Page 75 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Forty-Five

Tyr held his breath as he watched the cabin door open and close. Dwyn was alone.

He remained in the place between things, but he didn’t want to risk her hearing his movements as he broke through the crust of the snow.

He waited until she disappeared behind the furthest tree trunk in his line of sight before picking his way toward the cabin.

Deciding it was best not to give sound the chance to carry should Ophir exclaim in surprise, he opened and shut the door in the quickest of motions as he slipped inside the shelter.

The moment he stepped out from the place between things, it was to shock and horror.

Ophir looked up at him with wide, panicked eyes. “Can you help him?”

It was the only greeting they required. Any explanation, any apology could wait. He knelt beside Harland and examined the bite marks. He tugged on the belt and exhaled. “The tourniquet is perfect,” he said to Ophir. He looked at the vageth. “Sedit did this?”

“Dwyn commanded him to,” she said, voice thick with emotion. She lifted her hand, and he blanched with the horror of understanding. He’d been in the room with her in Gwydir when he’d learned of the rings. “She’s wearing its counterpart, but since I put it on first… I’m a prisoner, Tyr.”

He could tell from her unsteady breathing that she’d been crying for a long, long time. In the months he’d known her, he’d never seen her in shambles like this. He dropped her gaze and let his hand hover above the wound. “It’s hot,” he said with a frown.

“What’s that mean?” She swallowed, adjusting her grip around him.

“It’s infected. How long has he been unconscious?”

“He was speaking minutes ago. He was weak but okay.” She began to tap against his cheek with her hand until Harland’s eyes fluttered open. She responded with a quiet, hopeful laugh. “There you are. Hang on, Harland. Tyr is here. We’re going to get out.”

Tyr’s heart ached at the confidence in her words, as if he were the cavalry here to save the day. “Okay,” he said as he slipped an arm behind Harland’s back. “I’ll carry him. Let’s go. We have to hurry. I don’t know how long Dwyn will be out.”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking against the words. “She’s forbidden me from leaving.”

Tyr’s eyes flared as he absorbed the weight of her meaning. Dwyn could command her beasts and force her to stay put, all because of those stupid rings.

“Cut my finger off,” Ophir said urgently. “Cut it off! We were going to before Dwyn showed up and—”

“No,” Harland said, voice quiet but firm. He tried to right himself as he looked at Tyr, but sweat dripped down the gray skin of his face. “I’m dying,” he said.

“You’re not,” Ophir insisted. “Don’t say that.”

Harland ignored her as he held Tyr’s eyes. Tyr straightened respectfully as he nodded for Harland to go on.

“Is it true, what she said? Did you learn how to drain?”

Tyr furrowed his brow. He didn’t understand Harland’s question until Ophir’s face went white with dread and denial. “Absolutely not, Harland. No—”

Harland spoke over her, looking only at Tyr as he said, “You can get it off her. You can speak to metal.”

Tyr looked between the two of them.

“No, Harland, no, he won’t do that. He’s not going to hurt you. You’re going to be fine,” Ophir insisted. The fire flared within the hearth as if emphasizing her words, blazing with intensity and vanquishing the room’s shadows as she clutched him.

“I’m dying, Firi,” he said calmly. “This is why I’m in your life. It’s what I was meant for. Let me save you one last time.”

“Harland!” she gasped, fear and misery dripping from his name on her lips, every bit as thick and painful as the blood that splashed to the ground from his wound. She touched her forehead to his as she cried.

Harland accepted the touch for a long, stoic moment before he looked at Tyr and nodded.

“Close your eyes,” Tyr said to her. She’d seen enough. She’d suffered enough. She didn’t need another nightmare engulfing her in flames.

She shook her head in cold, cruel rejection of the truth.

“Close your eyes.” Harland echoed the command.

Her cries intensified as she bowed her head, her hold on Harland slackening. Tyr didn’t wish to prolong the moment any more than necessary. Not for Harland and not for her. He felt the hot threat of emotion on his lids as he put his hands on the sides of Harland’s face.

“Thank you,” Tyr mouthed to him. He needed Harland to feel the gratitude, not for him, not for either of them, but for Ophir.

Harland’s lids fluttered closed, and a moment later, it was over.

The wail that pierced through the evening could have been heard from miles around.

Ophir immediately brought her hands to her face to muffle the cries as she dropped the dusty remnants of Harland’s body, and Tyr knew her well enough to understand that her suffering was coming from a wound much deeper than this loss.

She was grieving how everything good around her died.

Still, the sound had been too loud. Dwyn could be anywhere, and if she had heard Ophir, they might only have moments.

