Page 32 of A Fate of Ice and Lies (Fated #1)

I shook out my beanie and growled. “You’re so dead.”

My words only made his grin grow wider.

With a handful of snow in my hand, I raced toward him, but he hefted me over his shoulder and spun us around. When he finished, I reached down to the waist of his pants, careful not to touch the wounds still healing on his back, and pulled enough to push snow down his pants.

He screeched and dropped me on my ass gently. Always gently.

While I laughed, he sent another swirl of snow up. Instead of hitting me with it, it circled me in a dance. It was like a heavy mist that froze in place when I touched it before he let the snow drop.

“Not gonna lie, that was pretty cool,” I said.

“As cool as me fixing your pipes?” He quirked up a brow, offering me his hand when I started to stand. “That you keep distracting me from fixing.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? I have a thing for plumbers. Gets me all riled up. ”

He growled. And damn, if that wasn’t the sexiest sound in the world.

Feeling lighter than I had in months, maybe years, I tugged on the hand I still held and took him the rest of the way to the well house, where the space heater Donnie had put there had stopped working at some point the previous night.

I waved toward it. “It’s all yours.” I leaned against one of the outside walls. “I’ll just watch you pretend to be a sexy plumber but instead use boring magic to fix it.”

Another smile, this one a bit shy.

When he went into the well house, he placed his hand on one of the pipes. The silver swirl of his magic spun around it and into the ground where I couldn’t see it anymore. Frozen water on the ground lifted as droplets that disappeared into the different pipes. Entranced, I watched him work.

His brows drew together in concentration. His beautiful lips moved as he muttered something under his breath, his eyes fixed on me.

He moved from one pipe to another, sending his magic beneath the ground. When he finished, he sent three tiny droplets of water to caress my cheek before they splattered on my chin.

He barked out a laugh at my narrowed eyes. The sound did something to me, making me want to hear it again.

I pointed at him. “Your days are numbered,” I warned.

That only made him laugh harder and my smile widen.

“You’re a menace,” I told him.

He gripped my waist and leaned against me to kiss the top of my head. “I don’t think I mind as long as I can be your menace.”

I tilted my face up to bite his chin. Something rumbled in his chest, so I peppered kisses along his jaw. Without him realizing, I grabbed snow that had collected on top of a tall chair in the well house and dropped it into his pants again.

He howled and did this funny dance to get the snow out while I bent over laughing.

From a distance, a stream of thunder clapped. Elias stilled and cocked his head to the side. His hand cupped my elbow, and eyes wide and alert, he ushered us away and toward the food bank.

More thunder, this time closer.

Without saying a word, he picked me up and lifted me over his shoulder while he ran us much faster than I could.

“What’s going on?” I asked, fear making me grip the back of his shirt.

“Thunderbirds,” he said. “Nalari said there are thirteen heading our way.”

Before I could ask what they were, we were inside the store, where George knelt in front of Victoria and squeezed her shoulders. Other people from our town were there too. Wide-eyed and scared, and just as confused as I was.

“What’s going on?” Donnie asked.

“Creatures from our realm are coming,” George answered.

“Everyone, stay in here,” Elias ordered.

Everly stepped forward but George stopped her. They seemed to have a quiet conversation before she nodded and came to stand beside me. Donnie went to her other side while Victoria hugged my legs.

George brushed his long fingers over Victoria’s thick braid, careful not to move the flowers still in her hair. “You’ll be okay,” he told her. “We’ll make sure of it.”

Elias nodded at both of his friends, who ran outside with swords drawn. I wasn’t sure where they’d gotten their swords since I’d never seen either of them with one .

“Stay,” Elias told me.

I nodded, and he ran out to meet Brenton, George, and the other fae in our region.

Outside, a string of fire crashed into the snow and into my car I hadn’t been able to move since this blasted winter started. I whimpered at the sight of my car in flames and shut my eyes tight when it exploded. Debris from my car flew everywhere, but the fae were quick to dodge it.

Nalari’s roar tore through the store, and many of the people crowded around seemed to hunch closer together.

Everly was the first to step toward the window to peer outside. Her hands hung on either side of her in trembling fists, and I dropped a hand on her rigid shoulders as we watched.

The fae were a fury of motion with their swords and shields. Archers threw arrows with almost perfect accuracy, but I kept my attention trained on Elias.

