Icicles Like Kindling Read Free

tattered strands of once-ivory cotton, blood caked in dried brown clumps over long, jagged cuts through his chest.
    He writhes on the ground, a groan finally escaping his mouth as he curls onto his side, showing me his back. What used to be his back. It’s so torn open, so mutilated, I can see one, two, three of his ribs, hard white bones coated in blood and dirt and a few of Autumn’s leaves.
    I drop to my knees and scream.
    Gregg stays curled away from me, his body convulsing on the forest floor. Crystalla. She should be with him. She should be here too—
    I scramble toward him, half aware of footsteps running toward us from camp. But I get to him before anyone reaches us and pull him over, his head lolling to face the specks of blue sky through the forest canopy.
    “Gregg,” I moan, my fingers slick with blood where I grip his arm.
    “Gregg, where is—” Hands jerk me back into a tight hug. Alysson holds me in one arm, Mather in her other, her face blank and pale and as she stares at Gregg.
    Everyone stands around him now, eyes vacant and faces gaunt and—where is Crystalla?
    She’s not here.
    Sir kneels and whips to the men nearest him. “Help me move him.”
    “He killed her,” Gregg says. Those three words shake everyone into stillness as Gregg stares up at the sky like he’s not really seeing it.
    “Herod. He killed her, William. I watched him. Three days, he had her in that cage, and he’d take her out and… he chained me up while he beat her, while he—” Gregg chokes. “I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t stop any of it.…”
    Herod, Angra’s second in command. The name sends shivers up my body, shivers of memories, of blood and pain and people dying.
    Sir nods and Gregg is blocked from view as the other men help Sir lift him into the air. I’m frozen in Alysson’s grip, unable to look away, unable to hear anything beyond the wind rustling the leaves together and the whine that escapes Gregg. One of his arms slips free, dangling limp toward the ground as they pass us. Around his wrist hangs a scarlet ribbon interspersed with streaks of black and purple, almost like—
    No. Not a ribbon. Blood and bruises and dried gore, skin torn open.
    He chained me up.… He killed her, William.…
    “NO!” I scramble to get out of Alysson’s arms.
    Everyone dies. I’ve seen them die, and I’ve cried for them, but this time…
    Crystalla wasn’t supposed to die. There used to be twenty-five of us, then there were ten, now there are nine. My parents died in the final battle when Winter collapsed under Spring. Mather’s parents died when Angra killed them that same night.
Everyone dies.
But Crystalla was supposed to live because I need her to live, I need proof that we can live.
    I scream again and Sir looks back, his eyes locking onto me as I push at Alysson and scream again. Someone slips in to take Sir’s place holding Gregg up, and Sir hurries back the few paces to us. He’s stronger than his wife, so much stronger, and lifts me as I thrash against him.
    Over his shoulder, I watch Alysson trail behind us with her arms around Mather, his face expressionless as he stares unblinking at the leaves beneath his feet. He’s holding something in his fist that he spins around and around. The stone he found.
    He looks up at me, his eyes wet with tears.
    My screams turn into sobs and I collapse against Sir’s neck, unable to breathe.
    That night they lay Gregg by the campfire under the clear Autumn sky. I drag my bedroll to the edge of my tent and lie there with the blanket pulled over my head, my knees tucked to my chin, and my arms wrapped around my legs so I’m as small as I can make myself.
    “They caught us in less than a week,” Gregg says. Everyone crowds around him—except Mather and me, children who should be asleep. But I can tell by the way Mather shifts in his blankets next to me that he’s awake too.
    “It was too risky,” Sir mutters. Something rips—bandages being torn.
    “I never