Page 12 of A Bond of Ice and Glass (Crowned By Wings #2)
“You’re doing it, Lena,” Lochlan says beside me. “Keep going, keep searching for where your magic begins and ends. Once you find it, grab it tight and do not let go. Focus, breathe it in, and let your magic take you.”
My hand shakes on the bar. I don’t want to let it all out or let it control me.
I want to stop the pain I’m causing, but I can’t control it.
It flows out of me until the air itself seems to freeze around the prisoner.
He falls to the ground, gasping and clawing at his throat, all the veins in his body visibly pulsing and writhing like they’ve been filled with bright blue magic.
“That’s enough,” Noble’s voice carries to me. It sounds distant, like I’m dreaming. “She’s going to kill him.”
I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to kill any of them!
“No, she’s making him talk.”
I try to pull away, but my hand stays frozen to the bar.
The prisoner screams. Begs for mercy I want to give him but can’t.
“Show them what you can do,” Lochlan commands like he’s my master, like I should listen to him, but something deep down, buried in my blood and soul, tells me to stop. Tells me I do not take orders from anyone because I am a queen.
“I said that’s enough!” Noble’s voice sharpens, threaded with desperation. “He won’t be able to talk if he’s dead.”
“The others will,” comes Lochlan’s cool reply. “We have plenty of them.”
What? No! This isn’t Lochlan. This isn’t the boy who bandaged my wounds at the convent and whispered stories to me so I could fall asleep. This isn’t the Lochlan who promised a life together once we were free.
I pull my hand free with a gasp. The prisoner gasps, too, like he’s broken the surface after nearly drowning. Except there’s no water—only ice. My ice.
“Do you see that?” Lochlan’s hand falls on my shoulder. “You’re so much stronger than you think.”
I stare at my fingertips, at the frost still clinging to them. “But I didn’t mean to hurt?—”
“You helped us, that’s all that matters,” he says, cutting in. “And it had to be done,” he adds in a whisper, more to himself than me. “They would’ve let more die. At any rate, we don’t have time for guilt. We need answers.” He turns back to the cell and raises his voice. “Ready to talk now?”
There’s still no reply. The prisoner coughs and heaves. The others stare at him in terrified silence. Lochlan’s jaw tightens and he grabs both of my hands. Noble tries to stop him from placing them on the bars.
“Lochlan, wait?—”
But it’s too late. My power rushes through, and Lochlan’s whisper in my ear holds me still like I’ve been frozen to the spot.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” he murmurs. “Let them see what happens when they defy us. Let them all see.”
All of a sudden, he’s that boy again, telling me not to be afraid of the dark. Except this time, I’m the dark.
Something cracks in the air—in him, in me —and I know I’ve gone too far. But I still don’t stop. I can’t stop. It’s like he has full control over me.
The prisoner gasps, once, twice, and then his body stops moving.
Frost laces the ground around him. His final breath escapes him as steam, vanishing into the dark.
I stumble away from the bars, my own breath catching, every bone in my body shaking. Someone catches me and holds me against a firm chest. Noble or Nymala—whoever it is, I’m thankful. I don’t think I’d be standing without them.
Lochlan turns to the prisoners. “Now let that be a lesson to you all,” he says, his voice horribly calm. “When we ask you a question, you answer it.”
The remaining prisoners stare at their dead comrade. One of the men flinches when Lochlan moves. He curls into the corner like he expects the ice at his feet to freeze him next. Still, no one speaks. Not until?—
“I’ll talk,” one of them rasps, his hoarse voice barely even human. “Please, just don’t… don’t let the queen touch me.”
The queen. Their queen.
I flinch, turning to the prisoner. Lochlan steps in my way. Although I can’t see his face, I can hear the smile in his voice when he answers him.
“You have my word. If you talk, I’ll stop the suffering.” Then he glances over his shoulder at me. His mouth isn’t smiling, but his eyes are. “This is why we needed your help. They would’ve sat here in silence and watched their comrades die, one by one. You saved innocent lives today.”
He crouches again and looks down at the body on the ground. The man’s eyes are still open, frozen on where I stood. Now they’re looking at Lochlan, who doesn’t appear remotely affected by it.
By what I did.
“Innocent lives?” I repeat the words to him. “You said they were monsters. Murderers.”
Bile coats my tongue before I’ve even finished saying the words.
“They are,” Lochlan replies, still watching the dead soldier. “But even monsters can be squeezed for truth. And if they won’t give it, then fear will take it. We just needed to find the right kind of fear to break them with.”
“Now isn’t that rich?” Nymala’s voice cuts through the chamber. “You don’t care about the truth. You only care about control.”
“I care about protecting what’s left of my home!” Lochlan snaps his head to her. “Do you think I enjoy this?”
Nymala doesn’t speak, but her silence is loud .
Even Noble’s silence speaks volumes.
I feel the same anger they do, only deeper. Lochlan made me do something I never thought I’d do. I step back from him, away from the body behind me, and shake my head.
“I didn’t want to kill him. You know I didn’t.”
But something inside me had already decided to do it, and that terrifies me more than anything. What’s happening to me?
“Yet you did,” Lochlan replies quietly. “And now the rest will talk.”
The prisoner who offered to speak clutches the bars, watching me with terrified, bloodshot eyes.
He’s not afraid of Lochlan. He’s afraid of me.
I step back again, shivering. The frost has reached the toes of my boots, and I realise I still can’t feel my hands. My entire body feels numbed right down to the bone. I used to think Lochlan was the one good thing I had left in this world.
Now I’m not sure what he is anymore.