Page 40 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

It is hard to watch the land I once fell so deeply in love with become my enemy.

The wyverians turned on us, joining forces with the drakonians.

They drew their swords and cut us down. Hadrian’s brothers…

they knew me. They dined with me, laughed with me, danced with me.

And yet, they believe the lies. They truly think I’ve bewitched Hadrian.

Now they roam the lands, hunting for us, hunting for me. To kill me and save their brother.

Tabitha Wysteria

‘The sooner we strike, the greater our chances of success,’ Adriana reasoned, her voice clipped with urgency.

Kai found the war council exactly where he’d left them, huddled over maps as dusk crept in.

The day had slipped through his fingers like sand, most of it spent sparring with soldiers, trying and failing to ignore the simmering presence currently confined to his tent.

He had no intention of returning before nightfall. Let the witch stew in her discomfort.

A small, begrudging part of him wondered whether she might make a scene by slipping past the guards and stirring chaos through the ranks.

But Dawn was only one witch pitted against thousands of trained wyverians.

She’d be reduced to ash before she could whisper the first syllable of a spell.

Glamouring herself might buy her a few seconds, but she didn’t carry herself like one of them.

She didn’t move or speak the way a wyverian did.

She’d be exposed before she even had time to blink.

‘Not yet,’ Kai muttered, rolling his shoulders with a wince. Cronan had joined him for training earlier, and the brute struck like a raging storm. Already, Kai could feel the dull ache blooming across his body, the promise of far worse pain come morning. ‘We need more information.’

He caught the way Ash glanced at him when he mentioned needing more information.

That single glance said enough. Did Ash already know?

He couldn’t ask. If the Fire Prince was unaware and learnt that Dawn had infiltrated the camp, claiming she was there to protect him, to fight for him… it would unravel everything.

Kai had despised the idea of Mal being bound to a drakonian. He’d loathed their stolen glances, the softening of her voice whenever Ash was near. But now, after everything… he would shield Ash with his own life. For Mal. Because he owed her that much.

‘But Kai…’ Adriana’s tone sharpened. Her dark eyes narrowed. ‘We’re sitting ducks.’

‘We wait.’ His answer was final.

He didn’t linger to endure the storm of protests sure to follow.

Instead, he left them behind, retreating into the greying light of early evening.

The sky, veiled in dusky clouds, blushed crimson beneath the rising red moon.

As he neared his tent, a sliver of hope sparked.

Perhaps she’d gone. Slipped away, vanished like smoke, leaving behind no trace. But fate was rarely so kind.

She was still there.

Kai dropped the bowl of food at her feet, not bothering to hide the indifference in the gesture as half its contents spilt unceremoniously onto the ground.

Dawn’s lips curled in distaste, but she gave a careless shrug and knelt to retrieve each piece with her still-bound hands.

Kai watched, arms crossed, silently revelling in her awkward struggle.

He waited, almost with anticipation, to see her attempt to stomach wyverian rations.

‘You can wipe that smug grin off your face,’ she hissed, her tone sharp as a blade. ‘I could enchant this slop into something fit for a feast.’

Kai clucked his tongue, settling onto a stool with an amused glint in his eye. ‘My tent. My rules. You want to remain here, you eat what we eat.’

Their eyes locked, two lethal weapons sizing the other up. Neither flinched. Neither blinked. Finally, Dawn snorted and plucked up a piece of half-rotten fruit. She wrinkled her nose at the stench, but bit into it all the same, never looking away. ‘Delicious,’ she said, her sarcasm thick as honey.

‘Finish every last scrap or you won’t be fed again, witch.’

‘Do you treat all your guests with such charming wyverian hospitality, commander?’

‘You’re not a guest,’ he replied. ‘And I’m not a commander.’ He kept his face impassive, masking the lie with practiced ease. The fewer truths she uncovered, the safer they remained. He would give her nothing. Not names, not ranks, not even breadcrumbs to follow.

‘Oh?’ Her brows lifted with intrigue. ‘Did I mistake you then? Is the infamous Kai Blackburn merely a common soldier?’

‘Eat,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘and hold your tongue.’

Dawn obliged, though with the theatricality of a travelling performer. She chewed loudly, messily, as though mocking him with every exaggerated bite. Sauce from the meat dribbled slowly down her chin, and when she caught him looking, her grin was wicked.

