Page 65 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Thirty-Eight

Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes After the Wedding

The Frozen Straits

It was tits to asses in the galley, but if Dwyn threw the right combination of glares and elbows, she would get back to the ship’s belly without a man touching her. She bared her teeth, hissing at the only sailor who dared to make direct eye contact as she shoved into the main interior.

“Firi, the food—”

Dwyn’s grip around the plate went slack.

The meal she’d sourced from the galley was little more than brown rolls and a cut of warm ham.

She’d prepared a grumbling speech about how if they were already denied sweets and vegetables on the first day of their voyage, it was going to be a terribly uncomfortable crossing.

Now, she frowned as she looked up and down the belly of the ship, scanning the arctic sailors who were too busy to be bothered by her presence.

A few of them cast her curious glances, but they weren’t foolish enough to speak disrespectfully to the princess’s companion.

“You there,” she said to a passing sailor. He swallowed audibly as he skidded to a stop. “Did you see where the princess went?”

He blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, m’lady. I would assume she’s in her quarters.”

“Her quarters?” Dwyn clarified. Her eyes drifted up to the deck of the chip. The captain’s quarters were directly below the wheel, completely removed from the crew.

“It’s not my business to know,” he mumbled apologetically. “We were surprised you came into the ship’s belly in the first place, m’lady.”

Dwyn turned for the ladder without thanking the sailor. She frowned up at the latched door on the ceiling. The same sailor jogged up behind her.

“Allow me,” he said. He quickly climbed the ladder and knocked thrice.

Someone deckside cranked a chain until the hatch opened.

“It’s sealed to keep us warm,” he explained.

“Someone will always be top or bottom to ensure you can get in or out, should you or Her Highness need to. I’d put your gloves back on before you go topside. ”

“Fine,” Dwyn said dismissively. She shoved her left hand into her glove, leaving her right hand exposed as it gripped the plate.

She balanced the dish in one hand as she mounted the ladder.

She’d managed to forget just how cold the air was in their short time in the belly of the ship.

The instant blast of arctic air set her eyes watering.

She was certain the ham had lost any residual warmth.

“I hope you like cold meat,” she muttered, irritated.

Dwyn got to the captain’s quarters and yanked on the door without knocking. It didn’t budge.

She began to bang on the door with her gloved hand. “Firi, I have your food. Let me in.”

“The princess hasn’t been topside,” a man called to her from the starboard side. “My lady,” he added hastily.

She glared at the man as if he were to blame for Ophir’s absence. Each word was a dagger as she asked, “Then where is she?”

It was clear from the shock on his face that he felt every drop of angst she threw at him.

A bloody cry cut through the wood from the belly of the ship.

Dwyn and the sailor dropped their gazes as each looked beneath their feet.

It was not the cry of man or fae. Dwyn’s eyes tightened as a second cry, one like rust and broken glass and anguish, ripped the boards apart with its piercing scream.

“Firi,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

The hatch burst open a moment later. Dwyn dropped the plate of food as she stumbled backward, back pressed against the lip of the ship in horror as an atrocity stared back at her.

A humanoid beast shook its head to scream, but as it did, its mouth dropped lower, and lower, and lower until its jaw dangled near the sternum of its manlike chest. The blood of a fresh kill dripped from its fangs.

It whipped at them with the razor-sharp arms of a praying mantis.

She threw her hands up to protect herself, calling to water that didn’t come.

It was so cold that the bitter snow lacked the moisture she needed.

Dwyn thrust out her hand to attempt to bend the blood within the creature, but it shrieked as if she were little more than an annoyance.

“She’s gone!” came the hound-like cry from a voice deep within the ship’s belly. “The princess is gone!”

Dwyn’s heart dropped into her stomach. She lurched for the sailor who’d spoken to her only seconds before.

The man shoved aside his fear as he responded to the emergency, extending his hand as if to help a damsel in distress.

She whipped off her glove and gripped his outstretched hand.

The withered husk of a man was taken on the wind before he’d even realized what had happened.

With a powerful yell, Dwyn called to the air and hit the demonic abomination with a gale-force column of wind.

The creature screamed as the wind punched it with unbeatable strength as if it were the fist of the All Mother herself.

The thrust sent the monster flying from the deck and skipping across the ice like a stone over the pond.

It would be on its feet in a second, but Dwyn was fast. She dove into the hull and blinked rapidly against the change in light as she struggled through the darkness.

Dwyn tripped over something and collapsed to the floor. She gasped at the hot, sticky liquid covering her hand, her knees, and saturating the fur of her white coat. The creature had worked very quickly.

Panic tore her to pieces. She grabbed the first man she saw as she drained him to borrow the ability to heal. If Ophir was wounded, Dwyn would find her. Cortisol gagged her as she shoved through the chaos of hollering men. “Ophir!”

“She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!” one continued crying. She reached the man and gripped his shoulders.

“Where is she!”

