Of Snow and Light (eBook)

Chapter One

Of Legends and Fairy Tales

Tsuna, as it turned out, was also a talker. Luka was not, but this did not deter her in the slightest.

She was also the scariest healer he’d ever met. During the first two days, Tsuna had threatened, with a guileless smile on her face, to reopen all of his wounds and add some fresh ones for good measure if he so much as thought about getting out of bed for any reason other than to use the bathroom or practice carefully monitored physical therapy. Healers weren’t supposed to be like that, but he knew how to pick his battles.

Even after his injuries had healed enough for him to leave, she kept him house-bound, quoting medical jargon that he had no hope of understanding, let alone refuting.

By the end of the first week, he must have developed some twisted form of prisoner-derived attachment because he had started to enjoy Tsuna’s company and didn’t even daydream about storming out more than once or twice each day.

None of that stopped his encroaching restlessness, though. Fortunately, Tsuna approached him before it could devolve into something more deleterious than fidgeting.

“Alright, blondie, it’s your lucky day,” Tsuna said as she entered the room. “I need a restock from town, and I don’t feel like going, so you get to be my errand boy.”

“No?” Luka didn’t mean it to sound like a question, but then again, he didn’t mean to say it at all.

“Yes,” Tsuna shot back. “It’s your fault I’m running low in the first place. Consider it your payment.”

“Healers are compensated by their towns,” he replied. He wasn’t opposed to helping her, but he took offense to the title “errand boy” and felt like he owed it to his dignity to fight back at least a little.

“The town that you are not part of and, therefore, don’t contribute to,” she replied. “You’re a stray, so you have to earn your worth.”

Hurtful but true.

“You should be happy I’m letting you out at all,” she added as if she had any real authority beyond intimidation to keep him inside. Then she handed him a slip of paper. “Head downtown, and find a shop called Ol’ Milly’s—you can’t miss it—and pick up everything on that list. Tell Milly it’s for me, and you won’t be charged.”

“What’s to stop me from just leaving?” Luka asked, more out of curiosity than intent.

Tsuna laughed a deep belly laugh and shook her head, but she didn’t answer the question, which was about what he expected.

He let out a controlled breath. “How do I get to town?”

“Turn left at the end of the drive. You’re an adult; you can figure the rest out from there.” She didn’t wait for any more questions, leaving him alone.

Luka decided to ignore Tsuna’s snarky comment and stood up before she could rescind the offer. His injured ribs twinged in protest as he donned his jacket. Then, without further ado, he slipped out of the house.

He turned left as instructed and soon found himself in the middle of a bustling, picturesque town. Nestled in a lush forest and framed by the towering mountains of western Canada, Luka had to admit that Quinby was rather beautiful, but he’d seen plenty of beautiful places. What gave him pause were the people.

Demons, healers, humans, and shapeshifters alike were mingling along the streets. Many of them waved and greeted him as he passed, welcoming him to the town with easy smiles. It seemed they didn’t get many visitors, which was not unusual, but the way they welcomed him so freely certainly was. And Luka couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen humans and skrita living so close together.

Luka found his way to Ol’ Milly’s, a small well-kept shop in the middle of town. A large window out front displayed many odd-looking novelties and knick-knacks. A soft, welcoming chime sounded as he entered the store.

“Milly is out to lunch and errands,” an oddly accented voice droned. “She should be back soon enough. You can wait for her here or come back later. Either way, she forgot to give me the keys to the cash register, so I can’t help you.”

Turning toward the voice, Luka saw what he assumed to be a demon girl who, though young looking, was likely much older than even his two hundred odd years. He could never tell with unfamiliar skrita. Pointed black ears topped her head, and she had a matching shaggy, dog-like tail at her rear. Slumped against the counter with her head pillowed in her arms and eyes closed, her entire posture screamed boredom.

She was also scarred, immensely so. Jagged and clean, deep and shallow, thick and thin, the variety and number of them was staggering and offered the only visible hint of her actual age.

