Page 24

Thea inhaled the icy night air, hoping it would smother the inferno within. She had no such luck. Instead she fixed her eyes upon the snow ahead and pushed on, as she had done for the past year.

Hours later, Thea could no longer dismiss the sheen of sweat on her mare’s coat and called the others to a halt.

‘The horses need to rest,’ she said flatly, swinging down from the saddle as she spotted a nearby stream.

‘They’re not the only ones,’ Kipp said, following her lead and bringing his horse to the water’s edge. Cal was already starting a fire at the base of a large oak tree.

Gods, she was glad for Kipp and Cal. Anything to avoid being alone with Hawthorne again.

Thea scanned the forest in a sudden panic, but spotted Hawthorne collecting branches despite the irons around his wrists. She loosed a breath and averted her gaze, opting to sift through her saddlebag to distract herself.

But soon, his voice pierced the frigid air. ‘There has been no call from the Rite, I take it?’

Kipp was already shaking his head, but Thea flung out a hand.

‘Don’t tell him anything,’ she commanded. ‘He’s not to be trusted.’ Seating herself on a nearby fallen trunk, she unsheathed Malik’s dagger and turned it over in her hands. Theweapon, once gleaming with a deadly shine, now bore the scars of time, its edge dulled by the countless enemies she’d slain with it.

‘I taught you to care for your blades better than that,’ Hawthorne’s voice sounded again.

Thea ignored him, having already reached for her whetstone. Esyllt, the weapons master of Thezmarr, had given it to her before she’d departed Tver. Its coarse surface was a testament to its years of service to him. Thea dropped her shoulders and unclenched her jaw, trying to remember one of Audra’s meditations as her hand closed around the hilt of her dagger and she drew its blade across the unyielding edge of the whetstone.

The sound took her away from the fallen Warsword in their midst, and back into echoes of battles past. It was the seemingly insignificant details that came back to her: the weight of a lifeless body, the trail of dragged feet in the sand, the suspended moment of time between when a gutted opponent realised he was a dead man and when he took his last breath. Her focus narrowed. She was glad to lose herself in the task at hand, her movements fluid as the blade’s dulled edge gave way to a renewed sharpness.

‘Did you get my gift?’ That rich timbre speared through her thoughts.

Tensing, Thea glided the last stroke of the whetstone across the dagger’s edge and held the weapon to the flickering campfire. It gleamed with a brightness that seemed to defy the darkness around them, the blade now ready to slice through the heart of a monster, or sever the bond between body and soul.

She pinned her former mentor with a cold, hard stare. ‘I threw it into the river,’ she told him, sheathing the sharpened dagger.

She waited for some smart-arsed retort from Hawthorne, but he simply looked away, staring into the flames of the campfire.Where she expected the sweet taste of victory, there was only bitterness on her tongue. Suddenly restless, she stood, swiping Cal’s bow and quiver from his side and walking off into the night. Thankfully, her friends didn’t try to stop her. They had learnt long ago when to give her space.

Thea shouldered the quiver of arrows and clutched the weapon in her gloved hand. They didn’t need any game, not when their saddlebags were packed with rations from the grateful villagers. But Thea couldn’t think straight. She needed to move, needed to get away from the deceptive lull of the fire and the molten silver eyes across from her.

Without her magic, everything felt so bottled up inside, with no outlet. She desperately wanted to conjure the bolts of lightning she had once mastered, to summon the clouds and thunder that soothed her heart like a healer’s balm. But that power did not speak to her any longer.

I am the storm…

She scoffed. She was no storm. She didn’t know what she was anymore.

Moonlight penetrated the skeletal canopy of the forest. Thea scanned the snow for tracks, glad for the distraction when she found what looked to be the hoofprints of a deer. Snow had been falling since they’d started out from the fishing village, so the tracks couldn’t be that old. Relishing the kiss of icy flakes against her face, she followed the prints to the stream. They continued on the other side, and so she leapt across the narrow channel of water with ease and followed on.

Thea’s breath clouded before her face as she wove through the barren underbrush, following the imprints in the snowy ground. With each step, the tension in her shoulders eased and the winter air hit her burning lungs, soothing that fire that raged white-hot within.

With a stifled gasp, she stopped short.

In the ethereal silence of the wintry woodlands, a graceful doe lowered its mouth to the ground, seeking roughage beneath the snow. It was a beautiful animal, elegant and regal, its long lashes framing wide, innocent eyes.

Silently, Thea reached for an arrow, nocking it to Cal’s bow and drawing the string taut. For a moment, she simply breathed, appreciating that all-too-fragile balance between life and death as it teetered on the edge, frozen at her command —

‘You’re still dropping your elbow.’

Hawthorne’s low voice skittered along her bones.

She nearly jumped, only just managing to master herself. But the damage was done – the doe’s ears pricked and the creature darted away.

Thea relaxed the bowstring and whirled around to face him. ‘Happy now?’ she ground out.

‘Are you?’ he countered, eyes aflame.