Page 52

“Get to work,” he grunted, nodding his head toward the crest of the hilltop.

Caldris held out a hand for me, and I was left to step toward him as my power rushed in my veins. With each step, it filled me. With each step, the creature within me rose to the surface, the golden threads of fate lingering in every direction I looked.

“What is it we’re meant to do?” I asked tentatively as Caldris entwined his fingers with mine. Every place we touched felt whole.

We reached the top of the hill, looking down into the valley formed between the three closest hillsides. The rock was jagged, the very beginnings of steps carved into them as a group of a dozen Sidhe worked at the bottom of the valley. Their hands moved, their bodies slicked with sweat as they motioned and directed as needed. The magic they possessed was limited, a grueling process as they reshaped the landscape of the valley slowly, piece by piece.

I didn’t know how long they’d been working, but the crude, bare beginnings of an arena and seating cut into the stone had begun to take shape. I glanced down at my hands, wondering if they thought I possessed that power. But where the threads hung from the sky, hung from the Fae themselves, nothing emerged from the dirt and rock beneath our feet.

Caldris released my hand, guiding me to the front of his body. His arms wrapped around me from behind, cocooning me in his warmth as he turned us away from the makeshift arena in the valley. The sun lingered to my right, shining uponour sides and nearly blinding that eye as it reflected off the surface of the white stone.

But I savored the feeling of it upon my skin, having spent so much time in mostly darkness. Caldris outstretched one of his hands, and I felt the moment he closed his eyes. With me in his arms, he used that single hand pointed toward the ground. Sparks of white left his palm, the snowflakes drifting forward to land on the ground in front of us.

Higher and higher the snow rose, the pile forming the shape of a pillar as Caldris gave himself to that power that existed within him. He created something from nothing, because the magic wasn’t just something that was a part of our world.It was something that lived in him, that had made its home beneath his skin.

He blew out a single, shallow breath, and the winds of winter rose through the hilltops in answer. It blew against his pile of snow, sending it billowing toward the river that flowed in the distance.

All that remained when the wind settled was a pillar of ice, standing tall and stretching toward the sky as if it had always been there.

He raised his foot, dropping it down upon the earth beneath us. The rock froze to ice, sending a ripple through the hillside. Malachi and Soren stumbled, slipping on the newly frozen surface as the hill stopped quaking. Cracks spread through the ice like fissures, arcing toward the spot beside the pillar Caldris had already formed. Carving in an x to mark the spot, my mate swept the hair off my shoulder and pulled my hood back so that he could press his lips to the skin behind my ear.

“Create another,” he murmured, the words a quiet challenge.

I shuddered, the feeling of that breath on my skin making things tighten low in my body as my mate chuckled knowingly.

I raised a hand, finding the threads flowing off his newly crafted ice and wrapping them around my finger. It came easily, the cold filling my palm as those icy tendrils wrapped me in their embrace.

“I didn’t say to use what I’d created. I said to create one,” Caldris scolded, laying his hand atop mine. The thread unwound from my fingers, leaving me gaping as I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I can’t,” I protested. I’d never been able to create from nothing, only to take what already existed and mold it to my will.

“If you rely too much on what is around you, you’ll never be able to defend yourself if your opponent controls the situation. Anyone who learns about that weakness will deprive you of the cold and the snow; they’ll make sure there are no bodies for you to animate,” he said, keeping his words quiet as Soren distracted Malachi with endless conversation from a few paces away. They watched the workers in the valley, the ones who possessed the power to change the ground itself.

“Those Summer Fae in the valley need to have something to change in order to access their magic. They are Sidhe; their magic is limited. But yours is as endless as the depths of my love for you.” He raised a hand to my chest, pressing the flat side of his palm against the skin over my heart.

“How do I create from nothing?” I asked, covering his hand with mine. I yielded to that love he spoke of, feeling it pulse through me as his lips moved over the skin of my neck.

“You summon it from within. You’ve wasted far too much of your life looking for answers in the world around you when you’ve had them within you all along. Nothing around you can tell you what you are,min asteren.Only you can make that choice,” he said.

His hand pressed more firmly into my chest, grounding me as he loosed a single sigh, and with that sigh, he released a wave of power that crashed through the hills.

I thought I’d seen the worst of his magic that night in the clearing when he’d summoned a storm great enough to bury the world in snow. I believed I’d seen the worst of it when he slayed his enemies where they stood, making his way to me with the whisper of death surrounding him—shadows melting from his body as if they could not be contained.

I’d known nothing.

The ground quaked beneath him—matching the rhythm of his heartbeat as Malachi finally turned a shocked glance toward us. My heart beat in tandem with his as I let my eyes drift closed, sinking into the feeling of his power as it washed over my skin. As the cold and inky shadows of his magic wrapped me in their embrace, shielding me from the worst of the wind as it whipped around us.

I drew in a breath, the scent of fresh snow and wintergreen filling my lungs. It struck something deep inside me, kindling a flame that had long since waited to be awoken. I felt it slide along the thread between us, turning it to ice as the power waited for one of us to grasp it. He’d given me an influx of it, a taste of what was at my disposal, sending it coursing down our bond so that all I needed to do was reach out and grasp it.

I raised a hand with eyes still closed to the world around us. Cold leaked out of me, pouring from that hand as if itneeded the release. As if Caldris had filled our bond with so much of the winter that it needed to escape, to wreak havoc upon those around us.

“Open your eyes, my star,” he murmured, and I flung them open suddenly.

It was not the soft, billowing snowfall that Caldris had summoned when he’d built the first tower that I saw when I opened them, but a solid block of ice as it rose from the rock in front of me. The rock split, cracking to allow for the ice as it stretched toward the sky.

Whereas his creation had been gentle, a stunning process to watch that alluded to centuries of practice with honing his gifts, mine was a crude, violent birthing of ice. It tore from the rock as if the world itself had not wanted to release it, stretching toward the sky until it stopped at the precise moment it reached the same height as Caldris’s.

Twin pillars of ice stared back at us as his power settled as quickly as it had risen, retreating to its master and filling him with it once again.