Page 37 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

His voice boomed with decades of fury as he boomed. “You know nothing of running a kingdom. You know nothing of adulthood! You can barely stay alive! Would we have let a stranger into your bed if you hadn’t nearly burned down the castle every night?”

She slammed a fire-laden palm against the table, embers gnawing at the wood as she yelled, “ You know nothing of who I am or what I can do.” Flame ate through its surface until the furniture bore the evidence of her cinders, but she didn’t bother to look at the five fingers that marked her rage.

“How can she—” Evander tripped over his words.

Ceneth gasped at the fire at her fingertips.

The woman beside him shot him terrified glances. “Your Majesty, I don’t know—”

She had no time for their squabbles. Their arguments were noise as she focused on her father.

“I know nothing of who you are?” Eero asked incredulously, voice mocking.

Flecks of spit hit the table as he yelled, voice red with anger.

“Tell me, Ophir. Tell me what you are. Tell me something your mother and I haven’t known since the day you were born.

Caris was meant to usher in an age of peace!

What can you do except burn things to the ground? ”

The world around her froze with a high, sharp ring.

Anger engulfed her, hotter than any flame. She guessed from the flash of muscle and flesh that her friends saw their fates before she grasped what she was doing.

Dwyn and Tyr were on their feet in an instant.

From across the room, Harland leaped up as if to cross the table.

She beheld them all as if they swam to her through the deepest trenches of the ocean, every labored movement happening bit by bit.

All three lunged for her as if to soothe her, but it was too late.

With a banshee scream of decades of betrayal, of pain and hatred, Ophir thrust her hands to the side.

She shrieked her bloodcurdling rage, ears ringing with anguish.

The high-pitched humming of agony and fury drowned out the shouting of Dwyn, Tyr, and Harland as time slowed, the clock ticking so that every second became a minute.

She saw their faces. She saw their fear.

She saw the disappointment that soaked her father like a child’s soiled pants.

She saw the confusion on Ceneth’s face. She even caught something akin to pride on Zita’s bemused expression as her fingers, bent into claws, rose at her sides.

Perhaps they knew her better than she knew herself.

Ophir hadn’t gone in with intent. She hadn’t thrown out her hands with a plan. She knew only two things. The first was that rage was the only emotion that mattered. The second was that King Eero of Farehold would live to rue the day he’d spoken so glibly of her.

The spray of debris and pebbles hit her before she was conscious of the noise.

Decay hit her in conjunction with the arctic wind that poured in from all sides. Light, dust, screaming, and horror erupted through the cocoon of her violence. Feathers and flesh, the whites of eyes, the cries of panic and pain flooded her.

The room exploded around her, each stone bursting into ten thousand smaller stones.

A shriek like rust, nails, and ice joined the raw, aching scream that tore from her throat.

She didn’t have to turn to see the enormous shadow that towered over the wreckage of the room.

Membranous wings attached to a monster the size of the mountain ripped through the very stitches that held the castle together.

She was spared from the rubble by the same wingspan that tore everything around it to the ground.

The outermost wall to the castle crumbled, more early-winter chill spilling in like cold cream filling a teacup.

The cold joined the dust, the rocks, the sound of coughing, the limbs that lifted to shield themselves from the pain.

“Firi!” Dwyn cried from her side. The siren’s high, panicked voice was coming from the blackened bottom of the sea, shouting at her from deep underwater. Her sounds barely reached Ophir’s ears.

Ophir didn’t bother to look at her. Wrath was the only thing she knew as she cried out again.

The spray of pebbles and chalk dusted her as the shape planted its mighty feet on either side.

With two thunderous steps, the quadrupedal creature’s front legs framed her silhouette.

Her winged serpent arched its neck into the sky, bellowing the sounds of glass shards and hellfire.

The night-dark dragon drank in the sky as it shook off the remnants of the destroyed room around it. She looked up at her beast with fury and pride as it screeched once more.

