As The World Catches Fire

Chapter Two: Tahir Vos

Wood grated against my cheek as I came to. Shivering, I opened my eyes, only to slam them shut at the brightness of a midday sun.

"Rozin?" asked Yulia's worried voice. "Rozin, are you awake?"

The grating stopped.

Feet crunched in snow, then gloved hands cupped my cheeks. Metal forced between my teeth and water filled my mouth, sweet and fresh and so welcome that I pushed up on my elbow and wrenched the bottle away from Yulia.

"You're alive!" she said, and when my eyes finally opened, I saw my entire squad surrounding me, mounted in a messy pack. They had tied me to a makeshift sledge, a wide board of rough wood lashed behind a horse with leather straps. Breaths curled in bitter wind. No one smiled but Yulia.

I tore back my sleeve, exposing my right arm. Golden tattoos. It hadn't been a dream.

"Where is it?" I asked, because I could feel the daemon, somewhere deep in the back of my brain, like someone had lodged a stone in my neck. Cold. Hard. Unreadable, but ever present.

Yulia looked to my left.

Captain Shokarov's horse pulled a second sledge. The daemon lay on it, tightly bound in thin iron chains, her eyes closed. Her skirt, now torn along the hem, trailed behind the sledge, and her bare stomach flexed and twitched every so often from discomfort.

They had not given her a coat, nor covered her in furs.

Yulia must have seen my confusion. "She's hot to the touch. We tried to put a coat on her, but she threw some kind of fit. Not awake, mind you. Just thrashing around. We didn't know what else to do."

I watched the daemon. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her brow drawn, enraged even unconscious. She reminded me of when a wolf had once snared its paw in one of our traps, and once exhausted, how it had huffed into the snow, just waiting for prey to get close enough for a snap of its jaws.

"She hasn't woken at all?" I asked.

"No. I don't know why—it's been two days. We're nearly at Tahir Vos."

I sat up sharply. "Two days?" I croaked. I rubbed the back of my neck, expecting a protrusion, or even something hard under the skin. But I only found my spine.

"What do you feel?" Yulia asked.

"Nothing. I got flashes when we bonded, but none since. But she's there."

"There's no connection between you? Can you feel her magic?"

I shook my head. "I haven't felt any magic. Wherever it is, I can't find it."

"Can you determine her name?"