Page 62 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Thirty-Six

One Hour Following the Wedding

The Frozen Straits

Gwydir’s snowflakes were nothing compared to the icy wasteland of dunes before the Frozen Straits. The cold burned Ophir’s nose. Her lungs ached. She’d heard legends of the Straits, but she hadn’t fathomed how bitter and desolate it would feel to stand on the edge of the known world.

“I’m not happy with this plan,” Dwyn grumbled as they crested the top of the hill.

She peered over the stark-white hills as the terrain flattened into a terrible, porcelain nothingness.

She shuddered at the endlessness of the Straits, then looked over her shoulder. “Are you going to destroy that door?”

Ophir looked at it for a moment, appreciating the hard ninety-degree corners of the ornate door backlit against the pastel gradient of the winter landscape around them.

She flicked her wrist as if to summon her flame, then thought better of it.

“I think it might be fun to leave a few around the continent, just for the chaos. How disappointing for some intrepid voyager to find a magic door only to have it leave them bereft on the Frozen Straits.”

“That may be my favorite thing you’ve ever said.

Unfortunately, I’m too irritated with you to enjoy it.

” Dwyn bundled herself into the thick white furs they’d taken from the treasury.

Ophir had made an offhanded comment about the coats belonging to an aboriou, which Dwyn had promptly told her did not exist.

“You aren’t happy with any of my plans,” Ophir retorted. She gestured with a thickly gloved hand to the people gathered in the distance. “There,” she said. “That’s the crew.” Her feet broke through the icy crust of the snow as she advanced.

“That’s not true.” Dwyn dragged behind. “I liked the plan to return to Gwydir. I loved the plan that turned the wedding into a bloodbath. What an iconic way to bring a dynasty to an end. I wish we could have seen it.”

“I don’t,” Ophir said into the wind.

She hated the questions gnawing at her. Were her parents already dead, or was that carnage still to come?

Had Zita’s power for frenzy truly turned tens of thousands of Aubade’s humans and fae into beings of sheer chaos?

She wondered what home looked like, then reminded herself it wasn’t her home any longer.

A new power would have to claim the bloodstained sands, but it wouldn’t be her.

She shivered but wasn’t sure if the cold was the true cause.

Brief thoughts visited her as to what it would take for Ceneth to heal from what they’d done.

The sun turned red as it descended to her left.

Across the continent, the sun was setting over the sea as her doppelg?nger walked down the aisle.

Perhaps her betrothed was looking into her face even now.

She wondered if the crew would spot them, but she supposed the white fur would have a camouflaging effect until they were practically on top of the men.

“It’s not too late to change the plan,” Dwyn said. “Aubade is gone, but your future doesn’t have to be. We can tell the men anything. We could still go to Gwydir. Think of how beautiful you’d look upon the throne in a castle made of labradorite, Firi.”

“No,” Ophir huffed. Her lungs burned against the frosted air and the exertion of trudging through the snow.

“I’m doing what must be done. When they don’t find my body among the carnage, they’ll go looking for answers.

They’ll need a monarch’s ass to sit in Aubade.

If they think I’m still on the continent, they’ll try to reinstate me in Farehold. ”

“Then let them!” Dwyn gasped. “It’s perfect. Then you don’t even have to get married or hang around with wings-for-brains. With Eero and Darya gone—”

Dwyn stopped speaking at Ophir’s flinch.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be insensitive. I won’t bring them up again. But Farehold will need a ruler, and—”

“And they can figure it out for themselves. It will be easy enough to understand how the winged fae were able to escape, but they’ll have expected my husband to have brought me with him. You’re from Sulgrave, Dwyn. This is the only way to make it make sense.”

Her eyes flared. “That we escaped the massacre and went back to my homeland? Without your husband? You’re newlyweds, for the goddess’s sake.”

“No one believes we’re happily in love. It won’t be a stretch for them to imagine that, given the turmoil, we chose to tackle separate corners of the continent.

Ceneth would need to stay behind with his people.

Meanwhile, I’ll go on as an ambassador for Farehold and Raascot pretending to look for answers as to what happened in the coliseum, because I’m such a good and selfless queen. Going to Sulgrave is a great plan.”

“Only because it’s easy. It’s great if you’re looking to disappear into oblivion as the only golden-haired defector in our mountain kingdom. It’s fine if you want to live a life of obscurity. Do you want to hear a better plan?”

