Page 98 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

Hadrian once explained the origin of the phrase "May the shadows guide your way." He wasn’t entirely certain, no one truly is, but his brother once told him of a king, a thousand years ago, who could shadow-walk. This king would lead his people into battle atop a shadow-wyvern. The creature’s shadow would carve a path through the terrain, unseen by enemies, allowing the wyverians to follow their king, and attack before the enemy.

It became their greatest secret, the key to winning every battle.

May the shadows guide your way.

Tabitha Wysteria

Mal had often wondered why the wastelands lay so barren as they pressed through them, silence clinging to the marshes like mist. Not a single witch had crossed their path.

No enchantments stirred in the shadows. Only the rustle of damp reeds and the squelch of weary boots filled the air.

Ash had said nothing, his eyes fixed on the horizon, his thoughts elsewhere.

And so, with a tightness in her chest she did not speak of, Mal gave the order to march on.

For years, Mal Blackburn had dreamt of the Kingdom of Magic, of its forgotten terrain and ivy-cloaked ruins.

She had flown over it before, alongside her brother Kai, gliding through the skies on the backs of their wyverns.

Where others had seen only rubble and desolation, Mal had marvelled, imagining the land in its prime, its spires alight with arcane brilliance, its people wielding power as effortlessly as breath.

Now, after all that had passed, she did not know what to feel.

This land had taken her wyvern. Its people had risen against her, cast her down, and drawn her into war. And yet, despite the bitterness etched into her bones, despite the betrayal… there was something else.

Because Mal Blackburn was no longer merely a wyverian princess.

She was a witch, too.

What she had once feared above all else had come to pass, and still, it did not consume her. In a way she could not explain, she no longer recoiled from the truth.

She did not reject it. Not anymore.

She yearned to speak with Hecate, or with the witch known as Tabitha, the Seer who had lingered like a shadow at her side for as long as she could remember. Now, with hindsight cruelly sharpened, Mal wondered if Tabitha had stayed close out of understanding. Had she always known what Mal truly was?

Memory flickered through her like candlelight in a draughty room, moments she had shared with the Seer, searching for some hidden sign, a whispered truth, a glance too long, too heavy. Some trace of tenderness that might betray Tabitha’s true heart.

But Mal found none.

She told herself she ought not to feel this hollow ache.

She had known true, unwavering love. Queen Senka had given her all of it, pouring every ounce of her soul into her children.

Mal had grown up cherished, protected, wrapped in warmth.

Her mother had not known the truth, but even if she had…

Mal believed, with quiet certainty, that it would have changed nothing.

Queen Senka would have loved her just the same.

And yet, Tabitha’s silence cut deep.

It was not the wound of a stranger's scorn, but something far more intimate. Like the slow, deliberate press of a blade slipping beneath her skin, inch by inch, until it pierced through flesh and nestled into muscle. A pain that lingered. That refused to dull.

‘They’ll be at the wall,’ Ash said, his voice low and meant only for Mal’s ears.

He had remained mostly silent throughout their journey, but as they neared their destination, he had begun to guide them.

Quiet commands and subtle shifts in direction, offered without explanation.

Still, Mal’s instincts whispered that Ash knew more than he let on—of where the witches lay in wait, of where the traps had been set.

They had changed course more than once, drawing frustrated huffs from the soldiers that carried on behind them.

But Adriana had quelled those murmurs with sharp glances and clipped words.

‘Do you think he knows where Kai is?’ Adriana asked once Ash signalled for them to land, urging the wyverns to descend to the fields below. From there, he said, they would proceed on foot until they reached the wall. He gave no reason.

‘I believe Ash knows a great many things,’ Mal replied, her voice thoughtful as she pressed a gentle hand to Nyx’s smoky leg in silent gratitude. It was difficult not to notice those golden eyes turning towards her, narrowing as if he had heard her despite the distance.

‘Then why won’t he tell us?’ Adriana asked, glancing back at where Ash stood a few paces away, quietly directing Keir and Cronan with calm, precise movements .

‘I think he’s afraid,’ Mal said softly, ‘that if he reveals too much, we might begin to change things.’ She paused, her hand drifting instinctively to her stomach. The gesture was so natural she hardly realised she’d done it, until Adriana’s eyes fell upon it.

