Page 19

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

Oralia

“What if he cannot be revived?”

The bitter air burned my lungs. My face was raw from the icy wind slapping across my cheeks. But I did not stop to look at Aelestor, who pushed through the high snow beside me, hands tucked into his sides and his cloak drawn tightly around his face. The question he’d spoken aloud burned deeper than the ice forming on my brows and lashes.

We had gathered before dawn to leave Infernis at my insistence. The mess of two days ago in the human village burned in all our minds, leaving behind worry at what we would find now. Aelestor had not been seen much in the day we rested, preferring to spend his time in Rathyra with Josette while I kept mainly to my and Ren’s rooms or spoke with the others in the parlor attached to our chambers.

“He can,” I answered, pushing the words out even as they stuck to my tongue.

We stumbled through another snowbank, visibility so low I was unsure whether we were at the peak of a mountain or traveling through a valley. All I knew was the bitter cold and the ice eating its way through my chest until warmth was barely a distant memory. Each step felt like a hundred. Each breath through my lungs was so painful I was unsure if I could take another. And it was not the snow or the cold, but the paralyzing fear now spoken aloud.

The question had not left me no matter how long I tried. When I slept, they curled through my mind, though after the first night, I had not dreamed again of Ren. Only long, narrow halls with no end, lightning streaking across the sky to pierce me through the heart, and a long fall through distant worlds to land on a boat that almost overturned. A voice spoke in my ear of trust and prophecy and strands of thread on a loom slithering through time and space over and over in an endless cycle until I woke with a gasp, clutching my chest.

“Are you sure?” Aelestor rasped, catching himself before he fell face-first into a deep trench.

That was the problem. I was not. Had I not spent the last two nights worried over the same matter? But I could not speak my heart aloud. To do so would be to admit defeat, that perhaps what we were doing was a fool’s errand, and risk him refusing to go any further.

So I pressed my gloved hand to my chest over the place where Ren’s power now lay. “I trust our magic”—my foot slipped on ice and Drystan’s hand shot out to steady me before I tumbled—“and our bond. If he cannot die then he can be revived.”

Drystan’s grip did not waiver as we met a high, icy wall of smooth gray stones, marked with time and grit from the wind. Each step was more treacherous than the last. The snow was blindingly white—so thick I could barely see my hand before my face.

The magic I spoke of tugged within me, guiding me to the right up the path leading to what had to be the side of the mountain. It was the only sensation I welcomed now: the reminder that within me a piece of Ren still lived.

“So how will we revive him?” Aelestor pressed.

“Aelestor…” Drystan warned.

I did not respond. But Aelestor did not relent, his voice clear at my shoulder as if he were the echo of my own worried consciousness.

“I do not mean any disrespect, Oralia. However, I must ask the questions others are too afraid to. You do not have his heart any longer—it lives inside of you.”

The words were needle pricks to my brain, each spot bleeding until panic lanced through each breath. What would I do if we gathered all the pieces of him? We would have all save one.

“How could you possibly—”

“Enough,” I snapped, turning so quickly my feet slipped, and I steadied myself with a hand on the sheet of rock beside us.

Aelestor skidded to a stop, gray eyes wide beneath the icy cowl covering his nose and mouth.

I tugged down the cowl covering my nose and mouth. “You do not trust me.”

He shook his head. “It is not a matter of tru—”

I stepped closer, looking up into the face of a god I’d once believed was my tormentor. Now he was my conscience, speaking the fears aloud I could not put voice to. Part of me understood and was grateful for his counsel—another time, I would have welcomed it. But not now, not when we were trudging up the side of a mountain in a blizzard.

“If you do not believe in the success of this mission, then your presence is not needed.” My voice was smooth, only the barest hint of tremble in the back of my throat. It was the voice I thought a queen might use. “I have no wish to drag you across this world kicking and screaming like a petulant god well before prime.”

Drystan gave a gruff sound of agreement, swallowed mostly by the howling wind. The cowl around Aelestor’s mouth shifted, small icicles breaking off and falling at our feet, but whatever he would have said next was drowned by an ear-piercing screech, like nails on porcelain. The three of us started, hands flying to our frozen weapons as small dagger-like shards of ice rained down upon us. My power flared outward on instinct, shielding us from the worst of the shrapnel.

“We need to move,” Drystan called over the tumult.

I spun, slipping on the rocks before charging ahead and around the corner. Whatever my magic led me to was close, the silver thread within my soul humming as it had before. The path inclined, wind whipped around my face, and the sound of my name was drowned by an ear-shattering wail beside my head.

Only a moment—it was all the time I had to throw up my shadows before an icy swipe caught the skin of my cheek. It did not tear my flesh, but the impact sent me tumbling backward into Aelestor. Scrambling within my cloak, my frozen hands fumbled with the dagger, but a heavy weight shunted me to the side. I fell with a sickening crack of my head against the ground.

Someone screamed my name.

The world spun, shouts dying in the storm raining ice and snow upon us. Unsteadily, I pushed back to my feet, looking around for the others and shaking my head.

Aelestor was on his back, copper hair spilling out from his cowl, a strange, four-legged creature pinning him to the ground as big as he was. Drystan stood over them, hacking at the monster with his short sword for all the good it was doing them both. It was strange—with each blow Drystan dealt, chunks of ice flew from the body, and thick legs pushed against Aelestor each time he bucked.

I slid forward, darkness shooting out and dragging the creature off him. Another screech filled my ears, the sound crackling and sparking inside my head until my shadows faltered from the pain and the world went silent. The storm raged, and Drystan’s mouth moved. The covering flapped around his face, and yet I could not hear.

The creature smashed against the opposite wall, falling onto its strange, pointed feet. The bulbous head rocked from side to side. It staggered, swaying, and I realized its face was covered in a thick layer of ice, as was the rest of its body. As if it had built these layers upon itself like armor, leaving only the sharp pincers around its mouth and feet free.

Aelestor shot to his feet, flipped the dagger in his hand, and drew his fist in to protect his chest. His clothes were tattered from the attack. There was no fending this creature off with blades, not with the sheet of ice protecting it. It would continue to attack until it met whatever its goal might be. Perhaps we were close to its nest, and it sought to drive us off the mountainside. Great Mothers only knew how far the drop was to the bottom. We would survive it, but it would take us time—time I was not sure we had.

The silver thread pulsed within my chest, a reminder of the mission we were on. This creature stood between us and my mate. It crouched and sprang forward with an agility surprising for its size. The three of us rushed it, and I forced my power to wrap around its limbs, holding it in place as Drystan and Aelestor hacked through the ice. Sweat froze across my hairline. My skin was tight and chapped in the bitter wind.

Drystan grabbed his short sword in both hands, thrusting downward, but the blade glanced off the thick ice, barely an inch chipping off in its wake. Frustration pounded in my temples, the heat of it burning through my veins. I was tired of the delay, ready for the bed I would fall into, to clutch Ren’s pillow to my face, and fall into an endless sleep.

Heat flared, similar to the warmth I would feel as I used my magic to grow life, but sharper. A knife tip instead of a paintbrush. Power tapped at the back of my head, and I knew it wanted me to listen, to focus.

Fear is not your enemy here. The words were merely a distant memory, a reminder that my power was an extension of myself. I should not fear it, nor fight it. As the creature thrashed against the shadow bonds, I slowly relaxed the hold I had on my magic, gritting my teeth against the onslaught of heat as it flared across my fingertips, the sides of my neck, and the center of my ribs.

And then my shadows exploded into ropes of flame and the creature died, its screams vibrating through my bones.