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"I don’t need forever," Ashlynn said with as much confidence as she could muster. "Just long enough."

The words were more bravado than truth. She’d already been fighting for what felt like hours inside this crystalline prison, and her enhanced strength was beginning to falter.

Already, she was denied any source of living growth to fuel her witchcraft, and at night, she couldn’t even draw on the sun’s faint warmth as a source of flame.

The Ice Tomb only added to her troubles, isolating her from the mountain wind and the vast reserves of ice and snow.

In the end, only the solid stone ground under her feet offered any source of strength, but Ashlynn had long ago found that there was a vast difference between lush, living soil and cold, barren earth.

What the mountain offered her, it offered only grudgingly, as if it knew that the right to command it belonged to a different lineage of witches.

"Long enough for what?" Ines’s cold, feminine voice echoed through Hauke’s mouth.

"For your vampire mistress? She’s abandoned you to chase shadows.

" Hauke might not have noticed, but Ines still maintained the faintest of connections to the blizzard she’d summoned outside the Ice Tomb.

Not enough to know what was occurring outside, but more than enough to have noticed Nyrielle’s hasty departure, as though she were hunting something far away in the direction of the ancestral cave that once held Ines and her fellow spirits hostage.

Perhaps the vampire had seen through them and was even now searching their former tomb for a method of unraveling their bond to the young Hauke, but those efforts would only prove futile.

The only records that remained in that ancient cave told of their creation.

None of them were foolish enough to leave behind a method to destroy them.

Ashlynn said nothing, conserving her breath as she drew steadily on the power of earth beneath her feet, hardening her flesh until she felt like she’d wrapped herself in a thin layer of armor. It wasn’t much protection, especially not against Ansgar’s runic blade, but it was all she could manage.

She could feel Nyrielle through their bond, and her lover’s heartbeat echoed in her chest. It had grown distant, but it felt strong and determined, focused on something that troubled Nyrielle so greatly she dared not confront it close to Ashlynn.

Heila’s presence was fainter. The bond between a witch and her coven was lighter and less.

.. imposing than the bond between a True Vampire and her Seneschal, but Ashlynn felt her friend close at hand, perhaps only a few feet from the other side of the icy walls.

Her presence was faint, flickering like a candle flame in winter, but still there. Still trying to reach her.

All she needed was time.

Ansgar charged again, but this time, Ashlynn was ready.

Instead of dodging or parrying, she crouched low, dropping underneath Ansgar’s swing in a move that was completely bereft of dignity but made every possible use of the power she’d gained when she rooted herself to the ground.

As Ansgar’s blade passed overhead, she sprung upward, lashing out with her falchion and scoring a long cut across Hauke’s thigh.

"You’re predictable," Ashlynn taunted. "You might handle your sword well, but you overcommit constantly. Who am I really fighting? The mighty ancestor or his sword?"

The ancestral spirit’s eyes narrowed with a cold fury that had nothing to do with his ice sorcery.

Hauke’s arms were much shorter than the ones he’d possessed in life, and no matter what he did, he found himself constantly re-adjusting his distance, making up for the shortfalls of his powerful blows with deeply committed lunges to close the gap between them.

He knew it was a technique rife with flaws, but he hadn’t expected such an amateurish witch to perceive it so clearly.

"Ines," he commanded, his voice tight with barely contained fury. "Since she wants to play tree, let her bear up under your blizzard while I chop her down!"

After so many years bound together, Ines didn’t need clearer instructions to understand Ansgar’s intentions.

The runes on the blade glowed with a bright, radiant white light moments before the icy chamber filled with swirling snow, dense enough that Ashlynn could barely see her own hand in front of her face.

In the dense cloud of swirling white, Hauke’s figure vanished entirely from her sight.

Her heart raced, pounding in her chest at several times the pace of the echo of Nyreille’s strong, steady pulse as Ashlynn realized she would have to give up the spell that kept her rooted to the earth if she wanted to have any chance of countering an enraged ancestor who could appear from anywhere.

Slowly, releasing the energy of her binding spell, Ashlynn backed against one wall, using it as an anchor and reference point in the whiteout conditions.

Her ears, already bright red in the bitter cold of the intense wind and beginning to go numb, strained to hear even the faintest sound of movement that might tell her where the ancestral spirit would attack from.

"You should have surrendered the defiler, little witch," Ines said, her voice seeming to come from everywhere at once in the swirling, dancing snow. "You’re too far from your trees and growing things. You have no power here except what your vampire gave you, and you’re far too inexperienced to protect your fledgling coven from the punishment that accompanies their crimes.

Now, instead of losing a branch, the whole tree will fall. "

Suddenly, the snow parted for the briefest moment, revealing Hauke’s form just as the runic blade swept toward Ashlynn’s ribs.

She managed to block the heavy strike with her falchion, but the impact jarred her entire body and nearly knocked the blade from her hands.

Worse, where the weapons met, frost immediately spread across her darksteel blade, making it painfully cold to hold even through her gloves.

"You think you’re the first to face us with borrowed power?

" Ansgar’s voice boomed from within the whirling snow as he vanished from her sight once again.

"We’ve fought the greatest arena champions to ever ascend from the High Fen to test their might on our mountains, armed with artifacts the likes of which made them the equal of a dozen men.

We’ve faced sorcerers and cultists who channeled the fiery spirits of broken, burning mountains. "

Another slash came from the blizzard, this one catching Ashlynn across the right shoulder before she could fully evade it. Blood froze instantly in the wound, preventing loss but sending an agonizing chill through her arm.

"In the end, they all fell," Ines added, as a spike of solid ice erupted from the ground, forcing Ashlynn to dive sideways or be impaled on its wickedly sharp point. "Just as you will."