Mal drew her hand away at once. ‘Not a word,’ she warned, her voice low and firm.

The warning was clear enough. Adriana nodded, though a small, irrepressible smile played at the corners of her mouth, hope crackling like firelight in her gaze.

Mal looked away, choosing to ignore it. It was far too soon. Too uncertain. She didn’t even know whether she believed it herself. Thanatos could have lied. She wanted it to be a lie.

Because if it were true…

The wind shifted as they neared the wall, carrying with it the sharp tang of something strange, something other. Mal inhaled deeply, and recognition struck like a spark to dry kindling.

Magic.

It thickened the air like stormclouds before a tempest, coiling in invisible threads, readying itself for war.

Ash moved silently to her side, his fingers brushing against hers in a fleeting, grounding touch.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked, just as Mal turned to study the army assembled behind them. As though reading her thoughts, he added quietly, ‘The wolverian army is almost h-here. They won’t be long.’

‘Do we wait?’ she asked, though she already suspected the answer.

Ash inclined his head towards the looming shape ahead, and Mal followed his gaze, her chest tightening at the sight.

The wall stood like a grave-mark on the horizon, distant yet imposing.

And now, atop it, rows of heads began to appear.

Witches and warlocks materialised in disciplined formation, each one preparing to defend what they still claimed as their own.

They were many.

But Mal’s army was greater.

‘They will not last a second against us,’ Adriana muttered with a scoff, a predatory gleam in her eye.

Something unreadable shadowed behind Ash’s golden eyes.

‘Do we break through?’ Mal asked him, her voice cool and steady.

Ash gave a single, solemn nod.

‘Very well,’ she said, squaring her shoulders against the rising tension that pressed like thunder in the distance.

Without another word, she turned back to Nyx, her loyal shadow wyvern, the only one who would take to the skies until the path was secure. After what had happened before, she would not risk the others. Not again.

The world seemed to hold its breath as Mal’s form dissolved into darkness, her flesh unravelling and reforming as smoke and shadow, an echo of the wyvern she now climbed upon.

For a single, stunned heartbeat, silence reigned across the battlefield.

And then, as if awoken from a spell, her army stirred, resolute and unshaken.

They had seen the impossible. And they were ready.

She had commanded it, and they obeyed.

For as long as she could remember, Mal had been different.

Hidden from the world, concealed behind high walls and watchful eyes, her purple gaze a mark of separation, something to be silenced, softened, controlled.

She had prayed in secret to distant gods, begged to be made ordinary, to be anything but the anomaly she was born as .

But now, rising in darkness above a world that once shunned her, Mal knew the truth.

Her difference was her power.

She was not a mistake.

She was a storm.

And the world, so frail, so unready, would soon know what it meant to stand against her.

Nyx unfurled her great wings and surged into the heavens, slicing through the clouds with terrifying grace. From her vantage above, Mal cast her attention beyond the wall, and her heart faltered at the sight that greeted her.

An ocean of witches and warlocks stretched out across the land, their ranks unbroken, cloaked in shadow and brimming with power. Tendrils of green smoke writhed through the air like serpents, thickening with the promise of ruin.

She glanced down, her eyes seeking Ash. Not for strategy, though he had never once led her astray, but for something deeper.

For the quiet, unspoken courage he gave her with a single look.

In his golden eyes, she found her reason to stand.

To fight. To imagine, if only for a moment, that the world might still be remade into something worth saving.

And to make that world, Hagan had to be destroyed.

Ash met her gaze and nodded, so slight a gesture, it was almost missed.

Mal closed her eyes and drew breath deep into her lungs, the air laced with tension and ash. She did not pray. Not anymore. Prayer belonged to the innocent. And she had learnt long ago that prayers sometimes were heard, and answered in cruel and merciless ways.

But in the stillness of that moment, she wished.

She wished Thanatos stood at her back. Wished Makaria and Zagreus flew at her side. Wished even Hades watched from the shadows. Not to rule, but to witness.

It would have been easier with them.

And infinitely more deadly.

‘May the shadows guide your way,’ she whispered into the breeze.

And on the wind, soft as breath and sharp as fate, the world whispered back.

‘May the shadows guide you.’