Thirteen
Zaya
“Zaya…” A hand was shaking my shoulder. “Zaya…” I blearily opened my eyes. The charzbos smiled at me from where he crouched near the fire. He brushed my hair back behind my ear. I blinked rapidly into the early morning light.
“It’s morning.”
“Yes and the storm has stopped.”
He turned back to the fireplace and stoked it, putting some more pages on it and one of the logs we had been drying out. The book pages flared up and pressed their hope for flame into the dried log.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow, rubbing sleep from my eyes, my fingertips lingering on my lips a moment. Had that been a dream? Had we kissed last night? Yes… Yes, we had. And I had initiated it. I shrugged off any embarrassment and pulled the towels and cloak up around my shoulders as I sat up. Cartari handed me a drink of water, which I gratefully chugged.
“Would you like to go out into the new snow with me?”
I smiled at him. “What for?”
“I’m sure we can find a sledding hill.”
I laughed. “Are you a child?”
“Whenever I get the chance to be.”
I nodded at him, finding his grin irresistible, then stood up and stretched. The cabin was getting warmer by the minute, the frost retreating into runs of teardrops down the windows. I reached up high and stretched out my whole body. Cartari was looking far too obviously away from me, when I had hoped he would be enjoying the look of my body twisting and turning to wake up. I frowned. I wondered if he was embarrassed by the kissing of the night before. He had stopped it, after all. Maybe he had someone waiting for him back on Farian…
A spike of jealousy went through me that astounded me. Why would I care? He was a charzbos. A barbarian. I had no reason to care if he was taken already or not. All I needed to care about was him getting me to Astrida safely, before Blatson could find out where I was. If Blatson threw the might of the military behind him to get me back, not even a telekinetic warrior could keep me safe.
Cartari handed me my cloak from the floor. It was a gorgeous piece of clothing. What dignified lady had lost it in the southern precinct jail, I wondered? Black with red feather accents, just my style. I slung it over my shoulders.
The door was snowed in and Cartari had to push quite a bit to get it open, but he finally cleared aside about three feet of fresh fallen snow. We strapped snowshoes that Cartari had thankfully not decided to burn during the tense night, to our feet and headed into the blanket of white.
The sunlight blasted us with brilliance as we threaded our way along the narrow trail. At least, I assumed it was a trail. Cartari seemed to know where he was going. Snow-laden branches above us shook occasionally and fell to the sides, letting shivers of snow sparkles fall into the air.
A bird shot off from its nest and cooed into the air, also grateful to have survived the storm.
We walked through a grove of giant redwood trees and a meadow spread out before us. A broad pond glistened, frozen over, snowbanks high on its sides. We walked up to its side. I smiled as Cartari bent down to unstrap his snowshoes.
“This isn’t a sledding hill, but I’ll swing you around on the ice, instead.” He grinned at me. I sighed good naturedly and took off my own snowshoes.
“I’ll race you.” Then I sprinted out onto the ice. Cartari was but a moment behind me, grabbing my arm, then twirling me around, slinging me out from his body, struggling to stay upright as his boots slicked away from him.
I laughed and clung to his arm as he spun me around and flung me far away, so that I glided, arms flailing, feeling as though I were flying, and he was racing behind me to catch up.
He grabbed my waist as I slowed, bent over, exhausted from laughing and from running on the ice. He pulled me up to him looking into his pale green eyes as they glistened with the shine of reflected snow and sun, and he swooped in to kiss me gently on the lips. Then he stepped back and pushed me away from him telekinetically so I was gliding out into the center again.
“Stand up straight! I will guide you!” He commanded. So I stood up, holding my arms out to my sides, but then his telekinetics slid me along the ice, ramping up faster and faster, my feet barely touching the ice, until I was out nearly in the middle and he was a speck behind me. Then his powers spun me, twirled me, like a ballerina, and I was getting dizzy as the snowbanks flash, spun, flash, spun, away around, laughing and smiling, the sun gazing down in supreme beauty, and he was getting closer and then a loud crack sounded beneath me. I could barely register the splitting ice before I broke through it, my spinning body dashing down into the ice water.
“Cartari!” I gurgle screamed from within the water. I flailed wildly to grab at the ice, but it broke beneath my glove’s grasp, and I heaved a huge breath of air into my lungs. In the next second, I was captured in the flow of water we didn’t even realize the pond had and I was dragged beneath the other side of the ice, the surface above my head.
The silvery transparency of the ice flashed by above me as I tried desperately to cling to it, to pound on it, to bash my fist through. I saw Cartari’s shadow far behind me and I tried to swim back in his direction, but the current was too
