Burnt by Lyn Lowe Page A

off with practiced ease and looked around the cavern with an expression of pure disdain. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, the woman might be beautiful in another world. Here, in this place, she was terror given substance. The sword belted across her shoulder was not half as intimidating as her simple presence.
    “This is where you savages pile your dead? Disgusting.”
    Toman, closest to the entrance and the woman, shoved Jun backward. “Run! Sojun, run!”
    Everything in Kaie demanded he do as the older man instructed as well. But there was nowhere to go. The woman stood between them and the exit. If there was another one on the other side of the underground lake, they didn’t know of it. Jumping into the water to seek it out wouldn’t get them to safety in time. She was too close, too certain. They were caught and she was not letting them slip her knot.
    Of course, he would run anyway if such movement were possible. But Kaie’s legs were rooted. No matter how his mind screamed at him to move, he couldn’t even shift his weight. Sojun suffered under the same affliction, it seemed, for the boy was still as stone.
    “This is my family! You’re not to take my family! That’s not how this is to work!”
    There was no hint of begging in Toman’s voice. He was telling this woman, with her armor and her sword and all her power. The words niggled at Kaie; they seemed to hold deeper meaning than they were supposed to. But it was admirable.
    It was stupid. She let her lip curve a little, considering him for all of a second. Then, in a move too fast for eyes to follow, the sword swung into her hand and sliced through the air. And Toman’s head.
    Blood and a soft grey goo misted across Kaie’s face. He flinched and lifted a hand to wipe it away. The goo slid through his fingers like butter.
    The woman flicked her sword once as the body fell, the careless gesture ridding the blade of what little mark Toman’s head left on it.
    Devin, her screaming done now that he wasn’t touching her, tugged on Kaie’s arm. “She’s shiny like you,” the girl whispered.
    The woman’s eyes instantly narrowed, locking on to Kaie with an intensity that drained the blood from his face. She turned the same gaze on Sojun and then the Lemme. Then she snapped her fingers.
    Outsiders piled in from the tunnels. She waved her hand in their direction.
    “I want them.”
    Before he could react, hands were grasping Kaie from every angle. He struggled, kicking and squirming, but it was already too late to stop. There were too many of them and nowhere to go. It didn’t take long for him to be pinned to the ground next to Devin, Sojun joining them just a moment later.
    “Captain!” The woman was in the process of leaving the cavern, but upon the bark of one of her men, she glanced over her shoulder.
    “The old woman. She’s dead, ma’am.”
    The words ripped through Kaie. Color ran out of the world, leaving him seeing nothing but white hot hatred. His feet jerked with a force beyond him, kicking free of their captors. He was standing in the space between heartbeats, his fists flying out blindly. His whole body became nothing but a vessel for the violence singing in his heart. His hands connected with flesh and bone, his shoulders slammed bodies against the stone walls. His teeth ripped into skin and muscle. All of it was perfect, thoughtless, blind.
    When the pain in his head came again, he rejoiced. His spirit clawed at freedom. The Lemme was dead. Dead like Toman, dead like Navin, dead like his parents and Amorette. Now he would join his family, as was right. So long as the Lemme lived, his tribe lived. If she was dead, so was it. So was he.

Eleven
    He wasn’t dead.
    It took him an instant to realize that. It was significantly longer before Kaie gave up hoping he was wrong about it. He didn’t want to be alive. Alive sucked.
    Alive hurt. Not as sharp as other pains he’d lived through. Not as intense. But that was always in one area. It