Rage mixed with panic, heating my blood and making the water steam.
“A fitting punishment for harboring a Fireblood, don’t you think?” said the captain, his eyes glittering.
So everyone would suffer because of me.
“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done this night,” I managed to whisper.
The flames cast strange shadows on his leering grin. “Tie her to a horse. We’ll take her to Blackcreek Prison.”
“But, Captain,” said a soldier. “Her fire.”
“Then knock her out.”
Pain split the back of my head. The last thing I saw before my world faded to black was the white arrow on the captain’s chest.
The mark of the Frost King.
TWO
Five Months Later
BOOTED FEET APPROACHED IN AN unsteady shuffle, a sign the guards were already deep into their cups. It was just past sunset, the light from the tiny barred window withering into a ruddy glow.
“Wakey, wakey, little wretch.”
I lay huddled in my usual position, knees up, arms wrapped around my chest to hold in my body heat, which the stone floor seemed so greedy to leech away. I sat up slowly, my ankle cuff clinking against the chain. Three faces leered at me through the bars.
“What time is it?” Bragger asked, the words tangling together in his mouth. He was thoroughly drunk.
“Time for you to toddle off to your barracks,” I replied, voice scratchy from thirst.
He gave a sly smile. “How do you like your new accessory?”
I glanced at the dull gray shackle. “I’m not sure it matches my dress.”
He snorted a laugh. “Filthy like the rest of you. And how does it feel?”
“Unnecessary.”
“Then I guess you won’t be using that heat of yours again anytime soon.”
“Depends on whether you decide to show your special attention to any of the other prisoners.”
A few weeks before, Bragger and his ale-soaked lackeys had decided they’d had enough of the wracking coughs coming from the older man in the cell next to mine. The man’s cries for help cut through the layers of numbness that I had built in my mind. Although the dirty conditions and spoiled food had weakened my health, and my gift, I had managed to reach through the bars to give Bragger a nice jolt of heat on his bare forearm. The beating had stopped, but the prisoner had died that night, and I had inherited his ankle chain as a reward for my interference.
“None of your concern either way, Firefilth,” said Bragger. “We might just turn our attentions to you next time. Won’t last a day once we’re through with you.”
Inside, my stomach lurched, but outwardly I was as calm as glass. “You’ve been promising me that for months, and here I am. I think you’ve become rather fond of me. Templeton here has been giving me extra rations.”
Templeton, the smallest and quietest of the three, started to protest, but Bragger just grinned. “I won’t fall for that again, turning us on each other so we forget about you. I ask you again, you dirty bit of char. What time is it?”
“Time to burn all of you into ashes.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said the words aloud until he laughed. “Can’t have much fire left in you or you would’ve done that a long time ago. But just in case, Rager, you got the bucket?”
“Right here,” said Rager, scraping the metal bucket against the bars.
A key snicked in the lock and the door swung open.
“What time is it?” Bragger asked, low and serious, the tone that told me it would only get worse if I didn’t play along.
I gritted my teeth. “Time for my dousing.” He smiled into my face, a mask of cruel anticipation.
I concentrated on staying still, not backing away. No matter how I tried, though, I jerked when the frigid water crashed over me, and hissing steam rose from my skin. The guards doubled over with laughter.
“That just never gets old,” Bragger said, fouling the air near my face with his breath. “A whistling kettle in the shape of a girl. I wonder what would happen if we poured out all that red tea?”
I lifted my hand slowly to brush back a lock of soaked hair. His eyes followed the movement, alert.
“I’m not scared of you,” he said. But he kept his distance as Rager stepped forward and swung another bucket of water, this one full of chunks of ice that cut my cheeks and tangled in my hair. I gasped, wishing I could control the steam that so entertained them. But then again, without the steam, there would be no fear. I’d seen what they did to the prisoners who didn’t scare them.
A third bucket soaked my back. I started to shiver.
“I don’t know why the executioner hasn’t come for you yet,” said Bragger, “but it’s only a matter of time.”
He gave a swift kick to my shoulder, knocking me off-balance. I curled up in a ball as the cell door closed with a clang, their laughter moving farther away.
I am as cold as the prison walls. I feel nothing.
Ice cracked like the breaking of bones.
I woke with a jerk, heart racing. A dark shape, something strange and inhuman, had been hovering over me, touching my cheek in a blistering caress. I blinked away the dream, and the prison came into focus.
Frost swept the prison in a white wave, crusting over stone walls and insinuating itself into every crack and keyhole. It spilled across the floor and hardened into glittering sheets that stopped inches away, leaving me on an island of bare stone.