The door frame was a halo of holy fire, both warding and beckoning, bits of it breaking away in charred ash. Without another glance back, he strode up the porch steps and into his doorway.
The threshold was no longer.
The roar of the fire and the wails of the dying drowned out Lilac’s and Yanna’s shouts at the escapees; they remained amply distracted. Artus was gone, or Garin at least didn’t recognize him in the immediate pile of dead near the entry. He covered the lower half of his face with his hand out of habit and began to move.
As expected, the fire devoured the front of the structure first, climbing upward faster than it spread outward. Black smoke filled the hallway; he winced and batted as the flames grazed him, the heat shockingly not searing so much as it was bothersome. He’d never walked directly into fire, but the sensation at least momentarily distracted him from the throbbing in his limbs.
He held his apology as he stepped on bodies, over those begging for their end. Fire seemed a shitty way to go, but so was an arrow through your body or a creature with an iron grip sucking the life out of you. They’d dug their own grave.
Fangs dripping, eyes stinging, Garin walked with his arms out beside him, fingers trailing the wall until he emerged into the kitchen, the parlor to his right. A wide sweep of his hand and the hollowthumpof aged wood it hit told him he’d reached the aumbry.
The smoke was a little thinner here; someone had broken the back window, but Yanna was out there, snarling threats and continuing to shoot arrows. He fumbled for the handle, throwing the door open and knocking several glasses over, shattering them before the book was in his grasp.
He swallowed, real tears beginning to fall as his hands grazed his mother’s handwriting. Garin flipped to the back and felt the small leather envelope—snarled and stuck his fingers inside. Empty.
The fact that the Adelaide’s family and Sable and Jeneare had kept the aumbry as it was shocked him, and filled him with a dangerous hope. Maybe it had fallen out. Just as he reached further into the aumbry, knocking his hand into the far corners, there was a sharp stab of pain at his back.
Garin roared and dropped the book, blinking into the smoke; he spun and swung, and his arm made contact with a body. Artus grunted before him, his entire face charred, grasping blindly around Garin’s torso for the hawthorn stake that had impaled him. The old man snarled and shoved Garin against the aumbry, trying to drive it further into him.
“No!” Fighting to keep conscious, Garin lost his footing and felt the stake inch into him as he slid down the front of the cabinet. Just as his vision began to go and felt his mind slipping, there was a shriek and athump; someone else grabbed him—someone strong and full of vigor. The painful pressure at his back and cloud of stupor that began to seep over him lifted, and Garin heard the stake clatter across the room.
“Come on,” shouted Lilac over the roar of flames. Coughing into her shoulder, she hauled him to his feet and threw his arm over her shoulder. She dragged him toward the now flame-covered hallway, retching and gasping for air.
He allowed her to pull him, but not before instinct had him tugging her back, sweeping his arm across the floor. He didn’t find Aimee’s journal and there was no time to look—but his fingers did find purchase in something else soft and brittle. Garin grabbed onto it, dragging it along over the piles of smoldering flesh.
The screams had become one with the creaking timber as the blaze spread throughout the east hall and second floor. A deafening groan shook the building. Lilac looked up at the ceiling, ducking and shielding her petrified face when embers began to rain down.
With all his might, Garin lunged for her, wrapping his free arm around her waist, pulling her down the hallway and out the door.
They stumbled together into the night and down the porch steps, collapsing onto the sodden earth. A crashing roar sounded behind them.
The Trevelyan farmhouse was gone.
35
Lilac stared up at the sky, blinking the stars and smoke into focus as her muscles seized against the ground. Her lungs burned, and it was painful to breathe; scowling, she turned her head and spat into the dirt. She could feel by the biting breeze at her feet and shoulder—despite the thick layer of soot that coated her skin—that part of the hem of her dress had been singed off. She sobbed once and gritted her teeth against the tremendous ache that resonated throughout her body. Miraculously, nothingfeltraw; if she’d sustained burns anywhere on her legs as Garin had, the adrenaline was enough to dull the pain.
By the time she found the strength to try to sit up, Garin was crawling away from the spot where he’d landed beside her—back toward the flame-swallowed porch that was no longer. He, too, was covered in soot, his shoes gone and one pant leg partially burned through, streaks of dark blood left in the dirt behind him.
“Garin,” she croaked as he pulled himself off the floor, cursing how convenient it would be to have even a smidgeon of the power he held over her. She coughed and scanned the grass for any sign of the bow she’d flung aside. “If you take one more step toward that house I’ll shoot you myself. Garin, I order you to stop!”
At that moment, Yanna rounded the corner of the house and took onelook at him nearing the blazing porch. She exchanged a look of fury with Lilac before dropping her bow and quiver. “Not again,” Yanna growled, striding straight for him.
“Yanna, no!” Lilac pushed through the ache in her joints and had barely staggered to her feet when there was a gargled yelp.
Garin had his mouth to Yanna’s throat.
Lilac froze. An unruly, apple-green rage stuck like a stake into Lilac’s chest, nearly smothering her fear for Yanna’s life.
Nearly.
“Get off of her!” Lilac demanded, tugging Garin’s head away with a fistful of his hair, wrapping an arm around his chest. “Let her go, Garin, she’ll die!” Lilac pulled with all her might, but even with her thrall strength, it was no use.
He only grunted and shifted his grip.
“Help me.” Whimpering, Yanna bucked and cursed both Lilac and Garin—but he clung to her so tightly at the throat and around the waist that the veins in his forearms bulged. His breaths between gulps were so loud, Lilac could hear them over the roar of the fire and Yanna’s bellowed gasps.
She staggered back and swallowed, sick with a burning envy she couldn’t help. This was her friend. It was her friend—and she didn’t care.
