Winter Fire (The Witchling #3)(83)

“What are you saying?” she asked. “What happened?”

Noah shook his head. “First things first, you need to warm up.” He offered his hand again.

She took it this time, sensing a shift in him without understanding what it was. He helped her to her feet. Biji wobbled, and Noah wrapped a strong arm around her. More than air magick fluttered inside of her. She focused on placing her frozen feet, and they moved towards the fire. Noah lowered her to the ground then released her to sit across from her.

Biji lifted wooden arms to the fire. Her fingertips had started to turn purple from cold. Her eyes watered at the idea that she was minutes away from freezing to death. It wasn’t the fact she almost died that bothered her; it was frustration that her body wasn’t strong enough for her to get help.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked.

She nodded.

“You don’t look okay.”

“I’m failing my friends,” she said, unable to help the tears. “I can’t walk. How can I save them?”

“I’ll help you.”

“Why?”

“My sister …” he hesitated, a tortured look crossing his features. “Someone has to stop her. She needs help. Maybe if I can keep her from doing something stupid tonight, she’ll listen to me. Or get her committed. Something.”

She wanted to tell him Dawn was beyond reform, but she didn’t, disturbed by the pain in his voice. Noah was struggling with his decision and himself. Biji suspected he got a front row seat to how crazy Dawn was. A loyal brother, he wasn’t willing to give up on her yet, even if he now understood the danger Summer and Morgan were in.

“You saw her hurt someone,” Biji said. She eased even closer to the fire, needing its heat.

There was a long pause.

“Maybe,” Noah said at last. “I wanted to believe it wasn’t her.”

She pitied him.

They were quiet. Biji let her body warm itself again as much as it would. She didn’t think the ice in her chest would ever thaw out after this.

“Are my friends okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he answered. “At least they were when I left.”

Biji almost sighed in relief. Noah’s intense gaze was on the fire. By the look on his face, his thoughts weren’t good.

“What made you leave?” she asked.

“My sister sent someone to tie me up so I’d keep quiet,” he replied.

“Bitch.”

Noah snorted. “You good at riddles?”

“Not really.”

“Well one of us has to figure out this one,” he said. “It’s where they took your friends.”

“You’re really going to help me?”

“Yes.”

She studied him. Noah didn’t look away. He was serious, which made her think that whatever he saw, it was much worse than she wanted to imagine.

“What’s the riddle?” she asked.

“They were trying to figure out a place to put Morgan. Somewhere where fire couldn’t survive. The ground is too frozen to bury her, and none of them are earth elements,” he explained. “Alexa said there couldn’t be metal or wood, because she can burn through them. Summer is an air element, so I’m assuming there can’t be air, either.”

Biji was thoughtful. Her mind was a little less sluggish than her body, but it still took effort to concentrate. Morgan was super agitated in the basement of the resort. She needed space, so it made sense that Dawn planned on making her suffer by taking away the elements a fire needed to survive.

“No earth and no air. No metal or wood,” Biji murmured. “She kept muttering about how the basement was …” She shivered.

“What?”

“Tomb. Dawn’s taking them to the cemetery.”

Noah grew pale. She saw the look on his face, the one that said he was fighting hard to remain focused when he was devastated.

“I’m ready,” Biji decided.

“No, you’re not.” Noah’s attention shifted to her.

“We can’t just sit here.”

“We can and will. You’re in no shape to go anywhere yet.”

Biji glared at him.

“I spent my life dealing with bitchy women. You are way too nice and pretty to out-bitch my mom and sister,” he warned her.

“I’m adorable,” Biji corrected him. “I hate being called pretty.”

“For real?” He didn’t seem to know how to take her response.

“Yes. Dead serious,” she said. “Pretty is so insincere.”

He rolled his eyes. “I was thinking beautiful but figured it’d freak you out.”

“Beautiful, I can tolerate,” she said. Then stared at him. “We’re in the middle of a snowstorm and my two friends might be dying and I’m half-dead and your sister went off the deep end. You’re not hitting on me, are you?”

“I always thought you were beautiful, ever since you got to the school,” he said simply and tossed another stick into the fire.

For the first time in her life, Biji was speechless. She spent years drooling over guys, but never thought for a second about what any of them might think about her. Mainly because she had a fiancé waiting for her in India. A prearranged marriage made years ago between her father and another business mogul in India. It was the sole reason she never chased after any of the boys at school and just watched them. Daydreamed of what it might be like to date who she wanted.