“Ophir—” Tyr grabbed for her hand.

She yanked away in her suffering, but he found the strength he needed as he forced her hands away from her face. “Look at me, Princess. Prove to Harland that this wasn’t for nothing, and let’s get you out of here. Give me your hand.”

“I—”

“Give it to me!” He jerked it away from her face perhaps a bit too hard, but he saw it in the shift of her posture that her acute fae ears had heard it, too. The steady thumping of feet as someone ran for them.

The chaos that erupted in the next few moments was a blur of unspeakable proportions.

Tyr spoke to the metal, forcing the ring to widen until it was a loose band that could easily slip off her finger.

The metal finished pulling away from her just as the cabin door burst open.

He saw the golden hair as Ophir jerked toward Dwyn and felt the rush of cold water as the siren attempted to douse him in ice and snow, but by the time she screamed for Sedit, it was too late.

“Stop,” Tyr said to her in a calm, loud voice. He rose from the floor, ice-cold water dripping from his clothes.

To Dwyn’s horror, her water ceased. She flexed her fingers again and again, but nothing happened. “No,” she began to repeat over and over. “That’s the wrong ring. It’s…”

Ophir looked down at her hand and then up at Tyr to see what he’d done.

“The first wearer disappears,” Tyr said, unfeeling. “You’re the first wearer now, Dwyn.”

“How could you,” Ophir said, the accusation like flesh dragged over glass until it was sliced and raw. “How could you,” she repeated.

“Dwyn,” he said, “go wait outside.”

And while Dwyn cried out and pounded against an invisible barrier, her feet forced her to obey.

The fangs of her elongated canines caught in the firelight as she bared her teeth, howling like a feral animal as she was forced beyond the walls of the cabin.

She continued her banshee’s cry as Tyr walked calmly to the door and closed it.

“How could you,” Ophir said a third time.

He cupped her face in his hands. “You never would have been safe.”

“You could have killed…” He saw the light of recognition in her eyes before she finished her sentence. No, to kill Dwyn would be to end his own life. “I’ll kill her,” she said firmly. “Let me kill her.”

“We’re fused now more than ever,” he said. He tugged his collar humorlessly over the tattoo. “I couldn’t have killed her before. But with these rings, if one of us goes, the other does, as well.”

Ophir’s breathing became shallower and shallower as she pleaded with him for any alternative. She needed a plan, a solution, something to fix what had been broken. Her rapid pants were the only sounds apart from the furious shrieking that crawled under the door and between the cabin’s cracks.

“I won’t let her hurt you,” he said.

“This hurts me,” Ophir said firmly. She grabbed his hand and pressed it into her heart. “Tyr, I can’t do this. How am I supposed to move forward knowing you’ve bound yourself to that witch—”

He chuckled lightly.

With shaking shoulders and trembling breath, she said, “I don’t see what’s funny about any of this.”

He shrugged, a sad smile on his face as he pulled her against his chest. “I’ve been calling her a witch since the day I first met her. It just feels good to have you finally on my side.”

She buried her face in the center of his chest while she cried.

She started several sentences, answering each demand before it completed its journey from her lips.

Dwyn couldn’t be sent away if they were fused by both the rings and the bond of their ink.

She couldn’t be killed, unless he, too, was ready to die.

He felt her fingers dig into him as if she could keep him from leaving if she just held on more tightly.

“This is the only way,” he said.

“Don’t leave me” was all she could say in return, soaking his shirt with her tears.

He tugged her chin up to force her to look at his face. She tried to look away, but he held firm as he said, “The fae life is long, Ophir. Your first century was more eventful than most. Not many get to realize they’re the All Mother.”

“I’m not the—”

“You are,” he said quietly. “And while this year was horrible beyond all imagining, it was also the year where you discovered who and what you are. And what you are is someone who changed the world. You’re brilliant, and stubborn, and brave, and fierce, and incredible.

I would have traded my centuries before now just to share the moment in time we had together, and I will trade my centuries after to honor my time spent with you. ”

She closed her eyes, but he left his hand beneath her chin. “What do I do now?” she asked into the darkness.

“You do what you do best,” he said. “You make.”

“Tyr…” Her eyes fluttered open. She held his gaze for as long as she could.

“I was never religious,” he said as he brushed a kiss against her tears.

“I didn’t care whether or not there was some greater power.

I didn’t have faith. Until my sorry, foolish ass stumbled its way into the blessing of spending a year with you.

You changed the course of kingdoms, of the people, of the world.

You’re the reason we pray. And if I get one thousand lifetimes after this one, I can’t believe I was lucky enough to have loved a goddess. ”