The Flame Never Dies. Rachel Vincent
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lure degenerates from miles away.
“I want to take him home,” I repeated. Then I held my breath, watching the others for their reactions as candlelight cast dancing shadows on the six other faces in our huddle.
“Okay, first of all, he doesn’t have a home,” Devi insisted, and though her voice was softer, it had lost none of its bite. “He’s an orphan twice over. He must be the unluckiest damn orphan in the world. I mean, who gets adopted by demons?”
“They spared his life, but you want to abandon him,” I pointed out. No need to note that demons only spare children so they can be possessed once they’ve suffered through puberty and can reach the high shelves. “Sounds like meeting you was his unluckiest blow yet.”
Grayson covered a grin with one hand, but Devi only scowled at me and continued. “Second of all, I’m not sure that returning him to a Church children’s home would be much of an improvement. Those are run by demons too. All we’d be doing is delaying his inevitable possession.”
“So your solution is to keep him?” Reese whispered, intentionally misunderstanding her to support my point, and I could have hugged him.
She abandoned the rest of her argument in surprise. “Of course not. A kid’s the last thing we need.”
My brows rose, and I aimed a pointed glance at my sister.
Devi pulled a long rope of dark hair over her shoulder and leaned back against a couch too musty to risk sitting on. “We don’t have any choice about that one. But that doesn’t mean we should start collecting more of them!”
But I could practically hear the part she hadn’t said out loud. Devi wasn’t worried about life in the badlands with an infant—in fact, she rarely even thought about that impending challenge—because she didn’t think Mellie’s baby would survive.
Despite my determination to see that baby live at all costs, the heartbreaking truth was that Devi was probably right. But Tobias was alive, and we couldn’t just leave him for the degenerates. So I took a deep breath and forged ahead. “Look, I know you all wanted to head south, but we don’t have a destination in mind, so what difference does it make if we head west instead?”
Finn squeezed my hand. “It’s nearly a thousand miles, Nina.” Because in our wanderings, we’d never strayed more than a hundred miles or so from New Temperance.
“So what?” I stared into the deep green of his eyes, trying to understand his reluctance. “Are we on some schedule I don’t know about?”
Maddock exhaled slowly as he painstakingly peeled the label from an empty bean can as if it deserved more of his attention than my suggestion did. “No, but it’s not safe. There’s too much empty space between the cities out west. Caravans will be few and far between.”
“We’ve never been better prepared for that,” Reese argued, and I gave him a grateful smile. “We just scored the biggest haul we’re ever going to have. That’ll give us some breathing room while we learn to spot those plants Mellie and Ana have been reading about. And it’s spring.” He shrugged. “Hunting will be easier.”
“Nina, what does it matter where we leave him?” Finn asked softly, stroking my knuckles with his thumb. “I hate to say it, but Devi’s right. He’ll be raised by demons no matter where we take him, so why not drop him in one of the cities on our way south?”
“Because he’s lost everything! Twice! The least we can do is return him to the only home he’s ever known, where at least he’ll have some friends.”
Maddock set his can down with a firm clank against the wood floor. “We’re not going west, Nina.”
I glanced at him in surprise. He’d always been a good leader precisely because he never made illogical, unilateral rulings, but something had changed. Something was wrong, and Maddock might not be willing to talk about it, but that didn’t mean the rest of us had to stop talking. “I say we vote on it.”
“No vote.” Maddy leaned back against the couch next to Devi and crossed his arms over the new T-shirt he’d found in the cargo shipment. “We’re not going.”
My gaze narrowed on him and I let go of Finn’s hand. “We’re a team. We decide together.” I glanced around our candlelit circle, hyperaware of the sudden tension in our ranks. “All in favor of taking Tobias back west, to Verity, raise your hand.” I held my left hand high above my head, and a second later Reese did the same.
Devi crossed her arms over her chest and raised one eyebrow at me in challenge. That was no surprise, and neither was Maddock’s nay stance, but what I couldn’t understand was why he looked genuinely sorry to be voting against me.
Anabelle raised her hand, and I smiled at her.
“You don’t get a vote!” Devi snapped.
“The hell she doesn’t! There’s a price on her head too, and she lost just as much as the rest of us when we fled New Temperance,” I said hotly.
“She gets a vote,” Maddock said. But he didn’t seem very pleased with his own ruling.
Fair enough.
But when Finn’s arm remained at his side, my chest suddenly felt tight. “Sorry, Nina. I vote we go south.” His deep gaze pleaded with me to understand, and I tried not to be hurt that he’d sided with Maddock rather than with me.
“That’s three to three,” Devi said, irritation flashing in her candlelit dark eyes, and we all turned to Grayson, who would have the deciding vote.
After a couple of seconds of contemplation, she raised her hand.
“Damn it!” Devi snapped.
Grayson only shrugged. “If we don’t go with Nina, she’ll go on her own, and we’re safer together than apart, no matter where we wind up.”
She was right on all counts.
Maddock glanced over my shoulder to where my sister lay snoring lightly on the wood floor. I could see what he was thinking, but I shook my head. “If you wake her up, she’ll vote to take him home,” I said, and no one disagreed.
Maddy sighed. “I’ll take first watch. The rest of you get some sleep.” His eyebrows dipped low. “In the morning we’re westward bound.”
* * *
When everyone but Maddock and Finn had curled up on their sleeping mats, I checked on Tobias and found him fast asleep on my bedroll, which meant I’d have to double up with someone. I grabbed Finn’s mat and tossed my head toward the door, silently asking him to join me in another room.
He nodded with a steamy smile, his pupils dilating as he picked up one of the candles, and heat flooded my cheeks when I realized he’d misread my request for privacy. Finn followed me into the dark hallway, then through another door and into a bedroom where most of the linens had long ago rotted away from the mattress.
“Are you mad at me?” he whispered, pushing the door closed at his back. I turned to find that the candle cast only a small dome of light around us, leaving the rest of the room in deep shadows. The lit space between us felt as intimate as his softly spoken question, and suddenly I realized I could count on both hands the number of times we’d been alone together.
“If I were mad at you, I’d be cuddling with my sister right now.” I watched the candlelight flicker in his eyes, thankful that they stayed the same no matter whose body he wore. If the eyes truly were the windows to the soul, at least I could be sure I was seeing some real part of him even when the rest belonged to someone else.
I’d first met him in Maddock’s body, and the revelation that his form wasn’t really his own had come as a shock to me. But I’d grown used to the guard he’d worn for months now, in part because I had no previous association of those arms or hands or face with another person. And in part because he wore the body easily and used it well.