Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(95)

Then, under the water, the remnants of the objects all caught on fire again, as if they’d never even stopped burning. As if the water was made of alcohol.

I caught my breath, and beside me, I could hear Malina’s gasp. It reminded me of images I’d seen of oil fires raging unchecked on ocean surfaces, but these continued blazing as they sank, like the ruins of some catastrophic shipwreck. Smoke from them funneled through the water, and spat up black and oily, spinning into the sky like a sooty tornado wreathed with veins of flame.

“Oh shit,” Niko whispered. “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?”

“Would we know?” Malina asked. “Would we feel it if it was?”

“Well, something has certainly transpired,” Dunja said, so dryly I nearly laughed. She swiped the back of one hand over her cheekbone, leaving a trail of char. “In either case, we cannot stay here. This will hardly have escaped her notice, whatever its effect. I need to get you all away from here immediately, back to our camp.”

“Why camp?” Luka argued. “Why can’t we leave, right now?”

“Because if this isn’t over, we will need some other way to finish it,” Dunja said. “And there is nowhere in the world for these two to go, where she would not eventually flush them out like prey leaving a bloodied trail.”

WE ATE WHAT we could forage from the back of the van. I wrestled open a jar of cocktail hot dogs that had seen better days, or possibly years, and we roasted them over a little fire banked with stones. Luka had lit this one; Dunja had been oddly willing to let him take the reins, and now she perched on a massive stump across from us, huddled in a tasseled black pashmina that had also come from the van. She looked like a bird that had drawn a sheet over its own cage. Maybe she was finally tiring, I thought. Or maybe she just missed him.

Malina sat with Niko on a log a little ways away from us, far enough that we couldn’t hear their conversation. Her head rested on Niko’s shoulder and her arm draped across Niko’s legs. Even exhausted, and with all the danger we were still in, my sister looked happier than I’d ever seen her.

I teased a baby hot dog off its stick with a pair of cheese crackers, and offered the makeshift sandwich to Luka. He took it without looking at me, making sure our fingers didn’t even brush, muscles twitching madly along his jaw in the firelight. He’d barely spoken a word to me since we got back here, and I could almost see the fury simmering inside him. It scared me. We’d been friends for almost ten years, and in all that time, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him fully angry. At least not like this, with it boiling so close beneath the surface.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered to him. “Why are you being like this?”

He gave a tight shake of his head, then stood. “I’m going to take a walk.”

I looked down at my hands as he left, picking at my fingers, my insides raw with pain.

“It’s not you he’s angry at, sweetness,” Dunja said. The firelight painted flickering shadows across her face, until she looked like a jungle cat peering through foliage. “He’s furious with himself. You can see it from a mile away.”

“Why would he be?”

“Because he doesn’t think it’s working, and he doesn’t know how to protect you. And that’s the one thing he yearns to do.”

I hesitated. “Dunja—I think I know him. Death, I mean. There was a boy I met, right before Mama died. Right before this all started. You haven’t said so much about him, but I think . . . I’m afraid it may have been him.” I took a shuddering breath. “And I wanted to say I’m sorry, for anything that happened with him. I didn’t know he belonged to you. And having known the best of him, even for just a little bit, I know it must hurt so much that he left.”

She unwound the pashmina from her shoulders and rose, stepping neatly over the fire and to me. Her movements were so precise the air barely stirred as she dropped into a crouch in front of me and took my face into her hands, thumbs brushing over my cheekbones. I leaned into her touch.

“He hurt you, didn’t he, sweetness?” she whispered fiercely, her pale eyes holding fast to mine. I could feel the outraged flare of her protection, even beneath all the love she had for him, and it was too much to keep from crying. “We aren’t meant to serve him with beauty outside of the magicked confines of that bubble kingdom; our living bodies are simply too frail to withstand the burden. So he pushed you too hard when he shouldn’t have, didn’t he, because he was eager to see how far you could go? Demanded more than you could give. Am I right?”

A tear slid hot down my cheek. “Yes. I mean, I wanted to do it—I was happy with him—but it just—”

“Let me tell you something your mother wished so desperately she could have told you, little niece.” She cupped my cheek. “Not everything is your fault. And certainly not anything he did. You don’t always need to be so brave.”

Tears stung my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Go to that boy.” She skimmed her fingers down my throat, hovering them gently above my breastbone. “Tell him what’s in there. Or what would be in there, rather, if you weren’t so hell-bent on keeping it out. There’s no need for that anymore. Not when you could have the true luxury of love.”