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“Those Skaags really got you good, didn’t they?” he said gently.
Hellion sat up. “What? Skaags did this? Which Skaags? I’ll have their heads.”
I lifted my arm limply and pointed at Hellion. “And that is why you’re not coming with me.”
They snorted and leaned back against the headboard, arms crossed. “I’ll find them myself then.”
Cian’s fingers traveled lower on my face, brushing over my beard. He seemed to have developed a fascination with it. Maybe he was developing a bit of a fetish for facial hair. Not that I was complaining.
“I want to ask you something,” Cian said after a long while. “But I don’t want to upset you.”
I closed my eyes, holding my breath as he traced a finger around the discolored patch of skin on my chest. “About the scar?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated. Others had asked, but it was the one story I never told.
“My mother had this music box,” I said. “We were dirt poor without a pot to piss in. Every coin they got went to supporting their drinking habit. But they never sold that music box. I can still hear the song it played in my head.” I hummed a few bars before sighing. “It happened when I was five, two days before the Festival of Dreams. I got it in my head that I would get up on a chair and get the box down because I wanted to hear the song. My mother caught me with the box, teetering over the lit fireplace on the old chair. She started screaming, which, of course, summoned my father. She…”
My throat was suddenly too tight to keep going, the taste of the memory too bitter on my tongue.
Cian’s arms tightened around me. “It’s okay if it’s too much. You don’t have to go back there.”
Hellion’s hand rested on my shoulder. “But if you do, we’re here.”
If I didn’t make it through now, I’d never tell the story, so I shook my head, swallowed, and steeled my mind against the flood of memory. “I… I dropped the box. I didn’t mean to. It went into the fire. My father… He was livid, but my mother, she was inconsolable. I’d never seen him so angry. He beat me. Burned me with the hot poker. Right here.” I rubbed the scar and winced as if it were still fresh.
I faltered again, too aware of the tear sliding its way down the side of my nose. The smell of roasting flesh was in my nose, the sound of her choked sobs in my ears.
Both Cian and Hellion squeezed me.
I wiped the tear away, suddenly angry that I’d let it fall. “It wasn’t the first time, but it would be the last. He locked me in my room for three days with no food or water. Said that’d teach me to go messing with other people’s things.”
“You were achild,” Cian ground out, voice full of rage. Yet his hands were gentle as he threaded his fingers in mine.
“I prayed three days for rescue. I waited and waited, but no one ever came. It was just hunger and nightmares and loneliness. And then I woke up and there was fire in every room. I could hear them screaming, the fire bell ringing…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “My parents…they didn’t make it out. I used to believe I had summoned that fire in my sleep because it was all I dreamt of after. In my nightmares, I became fire and vengeance and rage.”
Cian kissed the top of my head. “If you had, it would be justice, what you did.”
“No one should ever treat a child the way you were treated, Nevahn,” Hellion offered, running their fingers through my hair.
Cian brought my fingers up, touched them to his lips one by one. “Is that why? The blacksmithing?”
I nodded slowly. “The closest humankind will ever come to taming fire. I can’t bend it to my will with magic, so I use a hammer.”
“You’re drawn to it,” Hellion said quietly. “Or perhaps it’s drawn to you.”
I opened my eyes and looked up at them, remembering the way the blue lightning danced across my fingertips. What if I had summoned the fire that killed my parents? What if, all this time, I was alone because I deserved it?
Hellion brushed their lips gently over mine. “If anyone ever lays a hand on you again, you need only speak their names, and I will bring you their heads as a gift.”
That made me smile. “I love you, too, Hel.”
Fortwodays,Idrilled the Skaags with the ballistas, teaching them everything I knew. We drilled from sun up to sun down, practicing how to load, aim, reposition. Three hours each day were dedicated just to targeting.
At night, I slept between Hellion and Cian, all of us bone tired from days of drills and army camp life. It was the one comfort I had, knowing I would get to go back to them every night, even if I would soon be back on my own. I treasured every second we had together, every touch, every glance, knowing that I might not get another chance.
When the day of our departure came, my men weren’t ready, but we were more ready than we had been at the beginning. It would have to do.
