Of Frost & Cinder (Old Version)

Complications

*dedicated to @AuRevoirSimone for keeping me sane when Beck was being a pain in the ass.

Chapter 18

"Shelland?" I hear Beck shift forward. Even with my back turned, I can sense how he's wary of the distance he should keep between us.

I can't look to him. I can't even move in fear of lighting something on fire again.

What is happening to me?

I glare at my palms, furious at the blood coursing through my veins like lava. My hands are singed black again, like I've flexed my fingers through a pile of ashes inside a chimney. I'm afraid to wipe the dirt away, in fear of finding the flesh beneath disfigured.

I hear rocks crunch beneath the weight of men's boots and the warm prickle of Beck's touch along my arm follows the sound.

"Beck, don't!" I jolt upright, scrambling across the ground until I'm far enough from him to stand. "You can't...I might incinerate you."

"I'm not exactly flammable," he retorts, but the smile doesn't meet his cagy eyes.

"I don't know what's happening to me—what I am, or how to even—" I clamp my jaw shut the moment I feel tears bubbling along my lash lines.

Stop. Be brave and in control.

"I almost killed someone today." The words don't sound like they come from my voice. The noise sounds so frightened, so meek, so...helpless. "All I wanted to do was protect myself and then I nearly killed him. I could have killed your friends too, and you know what's even worse? I actually thought about it."

I stick out my arm, stretching out my quivering fingers up toward the wintery sky.

Beck slides his gaze down my limbs, and I desperately wish I could hear what he's thinking, but his expression is stone as he soaks in the darkness seeping from my skin. He stands there for a slow-motioned minute, and his silence is terrifying.

Does he want to run? I wonder. Suddenly—as if he somehow he read my mind—Beck meets my gaze and takes two strides toward me.

My hummingbird heart is electric, fluttering wildly against the cage of my chest as Beck lifts his hand toward my neck. I can feel the current surging through the space between his thumb and my throat.

"I wouldn't get too close. I'm dangerous," I say nervously as he gently strokes his coarse thumb along the line of tender flesh. The heat pools in my cheeks as he takes a look at the misshapen ring forming around my neck, bruises imprinted from the trucker's iron grasp.

"He tried to kill you first."

It isn't posed as a question.

"That doesn't justify lighting him on fire," I whisper, trying to read the hard glaze in his silver eyes.

He lets out a low growl, his warm breath sweeping across my forehead. I'm not sure how I hadn't noticed before—perhaps I was too caught up in my own drama to see it—but Beck has changed...physically. He's not as lean as he was when he broke into my house. He's wider now, much thicker, but his change in shirt size isn't what really grabs my attention. It's his skin. He looks tired, almost unhealthily so. His skin lacks that glow of youth it had the night he dropped me off from the library. There are other changes, like his longer hair and his unkempt facial hair, but mostly, it's his missing glow that I notice most. It somehow makes him seem older, like an exhausted parent instead of a vibrant man-boy.

"Beck?" I question, but as if he can sense my concern, Beck drops his hands to his sides and takes a step backwards.

"You need to go home."