He used his magic to turn snow into lethal ice and plunged it into the birds larger than my cabin. Some more massive than the food bank. Their huge talons were lethal, and I gripped Victoria’s shoulder when one almost clawed at Elias, who rolled under it to slice his sword through its underbelly.

It was the liquid fire that leaked from some birds’ eyes that terrified me the most. While other birds seemed to aim their strikes, these birds released that molten lava everywhere.

Birds shrieked. Fae yelled. Fire continued to erupt everywhere.

Then—as if in a scene from a horror movie—mounds of snow rose and rose to form an almost humanistic creature.

Icicles sprang from its head like a crown while even more icicles covered its broad body like a shield.

When it opened its mouth in a roar, rows of sharp teeth appeared.

Each step this monstrous beast took, shook the ground beneath us.

Amid all the chaos, I heard Leanora’s laughter.

Just as the snowy monsters formed from the ice, I saw her form.

Flowing white hair with fiery red streaks.

Eyes that glistened in unnatural colors until they shifted to a dull gray.

A crown of icicles atop her head and what looked like moss covering her private areas.

My breath caught when she stared at me. With her eyes still on me, she pointed a finger at Elias, who fought one of the snow monsters. A shot of black streamed from her fingers, swimming around Elias like a promise of death.

I grabbed Everly’s arm while I pointed my other hand toward Leanora, but with her focus elsewhere, Everly didn’t react.

“She’s going to kill him,” I whispered.

I felt Everly’s attention turn to me.

Leanora called forth two thunderbirds and sent them toward Elias. Then one of the three-headed dragons Donnie had seen barreled toward Elias from behind. One of the three heads blew fire from its mouth, engulfing Elias in flames. He rolled away before he jumped to his feet to face it again.

“Stop,” I begged Leanora.

Her lips tilted in a cruel grin. “What will you give me to stop?” she asked, her words slithering across my mind and through the windowpane that separated us.

“Anything,” I whispered.

As Everly draped a blanket over my trembling shoulders, Leanora vanished.

She left the three-headed dragon, though, which Elias and Nalari fought together.

Although the beast was strong, it wasn’t fast, and while Elias and Nalari fought it, another fae stabbed her sword into the beast’s chest. Plumes of gray smoke flared from each nostril on its three heads.

By the time it fell, Elias was fighting a snow monster.

“Did you see?” I asked Everly, my heart stumbling in my chest.

“He’s okay,” she reassured me.

“No.” I faced her. “The woman. Did you see her?”

Fear snaked around me when Everly looked back at me in question. She hadn’t seen Leanora. Couldn’t have seen her because she wasn’t real.

I gripped the side of my head, hating the way my mind worked. Hating the things it made up.

Not able to look at her, I turned my attention back outside, where three fae worked at cutting off a snow monster’s limbs while others hailed fiery arrows at it.

It didn’t stop it. Didn’t stop the other snow monsters from forming.

Only Nalari’s fire seemed to harm it until they were reduced to nothing but puddles.

While the fae and Nalari fought these otherworldly creatures, our downtown was quickly being demolished. I held my hand to my throat and watched helplessly.

One bird narrowed its green eyes toward us, but before it could shoot fire at us, Nalari swooped down and tore through the bird as if it were a plume of smoke.

“Ted,” Donnie whispered right above my right ear, “tell me you have guns here.”

I swallowed and leaned a hand against the cold windowpane. “In the back room,” I whispered back. “On the top of the yellow shelf, I have two pistols in my backpack.”

He ran to the back room quickly, and when he returned, he slipped one of the guns into my hand, which I tucked into the waistband of my pants. I wasn’t sure how smart it was for me to have a gun, considering the hallucination I’d just had, but I kept it all the same.

“Only come out if things get bad,” he told me, holding one gun while he kept his in its holster.

Bad? Things were already bad.

While the fae weren’t outnumbered, these creatures were not only strong but also looked like they were born to be a weapon.

Elias was mid-swing when a bird shot fire straight at his chest. He flew backward onto the ground, where he didn’t move. The same black smoke Leanora had shot at him now circled him. It seemed to tug at him, taking strands of his silver magic.

No. No.

Nalari let out an earth-shattering roar that I felt in my own chest.

I pushed off the window and crouched in front of Victoria while I kept shooting glances toward Elias, who still hadn’t gotten up.

“You’re gonna stay here with Everly,” I told her.

Eyes wide with fear, she shook her head.