Page 43

“Billie.”

I shook my head. “I said no.”

“Trust me for one stupid minute.”

That was an unfair thing to say, because I trusted very few people for any number of minutes, stupid or otherwise. Trust was for people who did not have to inspect every gift for a trap. But Kit stood there with fire in one hand waiting, and when I looked up at him there was no pity on his face, and the lack of pity mattered more than sense.

So I relented and gave him my hands, and he took them carefully. Something coiled tight in my belly and I realized I was surprised, because Kit touched everything, chair backs and plates and doorframes and other people’s food. He entered the world hands-first and expected it to be delighted. Usually his touches were rough and eager, but not now. No, with my hands in his, he went slow. Almost reverent in the way he held me.

Something in my chest kicked and I shoved the emotion away, refusing to even think about it as he turned my palms up and brought them around the flame, his fingers over the backs of mine. Heat gathered between us.

“Don’t think,” he said.

“Terrible advice,” I murmured, but my voice was tight to my own ears.

“Best advice. Thinking is your problem.”

“I have many problems. Thinking is one of the better ones.”

“Billie...”

I shut up and did my best not to think.

The fire bent, not much at first, just a lean like a curious animal catching a scent. I could almost picture it as a dog on a leash getting into a flower bush or something.

The prickle came hard a second later. It flowed from my fingers in both hands, up my arms and into my chest. The flame bowed toward me and the gold deepened, shifting at the edges until green bled through the gold. Then it doubled in size. Then doubled again.

Kit’s fingers flexed around mine.

“Holy stars,” he breathed.

I looked past the flame for a second and saw the fire reflected in his gaze and my breath caught at the sight. It almost looked like his very soul was there burning in his eyes.

The fire didn’t burn me, just like I knew it wouldn’t. It should have, because it filled the space between our hands. It was much too large, too close, and yet my skin only felt heat, a rushing warmth that moved through me instead of against me. Not mine. Not his. Both. A circuit catching, power pouring out of him into me and back again changed by whatever I was.

Kit was there too, I could feel him within the power that was flowing through me, and that was the terrifying part. Not thoughts or memories. I felt him the way I might feel heat by holding my hand near a regular flame, heat and hunger and a restless need to be looked at because being looked at was better than being reached for. Under that I could sense something else, a blackened place where a house had burned and a boy had never stopped counting who got out.

My breath caught as the green fire leapt higher and Kit made a sound, low in his throat. We had stepped closer together at some point and now we were too close. I didn’t know which of us had moved, only that the little yard had narrowed around us until there was fire, his hands, my hands, and the air between us, which felt like it could combust at any moment.

His eyes dropped. Mine did too. For one mad second, the fire seemed to pull us toward one another.

Then Kit let go.

Not dropped or jerked back, but let go carefully as though I might break at any second.

The flame snapped out and cold rushed into the space between us. I stood there with my hands empty and tingling.

Kit took three steps back and dragged both hands through his dark hair. “Okay.” He was turned away from me as he spoke and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He turned back to me, but still looked down.

“What’s okay?” I demanded a little breathlessly.

“That is me not doing something spectacularly stupid.” He looked at me then, and all the cocky Wyndham energy that usually bubbled around him was gone. “Billie, fire doesn’t do that.”

“I gathered.”