‘Care to lick it off?’ she asked, tilting her head. ‘From the way you’re watching me, I could swear I’m tonight’s main course.’

‘You wish, witch,’ Kai growled. ‘I’d never touch you.’

‘Bit squeamish, are we?’ Her laugh echoed through the tent, wrapping around him like smoke, cloying and maddening.

Kai’s jaw clenched. He needed air. He needed distance. But above all, he needed answers, and she was the only one who might give them. Whether she gave them freely… that was another matter entirely.

‘You need to start talking. Now.’

Something in his tone, or perhaps the steel in his eyes, must have struck a chord, for Dawn gave a small nod, placing the bowl gently to one side with surprising care. The tenderness of the act unsettled Kai. He hadn’t thought her capable of gentleness.

‘Hagan won’t rest until the great Houses lie in ruin and the Kingdom of Fire is reduced to ash.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he despises the drakonians more than anything,’ she said, her voice low.

‘It was the Acherons who led the skies a hundred years ago, raining fire upon our lands, burning every witch city to cinders. But there’s more.

’ Her gaze veered away, suddenly distant.

‘Hagan’s father was a drakonian. He… he raped Hagan’s mother.

That’s how he was born. Half-drakonian, half-witch. Born of violence. Of hate.’

Kai’s brows lifted, taken aback.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Dawn sighed.

‘If he shares their blood, why loathe them so deeply? But wouldn’t you?

If the people who gave you life were the very ones who shattered your world?

Who violated your family, turned your home into a desert of bones and broken dreams?

I think Hagan has more reasons to hate them than most.’

‘You speak as if you share his hatred.’

She shook her head, but the denial rang hollow. Even she didn’t seem convinced. ‘Ash changed that. He made me realise the world isn’t divided into light and shadow. Sometimes… it’s just grey. Blurred. Complicated.’

Her eyes found his, purple and haunting, and he turned away before their weight could crush him.

Gods, she resembled Vera. But where Vera had been all sharp lines and angles, Dawn was soft.

Her face was rounder, lips fuller, her gaze impossibly wide.

She looked like a doll, the kind a lonely child might enchant and wish into a sister.

‘So you’ve betrayed your own for what, exactly? You didn’t even know if Ash was alive.’

‘I needed to know,’ she whispered. ‘I felt it, somehow. That he wasn’t gone. That if he had been, I’d have known. Here.’ She placed a hand over her heart. ‘But I couldn’t rest without seeing for myself. If Hagan finds out Ash survived… he won’t stop until his head is on a spike.’

Kai’s hand moved unconsciously to his chest. Was that true? Should he have felt something when his sister died? When Alina…

‘You don’t truly believe he’ll just run back into your arms, do you?’ he asked, his voice rough.

Dawn gave a delicate shrug. ‘Haven’t you ever been foolish for love?’

His breath caught. Pain twisted through him, raw and sharp. Dawn saw it, the tightening in his jaw, the shift in his expression.

‘Wouldn’t you try to save her?’ she asked softly .

‘I would,’ Kai said, fists clenching at his sides. ‘But I can’t. Because your people murdered her.’

Dawn’s lips parted, perhaps to defend herself or offer some hollow comfort, but Kai was already moving, unable to remain a moment longer beneath the same canvas as one of Alina and Haven’s killers.

Whether Dawn had wielded the blade herself mattered little.

She was a witch, and she had been at the castle.

That made her culpable, her hands as stained as any who had struck the fatal blows.

His chest heaved with the weight of fury barely contained, thoughts of Hagan rising like wildfire in his mind. One day, they would meet again, and when they did, Kai would show him no mercy.

‘Go to sleep,’ he said curtly, not bothering to meet her eyes as he reached the threshold.

Her voice followed him, soft and uncertain, like the rustle of dying embers. ‘Where will you sleep?’

He didn’t turn. Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing the ache beneath his rage.

‘Anywhere,’ he muttered, his tone sharp as steel, ‘is better than beside you.’

…

‘Kai!’

He jolted awake, breath catching in his throat. He’d dozed off against the trunk of a gnarled tree, just far enough from camp that no one would question his absence, assuming him tucked away in his tent. Clearly, that illusion had shattered.

Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he looked up into the face of an irate Adriana. Her scowl deepened the more conscious he became, and the sheer exhaustion her presence stirred within him made his bones ache.

‘You look too much like her.’