Coated in a thick white powder of dust and debris, her father scrambled backward on bloodied palms. He tried to cry out against the dragon that had enveloped the wing of the castle but choked on the cloud of wreckage.

“Kill him,” Ophir said with cool command. The winged beast poised to strike. Her lip twitched with the ghost of a smirk. In the midst of its arc, she shouted a single word. “Halt.”

The corner of her mouth flickered up while her eyes remained cool.

The ag’drurath paused inches from Eero’s whimpering form. Thick, iridescent fluid dripped from its thousands of needlelike teeth. It twitched anxiously as it stared at the king. Hunger reflected in its eyes, mirroring the bloodlust she was certain shone in hers.

She maintained a vague awareness of yelling from all sides. Someone was shouting for a healer. The wailing of the wounded rose from across the table. Tyr tugged at her arm, but she didn’t bother to look his way as she commanded her dragon.

“Pick him up by his collar,” she said. She flicked a finger lazily from her creation to her father, though she was quite certain the gesture was unnecessary.

The ag’drurath leaned forward, sulfur and carrion filling the space as the stench of its rotten meat suffocated the piles of powder and stones.

Icy, whipping wind joined the blood and cries of the wounded, but Ophir heard none of it.

Her eyes remained focused on the careful way the ag’drurath’s teeth snagged on Eero’s collar, lifting him off his feet until he sputtered, purple with his need for air.

“Now set him down,” she said.

The dragon complied. It opened its maw and released its royal prey. Eero crumpled to the ground with a fleshy thump as his shoulder took the brunt of his fall. Her gaze remained on her beast.

“Now go,” she said, voice cold. Each word was laced with bitter intentionality as she added, “And please, don’t hunt within the city. Fly to Farehold. Torment the citizens of Aubade for all I care.”

Her hair kicked up against the force of the dragon’s mighty wings as it beat once, twice, then again and again as it battled the pull of the earth to take flight.

She closed her eyes against the fine mist of grit and sand from the stones and mortar of its destruction.

The distant screams of the citizens beyond mingled with the pained cries in the room, soaking her with an unpleasant white noise.

The shrieks of civilians tumbled over one another like a babbling brook as the world saw her dragon.

She was unwilling to feel so much as a breeze until her eyes reopened to see its reptilian shape dotting the horizon.

Her father gaped at her, as speechless and bug-eyed as a trout left on shore to die.

She barely had time to admire her demon child as it cast a spectacular shape in the sky before someone was grabbing for her attention.

Ophir swatted away the hand. “You think you’re powerful, Father? You pass laws? You steal land? This—this is power. I hold life and death in my palm at a whim. Do you understand?”

“Firi,” Dwyn begged, tugging at her sweater. Ophir blinked at the siren, surprised at the panic in Dwyn’s voice. “Your father is not the only one present! You have to do something! You can help them.”

“Help who?” Ophir said, still watching the dragon as it took to the south. “It won’t hunt here.”

“People are dying, Ophir. People you care about. I can’t use my powers. I can’t…”

The unfamiliar whites of Dwyn’s frantic eyes shook her awake.

Until now, she’d witnessed only her father’s face as her dragon had shown her exactly what she could do.

For those glorious minutes, no one else in Gwydir had existed.

Blinking back into reality, she realized Dwyn was the only one who remained at her side.

Tyr had run to the others. He was urgently shoveling rubble away from Ceneth while the strange woman grunted against the stones that had buried Evander.

A distant part of her became aware of the sticky vermillion pool that gathered around Raascot’s advisor.

A pulp-like gore had smeared itself onto several of the cracked rocks.

She tried to care, but she was too detached to comprehend the ruby-red liquid and its implications.

The adrenaline of her fury seeped from her. Her crimson rage faded into the pale blue of panic as she looked at the fallen men.

“Firi! Make something!” Dwyn begged, waving a hand to the stones that crushed the monarchs around them. The dust cleared enough for her to see the large boulder that pinned Zita’s leg to the ground, her head unmoving as it rested on the table.

