House of Winter

Chapter 34, Part 1

"Lumi."

Tom's voice was gentle but she turned on him with a vicious glare. "Don't you dare," she snapped.

"I won't dare anything," Tom said, his voice calm.

"If anyone had harmed Kobuk you wouldn't hesitate to..." Lumi didn't finished her sentence, and instead she left the threat hanging there.

"If anyone had harmed Kobuk, I would want to kill them," Tom said gently.

"Exactly," Lumi snapped.

Her fury had built up inside her and now it was boiling over, and she wanted to destroy everything around her. She turned to the others in the group and stared at them over the fire.

Jinni was growling. His energy was building off hers. She turned to stare at her tiger, so shocked that she was with him again. She had thought him lost forever, but now here he was.

"How's your leg, boy?" Lumi murmured, and she felt tears in her eyes and her throat choke as she said the words, as she recognised her anger was built by her own fear. "It's healed up, hasn't it? Look at that scar. You're just like me now. We've each got our scars."

She said the words quietly, but she imagined that Tom could hear her, and that he might take pity on her now that she was sad, and try to comfort her. But when she looked back, Tom had moved away from her and was now sitting on the other side of the fire, discussing quietly with Katja and Sanna.

Lumi felt a pang of sadness. Tom, Katja and Sanna had been close friends for years. She could never compete with that, she knew. Tom liked these girls more than anyone else at the school. He spent every day with them.

Lumi turned to Jinni. "How do I stop this rage?" she said with desperation. "How do I stop all of these emotions? They layer up inside me and I can't make sense of them, Jinni. I'm angry and I'm tired and I'm so frustrated and sad that I could cry at any moment. All of this is inside me. And I can't let it out. Because every time I let it out, I see the faces of the people around me. They wonder if I'm just like my brother. They wonder if I'll be awful too."

Lumi felt so separate from the rest of the group. They were all winter starrlings, and they had known each other for years. They were such close friends and they seemed to genuinely really enough each other's presence. Lumi had never had a friend like that. She'd always followed Tai around like a lost puppy - it made her shudder now, to think just how blindly she had followed Tai - but she had always known that he wasn't her friend. He had been her brother and her king, but he had never shown her a sliver of friendship.

Tom and Katja and Sanna had never known that. They'd always had friends. They'd had each other ever since they started at the school.

Lumi took herself away from the campfire and deeper into the forest. The others didn't seem to notice, although she realised that Kobuk was following her and Jinni. Clearly, Tom was allowing her space while making sure she didn't run off.

She wondered if Ari would be okay. She had a dragon, a kinnling. Well, it wasn't her kinnling, Lumi thought. Because Ari was a winter starrling, and yet she rode a dragon. It was strange. But surely Ari could go back to Vastier. Lumi tried to push Ari away from her mind. She owed the girl nothing.

She owed her everything. She had brought Jinni back to her.

And she had taken Jinni away from her.

Lumi found a quiet place to sit and pulled up her sleeves. She did what she'd done for so long, seeking the solace that it had always given her. She made a fire in her hand and she pressed it into the bare skin of her inner arm, so that it burned.

She hissed out as the fire ate through her skin, and then she closed her eyes against the pain. Jinni let out a low whimper, but she ignored him. Then she heard a howl. A moment later, her eyes snapped open, and she looked up, startled, to see that Tom was staring down at her.

"What are you doing?"

For the first time, Lumi heard anger in his voice. He'd always been so calm, but now she was seeing his anger. It made her feel alive, to know that she was the reason his voice had changed like this. The burn in her arm hurt, but this, seeing the shock and horror in Tom's face, this was the real reason she had hurt herself. She wanted to see his shock. She wanted to see his reaction.

"Go away," she snapped. "You don't need to babysit me."

Tom glanced back towards the clearing, where the girls were, and then glared down at Lumi. "What is this, Lumi? Tell me the truth."

"Don't talk to me," she said. "You don't know me, Tom. You thought I needed rescuing. You wanted to be the hero. But you'll never be the hero."

"Have you been doing this to yourself? Is that what all those burns are?" his voice was low.

"It's none of your business."

"You're..." he stared at her. "You're sick." The horror in his voice made it clear just how much he meant those words, and Lumi felt the pure hatred slice through her.

"Now you know," Lumi said. "Now you won't want to save me."

"I can't save you from yourself," he said. There was disgust in his voice.

"No, you can't," Lumi said. "So you're not the hero. Run back to Katja. I'm sure she wants you to replace the hole in her heart that Raphael left. You'll never be him, though. You're just a cheap imitation, and she knows that. She will never love you the way she loved him. You'll always be second to a dead prince."

"Come back to the camp."

"No. You go."

"Come back now. This is not a request. It is a command."

"How dare you think you can command me. I will be the Empress of Kakaio." It was the first time she'd ever said that out loud, and it sounded strange on her lips. It sounded familiar.

Horrified, Lumi remembered why it sounded familiar. It was something similar to what Tai had once said. His aggression and his disdain at their grandmother. He had told her that he would be Emperor and that her words meant nothing. Now, Lumi's words had echoed the very same sentiment.

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