“I’ll stay,” he replied. “I have nothing better to do.” He walked farther into the store. Checking Tsuna’s list, he started searching for medical supplies, thinking it would take him a while to find everything.

“You’re human, aren’t you?’ the girl called out. Luka turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved.

“Yeah,” he replied, already weary of the coming conversation.

“You have interesting eyes. For a human.”

“That’s what they say.” He sighed and closed those eyes. Over two hundred years, he’d managed to come up with a new bullshit excuse each time someone asked. Most of them sounded more plausible than the truth anyway.

“You were cursed, weren’t you?” she asked, curiosity evident in her voice.

His bright purple eyes snapped open to regard the girl. Most people didn’t understand the curse when he explained it to them, and no one had ever guessed correctly before. It wasn’t a common thing, to be cursed. In fact, the ability to cast a curse was almost unheard of. The potential only popped up sporadically in various skrita species throughout time. As far as Luka was aware, there was no rhyme or reason regarding why someone developed the capacity. It had just been his rotten luck to meet one of those uncommon people.

Most beings probably wouldn’t consider his curse to be bad. However, they didn’t understand that for a human, it couldn’t be worse.

“Immortality?” she asked.

He flinched. He didn‘t know how, but she was correct again.

Humans were the only advanced species with a limited lifespan, the length determined by something as simple as the passage of time. Skrita were designed for an indefinite life, all the way down to the chemical makeup of their brains and bodies. They could handle the things that a perpetual life brought. Humans could not. And yet there he was, just past his two hundred and fifty-fifth year, his body held intact by the unwanted curse and his mind held together with some haphazardly placed staples and glue.

“Wow, that’s a rough one for a human. How do you do it?”

A surge of anger burned through his surprise. He wasn’t particularly shy about his curse, but he didn’t like her tone. “That’s none of your business,” he snapped. Luka turned to leave; Tsuna’s supplies be damned.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” she said. “You just have to admit it’s a curious situation. I meant no offense.”

His anger had always been a geyser, quick to erupt but just as quick to wane. He sagged and took a deep breath through his nose. He wasn’t in the business of making friends, but he wasn’t dumb enough to purposefully make enemies either.

“I just have to keep busy. It doesn’t do anyone any good to dwell on things that can’t be changed,” he replied, eyeing her without turning around. When people couldn’t be turned away with rudeness, bluntness usually did the trick.

She opened her pale blue eye and quirked an eyebrow. “That’s pretty smart. It must have been hell for you to sit around all week, doing nothing.” Her eyes closed as she smiled impishly.

“Yeah, it was,” he replied. “Wait, how did you know I was—”

The girl opened both eyes, the left one misty blue and the right one an icy cobalt.

“You,” he exclaimed, bewildered.

“Hi again.” She grinned up at him, her sharp white teeth fully exposed.

***

He blinked twice, disoriented. He took in her appearance in more detail now that he knew she was the not-hallucination. Even though she probably wasn’t much shorter than him, she was lean, all long slender limbs and narrow body. Her features were broad but sharp, spattered with freckles that were barely visible against her deeply tanned skin. The long, dark hair that fell raggedly to her ribs was the same color as the fur on her tail and ears.

Even though her coloring was all wrong, and the girl had none of the physical softness typical of youth, his traitorous mind always saw his sister in people her general age and size. And as soon as his terribly traitorous mind made the connection, he couldn’t stop it from forming her image, forever frozen at seventeen.

Her hair had been a pale golden color, slightly lighter than his own. They had shared their eyes with their mother, whose whiskey-colored gaze had ensnared their father’s heart the day they met. But now none of them had them; his mother and sister dead and gone and his own permanently dyed an unnatural pigment. It was a detail Luka had always been irrationally grieved about.

Luka reined in his wayward memories before they could take over his thoughts and he forced aside the image of his dead sister when he looked back at the girl. He struggled for a topic that wouldn’t bring...