Ophir shook her head blankly.

“Firi!” Dwyn shook her. “You can do it! You can make anything! All you have to do is think it! Make someone to help!”

She knew Dwyn was right. All Ophir had to do was imagine her intentions, and she could create something. She gaped at Ceneth’s unconscious form beneath the stones. She could scarcely see the crying woman beside Evander. She’d done this. She’d hurt them.

“Firi!”

“I…”

“Do something!”

Fine. She could make something to dig. She could make something strong and capable and with hands that could fling the castle’s stones from everyone around her.

Ophir did her best to picture a helper, a worker, a fae who might possess the scooping hands and wide palms to free one from rock, but she saw only death.

She tried to look at Dwyn and Tyr, but she knew that dead bodies remained pinned within the rubble.

Her heart struggled with the pain of funerals, of loss, of Caris, of blood, of murder.

She tried to tear her mind from the horrible night that had shattered her world, but trauma coursed through her as she summoned her manifestation.

She flexed her fingers and cried out in surprise at what she’d created.

Even Dwyn stumbled behind her in reaction to the abomination that slouched before them in tattered, black rags.

Its skeletal mouth hung loosely on its jaw.

Its large eyes looked at them without comprehension.

Enormous hands with palms too big for a humanoid creature hung limply at the end of its bent elbows.

She grimaced at her disgusting, broken, fucked-up manifestation. She hated it even more than her other creations. This was the best thing she could make, and it was an unholy nightmare.

“Help them,” Ophir croaked.

Tyr didn’t step away from the stones until the monstrosity approached him.

Though he knew it was Ophir’s creation and tethered to her will, the terror was plain on his face.

The ghoulish monster freed Ceneth and his advisor from the enormous boulders with a few strong swipes.

Acidic liquid dripped from its mouth as it cocked a too-human face toward her.

She blinked at it. She’d done this. She’d killed and maimed and destroyed. She’d set a dragon into the world without the aid of a sentient rider to tame it. She’d horrified her closest friends and confidants. And this was how she’d fixed it. Through another abomination.

The freakish beast looked at her with unintelligent eyes, and she knew that she’d made something that would never know love, or peace, or life. She created only death, thirst, and destruction. Ophir swallowed as it tilted its head again, head rolling like that of an insect.

“You can go,” she said breathlessly.

The creature shrieked at her once, its noise the hellish sounds of rusted nails in tin cans, before turning toward the broken opening in the castle wall.

It took off into the cobblestones and alleys of the city faster than man or fae.

The monster glided into the woods as if it possessed not feet but traveled with the speed of mist and smoke.

The atrocity had shaken her to a waking state.

She was too stunned by what she’d done to absorb the regret that clawed to enter the protective shield she’d formed around herself.

She finally turned to appreciate the shock on her father’s face.

Eero remained on his back, propped up only on his hands from where he’d scrambled backward after the ag’drurath had released him.

He looked at his daughter as if he’d never seen her before in his life.

Nothing but stunned fear and repulsion painted his face.

The shock that had leached into her upon seeing Ceneth and Evander evaporated.

She’d done all she could do. Zita and her party were fine.

Tyr and Dwyn were helping. A new sensation filled her.

It was not rage, or hate, or vitriol. Her fire died, giving way to the ruby smolder of whatever remained long after the hearth had been forgotten.

She was not the campfire that warmed hunters; she was the kiln that forged the world.

With a chilling calm, she knew with some certainty she was the most powerful being on the continent.

“What have you done?” Eero said, question ripe with his horror.

His words stirred the coal within her. Ophir took a few careful steps over the splintered table, picking her footing between the fallen stones and the shards of rocks and chairs that littered the space.

She resisted the urge to brace herself against the cold as she stood over her father’s fallen figure.

She glared at him, all respect, love, and familiarity lost to the repulsion of her anger.

“I do more than burn things to the ground,” she said. “I salt the earth when I’m done.”