Frostblood (Frostblood Saga #1)(88)

Hadn’t enough been taken? My mother, my home, months of my life. All that was left was Arcus. No matter how I had tried to close myself against him, he’d become a necessity to me. Losing him was too horrible to contemplate.

“What’s that?” said Arcus, his fingers feathering over the tender skin near my ear. “It looks like… a heart. A small black heart.”

“It must be a burn.” But I knew that the Minax had marked me. Sickness twisted my stomach. I couldn’t think about that right now. All I wanted was to bask in comforting arms.

Arcus sucked in a breath as he touched my cheek, drawing his fingers away quickly. “Ruby, you’re burning up. Even for a Fireblood, you’re wickedly hot. We need to get you into water.”

I nodded and pushed up to stand. But the world tilted like a spinning top, and I was pitched from its surface and sent into the black sky.





I moaned and pushed at the hand that mopped my forehead with a cold cloth. I hated cold. I wanted to burn. I was fire.

A sigh. “You have always been stubborn. Now I fear it will be the death of you.”

I fought through the heaviness that fogged my mind and opened my eyes. A lined face and hooked nose swam into view. He smiled, displaying a few missing teeth. The tufts of white hair on his mostly bald head shone like filaments in the sunlight. With his beatific expression, he looked like a messenger of the gods. And since I knew Brother Gamut was dead…

“This is the afterworld?” I asked, my voice as rough as quarry rock.

“If you were dead, would you be sponged with cold water, which you hate so much?”

My senses returned in a rush. My throat hurt. My skin hurt. My eyes felt as if they were full of sand.

“It depends,” I croaked. “The gods might be punishing me.”

He chuckled. “That is all too likely.”

Tears filled my eyes. I was alive. Brother Gamut was alive. If the captain had lied about Brother Gamut, maybe he had lied about the others, too. With a grunt, I pushed up and threw my arms around his fine-boned frame. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you safe.”

He laughed and sucked in a breath. “Your skin is burning hot, Ruby.”

I released him and fell back onto the soft mattress, putting my hands to my spinning head. I finally registered where I was: in a room I had never seen before, with gauzy curtains around the bed and heavy drapes at an open window.

“Where am I?”

“In the queen’s old room.” He gave his gap-toothed grin and waved to a door in the wall. “With a door to Arcus’s room. It is lucky for you that I am so happy to see both of you or I might question the prudence of his choices.”

Before I could reply to his teasing, a wave of nausea hit. “I’m going to be sick.”

“There is nothing left in your stomach but water. That is all you’ve been able to keep down. You have been through a trauma, and your body is just now starting to heal. I have been sitting with you since I arrived, talking to you in hopes that you would fully wake. I am glad you finally decided to do so.”

“How many days?”

“Arcus sent for us before he entered the city. We arrived the day after you… became ill. I have been at your side for three days.”

“And before that you were at the abbey? Safe?”

His wild white brows drew together. “Most of us are unhurt. After the soldiers came…” He met my eyes and sighed. “We had thought Brother Lack was unaware of the exit through the catacombs. We must have been wrong. Once the soldiers knew about you, they questioned us. But Arcus returned quickly, and he and Brother Thistle unleashed their frost on the soldiers. Those of us who are young and able helped fight.”

“And you won?”

“We escaped. After that, Arcus left to bring his supporters to the castle. The rest of us hid in the caves in the mountainside until we received word from Arcus that it was safe to return to the abbey. But he wanted Brother Thistle here when it was all over, someone he could trust to advise him. And I offered to come provide healing to anyone injured in the battle.”

“Brother Gamut, you won’t look me in the eyes. What aren’t you telling me?”

He shook his head, the words coming out slow and labored. “We lost a few of our brothers and sisters in the fight.”

He told me the names of his lost friends, including the jovial Brother Peele. I held his hand tightly as he spoke, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“The rest of us are safe, though,” he assured me. “Sister Clove’s arm was broken, but it’s healing. We all help her more now.”

“And so will I,” I said, sitting up and taking a deep breath. “As soon as I’m well, I’m going back with you. The abbey is my home now.”

“I am glad you would call the abbey your home. I have had to drink many cups of my own tea to ease my worries about you.”

“No need to worry anymore. But tell me more, please? I need to know what I’ve missed.”

He patted my hand again, withdrawing it quickly with a grimace. “Only if you promise to let me sponge your face and neck. Even Firebloods are not meant to burn all the time.”

He continued to dab my forehead, cheeks, and neck with the cool cloth as he spoke. I interrupted often, and he answered my questions, sometimes urging me to be quiet so he could finish a thought.