“She’s dead,” he said again. His cheeks were red and stained with tears. Each ragged breath was punctuated with the horrible proclamation, time and time again. Dwyn looked over her shoulder at the slain man, his throat slit, his soft organs strewn about the belly of the ship.

“Where!” Dwyn demanded. She could scarcely hear her thoughts over the screams of the men as pandemonium filled the ship.

Between the horrific fanged demon, the withered husks of men, and the slain princess, there was no sanity to be had.

Terror rang in her ears, battling their screams. Her eyes spiked with tears as the fear consumed her.

“So many are dead,” he sobbed. “So many…” He lifted his hand to gesture to another body. Dwyn nearly hit him to get him to focus but followed the point of his finger to see the drained husk of a sailor.

She blinked at the body. She slowly released the man and walked over to the bloodless, mummified man.

She’d killed only twice since boarding the ship, and their fragile bodies had already been taken by the wind and blown onto the ice.

She took a few steps closer to the sailor and kicked the new man with her shoe.

He moved easily beneath her nudge as if he were made of little more than paper. This was not her doing.

Her fear was replaced with something else entirely. She turned to the sobbing crewman and changed her question. “How did she die?” Dwyn asked woodenly.

“She walked out onto the ice. No one could stop her! She was claimed by the Straits.”

Time slowed as she worked through her next question. “And, what are you to do with this information?”

He wiped his tears as he continued to blubber. “Return to our villages and tell others how she died.”

There was a weightlessness to the numbness that claimed her.

“Firi, how could you,” she whispered.

She saw the calamity for what it was—a sleight of hand.

She walked away from the wailing sailor.

She stepped over the brutalized body of the young man who’d fallen victim to Ophir’s latest monstrosity as she mounted the ladder.

Dwyn would have shivered against the cold if she could feel anything at all.

She scanned the horizon for any sign of the princess but saw only the husk of the man she’d eliminated as his bundle of bones and clothes was pushed along the ice by the whipping winds.

She was continuing to scan for where Ophir had gone when she saw it.

Out of nowhere, a doorway appeared. It opened, closed, and disappeared into a bout of smoke and flame as if it had never existed.

Ophir had drained a man to try her hand at hypnosis.

The tale of a monarch who’d died on the Frozen Straits was even more final than the false hope that she might one day return from Sulgrave.

Dwyn realized in that moment that Ophir had never intended to relocate to the mountain kingdom.

She didn’t want to live at Dwyn’s side at all.

The horrid, shrieking creature rammed the hull of the ship. Dwyn peered over the edge at the terrifying monster that Ophir had made merely for distraction. Unless the princess had drained a second sailor, then perhaps this beast knew a thing or two about how to help someone slip away unseen.

She blamed Tyr that Ophir had even considered stepping into the place between things.

She watched the demon ram the ship time and time again as it slashed and hacked at the wood in vain. Its tearing had no impact.

“My lady!” came the concerned voice of a sailor rushing for her. “Did you hear? The princess is dead. She—”

Dwyn grabbed the man by the neck. She dug her nails into his throat, wrapping her hand around his esophagus just to feel the thrill of his panic in his final seconds as rage pumped through her.

She’d already stolen and used wind. The second power she’d taken was healing, though she may very well still need it soon if she was about to set out onto the ice.

“It’s nothing personal,” she said to the man as his blood vanished, his skin suctioning to what remained of his skeleton. “I need a few things. You and a few of your brothers are going to have to cough up the price.”

The first stolen power was that of strength.

She burst through the locked cabin door as she stormed into the captain’s quarters.

Just as was true of ships bound for the sea, the captain’s cabin had a large map of the continent on the table at its center.

Dwyn sighed as she looked at the map. She worked her face into a dramatic display of pain and panic as she screamed for help.

She cried out again and again until someone sprinted to her aid.

The man threw himself at her protectively before identifying the source of her fear.

Within a moment, she’d claimed him.

She turned back to the map and used her next power.

“Show me Ophir,” she said to the map.

A large, dark blotch appeared on the elaborate parchment. To her surprise, Ophir had not gone to the Raasay Forest, or the warm coastal climates, or Tarkhany, or Sulgrave. As she looked at the dark spot on the map, she desperately wished it had been the Etal Isles.

Dwyn snarled at the map as she spun out of the cabin.

A concerned, handsome face opened his mouth to intercept her, perhaps concerned for her safety as crewmembers dropped dead left and right.

He’d be her final kill. She didn’t hear what he had to say before she grabbed the rope that dangled over the ledge and lowered herself to the icy ground.

She only needed to get far enough away from the ship to keep the men from following.

She tucked her exposed hands into her coat, praying Ophir’s demon would be too distracted by the crew to come searching for her.

Healing awaited her should she need it, but she had one more power to use.

Dwyn closed her eyes as she made good on the rumors that had circulated about her for months and became a fae who had the gift of travel as she focused on the Unclaimed Wilds.