Page 38 of Heart’s Rescue

“Arryn!” I scream, and then I’m running over to her, my magic churning restlessly just beneath the snow.

She’s still holding the flaming branch in front of her chest like a Royal Guardsman making a valiant last stand. Her lips are pulled back in a snarl, her eyes are wide, and her skin’s gone several shades lighter, as though the void beast bled the color from her cheeks. She’s looking right at me, but I don’t think she’s really seeing me.

“Arryn,” I say again, gentler this time. “It’s okay. It’s gone.”

She pulls in a ragged breath, and the flaming branch dips toward the snow. Sparks drift down to sputter and die beside the brilliant red spots of blood.

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

I’m trying to keep my voice calm, trying not to scream at myself for letting this happen, leaving this woman undefended. Letting her get hurt. Voids, I might as well have drawn the beast in myself.

Arryn sucks in another breath and finally drops the burning stick.

“N-No,” she stammers, shaking her head. “I’m f-fine.”

Her sleeve is ripped wide open. Blood leaks down the thick leather of the jacket I’d given her. I hold my hands out to her, palms up to show I’m unarmed, and then take a step closer. My mind is ruthlessly churning through our narrow array of terrible options; I try to ignore it and give her a calm, easy smile.

“Fire magic, huh?” I ask. “Not bad.”

A jumpy little laugh comes through her lips. She shakes her head, sending her dark hair flying.

“Fire magic is the worst,” she says.

“Aw, that’s not true,” I say.

I take another step toward her. Now I’m close enough that her thick, floral scent swirls in the air between us.

“Arryn,” I say. I’m trying to be as calm as Phaedron patching my scrapes and cuts when I was a kid. “Your arm. May I touch it?”

She looks at her arm, then gives a little start. “Oh,” she says, in a thin, wavery voice.

Is she about to faint? Voids help me, she might be about to faint.

“Let’s sit down,” I say, falling to my knees.

Arryn settles clumsily beside me, then bites her lip and holds up her arm. Her skin has gone a dusty gray color. There’s too much blood on the jacket for me to get a good look at her injury. For me to know if it’s been touched.

“Tell me about your fire magic,” I say, to distract her.

She gives another shaky laugh. “Oh, that. It’s— It’s so uncouth.”

She laughs again, and this time it’s a bit brighter and stronger, as though she’s making a joke. Or perhaps as though the world has made a joke of her, and she’ll be damned if she’s not going to laugh right along with it.

“Damn useful, though,” I say as I take her arm in my hands.

“No,” she replies.

Her voice is almost a whisper, and she’s still shaking her head. Her gaze has gone from her arm to the snow beneath her legs. Very gently, I peel back the leather of her jacket. There’s a layer of wool underneath, that dark blue sweater I was especially fond of and probably never should have lent her. It’s my warmest sweater.

Was my warmest sweater.

“It’s kind of a scandal,” Arryn says, still speaking in that voice that’s scarcely more than a whisper. “Fire magic is so lowbrow.”

I can’t stop the noise that rises in the back of my throat, but I do try to make it less of a growl and more of a cough. What kind of a world does this woman come from that fire isn’t valuable?

“I burned down the family’s grandfather clock when I was three,” she continues. “That earned me thirty lashes. One for every decade the clock had survived until I came around.”

She tosses her hair back over her shoulder and looks at me. There’s something oddly defiant about her gaze, as though she’s daring me to say anything about her magic. Or about a family that would beat a three-year-old.