Ophir ground her teeth until her jaw ached. She turned in the snow to glare at Dwyn. The wind kicked up a swirl of crystallized snow, cutting a magnificent silhouette along with Dwyn’s long, dark hair as it fluttered behind her. Dwyn shot her a challenging stare.

“Take what’s yours, Ophir.”

“I am,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m taking choice. I’m taking autonomy. I’m taking control of my narrative.”

“The world is at your fingertips, Firi. All of the obstacles were taken out with fire and frenzy. You have the support of Raascot and Tarkhany. You can claim the throne and make it new! You can do anything! You’re the next fucking All Mother!”

Ophir blanched. “How could you say that?”

Dwyn stamped a foot, but the gesture was futile, muted as snow absorbed it. Her anger was caught on a gust as she threw her hands out to either side. “This is what it means to be a god. You create and you destroy. Look what you accomplished in Aubade.”

Ophir refused to meet Dwyn’s imploring gaze. “I wasn’t even present for what happened in Aubade.”

“And yet it happened because of you.”

Frost and fury burned through her in equal proportions. “Are you trying to tell me their blood is on my hands?”

“It is. And I mean that as the highest compliment. The continent has been waiting for you for centuries. Zita could have called her frenzy hundreds of years prior, but she was waiting for you, whether or not she knew it. Raascot would have been squished beneath Farehold’s thumb.

You changed history. You make and unmake.

That’s godhood, Ophir. You’re the goddess of change, of creation, of—”

“Discord and strife,” she sneered. “I know what I want, Dwyn, and it isn’t to rule.

If you’re going to stand in front of me and tell me to go back to the throne, then you’re no better than my father.

I haven’t come this far just to have someone else’s will imposed on me.

Stand with me, or step aside. I’ll take care of the crew myself.

” She turned and marched toward the specks of workers in the distance, who busied themselves around the dock at the edge of the Straits.

“By going to Sulgrave, you’re throwing it away,” Dwyn said, voice ripe with pain and frustration.

But Ophir didn’t turn to look at her. She’d said all she needed to say. The siren could scream into the snow all she wanted. Ophir wasn’t going to Sulgrave. But she was finished being told what to do.

***

Two Hours Following the Wedding

As far as she knew, the ship had never seen the sea. It was built on skates for northern ice, not for salt and waves. Why then, she wondered, did the sailors reek of rotting fish?

“I hate these men,” Dwyn said, eyeing the sailors bundled against the arctic as they bustled in and out of the ship in preparation for departure. The men were citizens of Farehold paid by Ceneth’s coin to take his new bride and her companion to Sulgrave.

Ceneth had promised that the men would ask no questions.

They had been skeptical, but were ready to do whatever their princess needed, particularly when their pockets were lined with gold.

People rarely survived passage across the Straits, but Ophir’s gift for flame was well known across the kingdom.

It was the reassurance they needed that, should the ship falter and the wind crack its hull, she could call a fire as large and hot as the sun to keep the ice and snow from consuming them.

“You hate all men,” Ophir hissed back.

“That’s not true.” Dwyn’s attempts at a whisper fell short. A crew member raised a disapproving brow as he passed.

Ophir had been aboard pleasure cruises that idled around the coast with Farehold’s nobility.

She’d enjoyed the rocking of the western sea while drinking wine and dipping crab legs in melted butter as dolphins leaped into the wake behind them.

She’d enjoyed watching the wind fill the sails and the way Caris had clutched the mast while she’d scanned incessantly for the merfolk that most certainly didn’t exist. This enormous, land-bound ship reminded her of the seafaring ship in many ways, but it was on an interesting set of thin, flat skis, prepared to glide across the snow.

She was told that they were still several miles from the Straits and that the crew would set to work switching out the boards for blades once they hit the ice.

She struggled to imagine what the Straits must look like if this barren sea of white nothingness was still several miles from its territory.

“Name one man you don’t hate,” Ophir demanded.

Though she had been shown to the captain’s quarters, she had opted to stay amid the crew beneath the ship.

If the men needed to be brainwashed into telling a very specific story, she thought it might serve her well to observe them before they utilized that ability.

Dwyn chewed on her lip.

“Told you.”

“I’m thinking,” Dwyn bit back defensively.