into the land, casting an unnatural night that burned orange through the treeline.

The mixture of cold and scorching air scraped the back of my throat as I gulped down the toxic smoke. Each stride toward him was chaos. The faster I ran, the farther away he seemed. The path stretched beneath my feet, gliding him away from me even though he never moved.