Page 74 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Ophir saw her opening and took it. “There are no more healing tonics. I can’t lose Harland. Please, help.”

She wrung her hands as her eyes continued to bounce between them, little more than a fretful hummingbird unsure as to which flower had what she needed. Dwyn’s concern grew as she finally absorbed just how much blood Harland had already lost, presumably connecting what that blood loss meant for her.

“You can make some,” she said hopefully to Ophir.

“No, I can’t,” Ophir replied, pain thick in her voice.

And she saw in Dwyn’s eyes that they both knew she was right.

Nothing Ophir manifested would be reliable for consumption—not on her first try, at least. She’d never crafted anything that had turned out the way she’d intended, and a healing tonic was not the place to start.

“Snowberry,” Harland said weakly.

“What?” Dwyn demanded.

“Snowberries are used in healing tonics. They’re nowhere near as effective when they haven’t been distilled with a healer, but they’re the soul of every tonic.”

“It’s winter…” Dwyn said skeptically as she looked over her shoulder.

“Snow is in its name, for the goddess’s sake. It’s a winter berry. It’s white, so it may be hard to spot against the ground, but the bush will be barren. They look like little clusters of snowflakes. The plant may be no taller than your knee, or up to your hip.”

Dwyn nodded along as she listened. “And they’ll be here? In this forest?”

Ophir snapped with irritation. “How is he supposed to know! We’re in the Unclaimed Wilds, Dwyn. Please, for the love of the goddess, help him.”

Dwyn’s head continued bobbing uncertainly as she slowly got to her feet. Her eyes remained glued to the ever-expanding lake of blood. She looked at Sedit, who was calmly grooming himself like a cat, licking the evidence of his crimes from where it had splattered against him.

“Go,” Ophir begged.

“Okay, yes,” Dwyn agreed. “I’ll be back before dark, with or without the snowberries. I can’t leave you alone overnight with a dead body. But… It won’t come to that. I’ll find them.” She shut the door behind her as she disappeared into the winter day beyond where their eyes might follow.

Quiet stretched between them for so long that Ophir was almost certain she could hear the sound of Harland’s blood leaching from his body.

“Is it true?” Ophir asked. “The thing about the berries?”

Harland waited for a painstaking while before he said, “No. It’s not.”

Her heart sank into her entrails, bobbing around her stomach and leaving her chest cavity dark and vacant. She looked into the hazel eyes that had been with her for so many years. “Are you going to die?”

He held her gaze. With his good hand, he brushed a tear from her face. “Everybody dies.”

“You said a man in the woods was gored by a vageth?”

She watched the ashen color of his face deepen further into whites and grays as he answered. “By Sedit. It seemed he was drawn to the fire. I wonder if he thought it was you, since your gift is flame.”

Ophir looked at Sedit, but he continued licking his paws.

“Tyr was with him. He instructed us to put out the fire. It was the only thing that calmed your hound.”

It hurt her to think that Sedit had been pulled in by a flame only to feel betrayed that she was not its source. “The man with you—you said he drank three tonics and still perished?”

Harland looked at her grimly. “I don’t know much about your creature, but the bite soured his blood. He drank two, and the third was put directly in the wound. Maybe I’ll be fine. Maybe I’m wrong. But if these are our last moments together, Firi—”

She scrunched her face against a bubbling sob.

She tightened her hold on Harland. “Don’t say that.

You’re going to be fine. The snowberries—” But she stopped herself.

The snowberries had been a lie to get Dwyn out of the cabin.

He’d said as much. Even if there was nothing dangerous about Sedit’s bite, Harland had already lost so much blood.

“Let me say what I need to say, please,” Harland asked.

She peered down into his kind face and was transported to drinking wine on the wall, to seducing him in the castle, to being shaken awake when her nightmares had consumed her.

He’d suffered blisters, burns, and unmatched pain each time he’d rushed in after her.

He’d fired every other guard who’d attempted to keep watch outside her room, trusting no one to do right by her.

He’d followed her to Henares, then to Tarkhany, then to Gwydir.

And goddess, the man was imperfect, and frustrating, and had made her want to pull out her hair on many occasions, but she knew what love was and what it wasn’t. And she knew that Harland loved her.

“Okay,” came her quivering response.

“I’ve been in love with you since the first day I laid eyes on you,” he said.

He smiled as he continued to whisk the tears from her face with a comforting, cupping hand.

“But no one deserves you, Ophir. I would never be foolish enough to think I did, and I know from the bottom of my heart that Dwyn will never be worthy of you. Because you are priceless beyond measure.”

“Harland…”

“I’m almost done,” he said, offering a weak smile. “We have a little time left before Dwyn gives up on her goose chase. We’re going to make a plan, and we’re going to get you out of here. And when you leave, you need to keep a promise to me.”

And perhaps because she knew it was a mortal sin to deny a man his dying wish, through her silver tears, she whispered, “Anything.”

He looked at her sadly before he said, “You need to forgive yourself for all that’s happened. You need to let go of Caris. And you need to find a way to be happy. Because you deserve a full life, Ophir. Lay claim to the world. It’s yours.”