He crouched beside me and helped me sit up. Blood ran down the rivulets in the white streets; a slow current of death and my saving grace.
Four men lay dead by the alley with more blood covering them than a simple knife wound would cause. My hearing returned with a popping sensation in each ear. Some women were screaming, and some men were standing uncertainly outside of the tavern.
I looked at my bare wrist; having the cuff off was too strange to have forgotten. Weston slipped it back on before I could ask for it. He threw my cloak over his shoulder and picked me up with an arm around my back and one under my knees. I saw the city’s guards running down the street, shouting. Weston carried me through an alley and stood in front of the city’s blue shield of flames.
I didn’t know whether it was my aching head and hazy thoughts or complete trust that had me void of any worry while he set me down and wrapped me up in my cloak. A tinge of cold came off the fire; we were so close that I could reach out and touch it. I stared at the dancing, flickering flames in a mesmerized state of nothingness.
He hauled me back up, and we both looked to see the city’s guards running down the alley. Weston’s eyes met mine for a moment before he looked to the flames and took a deep breath, his chest moving with it.
And then with the fortitude that I was sure only an assassin could have, he walked us into the fire.
I kept my eyes open. If this was how I was supposed to die, then I wanted to see the flames that were my undoing. I felt nothing as blue consumed my vision. It was as if I were underwater in a pool of icy flames. Weston halted for a moment, his body cold and tense against mine.
I felt his chest inhale hard when we stepped out. His skin was beyond chilled, and there was visible ice on his face while his lips had to have been numb in their blueness. Other than that, he seemed healthy. Alive.
The first feeling I felt since I had hit my head was astonishment. We shouldn’t have been able to walk through the flames. Because the flames killed a man with one touch.
I now knew he wasn’t human at all.
But what did that make me?
* * *
The ache in my head was a constant all the way back to the camp. I assumed the guards would be running at us any minute, but no one followed. The only sound behind us was the swish of the long, dry grass and the song of the cicadas. I could still see the flames when I closed my eyes as if they had left an imprint on me forever.
“Why aren’t they following us?” I asked, my thoughts of Weston leaning toward the uncomfortable side after my realization that he wasn’t human. I knew human men. They were motivated by sex, money, or power, weren’t they? But what drove Weston? I didn’t know how to understand his motives, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to.
“They don’t care what happens outside the city,” he said as he made his way into the camp. Color had returned to his lips, and the ice had melted, dripping down his face. No one would have ever guessed that he had just walked through man-killing flames.
“How did I live through that?”
“I shielded you,” he said as he sat me down next to the fire. I couldn’t decide if I
felt better that he’d shielded me than I would if I were some kind of immortal farm girl from Alger. I wasn’t familiar with that girl, and she kind of scared me. But maybe . . . just maybe she didn’t exist, and I only survived because of Weston.
“How did you survive that?” I asked.
“Enough questions,” he sighed. Walking through the flames distracted me from the real problem I now faced. The cuff had come off. For enough time that I was sure it didn’t go unnoticed.
“Weston, we need to go,” I said as I stood up, wincing at my aching head.
“We aren’t going anywhere tonight.”
“You don’t understand. We have to leave.” I put a lot of emphasis on have. I didn’t know how to explain it to him, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to elaborate.
He raised a brow. “Why don’t you make me understand, then?”
I swallowed. “There are men after me.”
“I’ve been aware of that since we left Cameron.”
“They know where I am now.” My shortened pants started to slide down my hips under my cloak, and I grabbed them with a fist to keep them up. What happened in the Burning City slammed into me like a tidal wave and I felt too exhausted to stand, but my worry over the cuff was like a tug-of-war of emotions keeping me standing.
Weston looked down at my fist and then back up to my face with fury simmering underneath the emerald green.
Nobody at that moment could have convinced me Hell was red. No, it was most assuredly contrived of green flames.
“Let them come,” he said darkly as he sat down, leaning against a tree trunk and focusing the intensity of his stare on the fire.