Page 27

CHAPTER 27

T he sky was boiling.

Night air whisked around Laena’s legs, the wind pulling at her thin shift, but she hardly noticed the chill. She was distantly aware of it, like she was distantly aware of the clanging alarms, the shouts of the soldiers, the shing of metal swords leaving sheaths, the camp roused from its after-travel rest to face some as-yet-unseen attacker. The smell of the tithe was thick in the air, each breath of it filling her lungs with a searing heat, but that, too, was little more than a vague sensation.

It might have been a dream. She might have been a dream, a ghost, leaving the comfort of her tent—of Callum’s arms—to wander into the midst of these frantic battle preparations.

Callum. He was calling her name, his voice nearly lost behind the clamor of activity. But the sky was boiling, the clouds undulating with red and purple lightning, and there was no time to hear.

As she reached the edge of the camp, her body felt as if it were not entirely her own. She walked as if in a trance, the knot of ice at her core pulling her forward like a tether as thin as a fishing line, her magic reaching for whatever was coming. Ready, like a sword not yet drawn. She was there , and yet she was also here , counting each grain of dirt beneath her bare feet, each whisper of wind in her hair.

Steel clashed behind her, and she thought she heard Callum call her name again, but his voice was immediately lost in the din of the fight.

But this, her magic said, was not the real threat.

This was the distraction.

A band of shadows materialized out of the darkness, and in her core, Laena’s magic unfurled. She threw up her hands, pushing out a wave of frigid air to meet the oncoming threat, the pulse so strong she could almost see it as the surge of cold air met the warmth of the summer night.

The first wave of shadows dissolved, crystalizing into snowflakes that swirled in the breeze, finally falling to coat the green grass like a swath of spilled paint. She could hear each hushed landing, feel the blades of grass bending beneath the gentle weight, taste the sharpness of the cold on the tip of her tongue.

Behind her, the shouts intensified. A dagger escaped the fight, whistling toward the back of her head, but she felt it coming—she felt everything —or her magic did, and she batted the blade aside with an icicle.

As a fresh wave of shadows thickened over the hills, Laena readied another wave of magic. It was coming easier now, flowing from her center like it would keep coming forever.

A woman materialized at the center of the shadows, her slight form cutting a sharp outline amid the smoke.

“Milla,” Laena said. “I didn’t think you had anything left to care about.”

Not when her last heart-tithe had failed to whisk Laena more than a few leagues from where she’d stolen her. Not when she’d had to run from the cabin, her magic drained .

Milla sneered. “Your Aglyean troll left Penn for dead, but I was the one to end his misery. I have nothing left.”

Why, then, did she seem so smug?

“I do hope the Ruthless King appreciates all the sacrifices you’re making,” Laena said.

The woman smiled. It looked like a challenge. “You still think this is about Silerith. How adorable.” She bore no weapons in her hands, yet she stared at Laena like she’d already won this battle. Like she had won the war. “The Ruthless King is a fool. But he is not the only monarch in the Vales. You should know that better than anyone. Perhaps you would do well to join us. Where the real power lives.”

“Is that an invitation?”

The woman tilted her head. “Would you like it to be? They claimed you would not… but with your powers added to ours, we would be unstoppable. A deal might be brokered.”

Her words were not her own, as if some other voice were using her as a mouthpiece.

The magic in Laena’s core writhed, as if disgusted by the suggestion of an alliance. But the negotiator in her had seen an opening, the barest gleam of what Milla might want and what Laena might be able to offer. “I cannot join you,” she said, “without knowing who sent you.”

Milla laughed, an ugly sound. “Nice try, Princess. I admit, I’d rather hurt you than ally with you. But they would have wanted me to try.”

Laena would have pushed her for information—if not Silerith, then who?—but Milla threw her head back, and the shadows behind her hardened, taking the shape of men.

No, these were not men. These were monsters . They loomed alongside their maker. Their edges melted into clouds of black smoke and remaking themselves again, joining with one another until she could hardly tell if they were dozens of monsters or just one .

Laena pushed a wave of cold air at them. She drew deeper into her well of magic, turning them into nothing but a thick band of snow, but they kept coming, undeterred. Gritting her teeth, she called on her magic to try again, and again, yet they were nothing but shells, shadows given form. Milla’s heart-tithe could not be that strong. It couldn’t.

She didn’t know if she said it out loud, or if Milla could hear her thoughts—or read them on her face, somehow—but the woman threw out her arms to the sides as if welcoming her monsters. “I gave everything I had.” Milla’s voice echoed with unnatural strength, booming over the camp-turned-battlefield. “I sacrificed every friend, every lover, every ally to their cause. Did you not think the mages would reward me? I will kill your army, and then I’ll take you. And there won’t be a thing anyone can do.”

Laena didn’t have a chance to ask why Milla wouldn’t kill her, too, because the first shadow monster reached her, and she tapped her magic again, forming a dagger of ice in each hand. She slashed, and the shadow man fell in a cyclone of snowflakes. Again she slashed, and again. Again.

A tendril of heat unspooled through her core, like a hot wire dropped into a frozen pond. A trickle of discomfort, a warning sign, but she could not stop. There were too many monsters, and they kept coming. Shells they might be, but they were shells with weapons. They were shells that would tear apart everything she knew, everything she had left. And she would not allow it.

She pulled on her magic, reaching to the bottom of the well and ignoring the heat searing the bottom of her ribcage.

The battle had moved toward her, and it surrounded her now as the soldiers came from the shadows, bringing with them the smell of blood and sweat and fear. Landon Moore’s voice cut across the din, calling orders, and when she spared a glance behind her, she saw him fighting back-to-back with Callum, the men trying to make their way to her. Fear spiked through her awareness, brash and painful, and she blinked, taking stock of the situation for the first time.

To her right, Edmun clashed with a human soldier, his movements precise despite his clear exhaustion. Beside him, Godfrey and Archer were fighting a single shadow monster, slashing and slashing while the beast re-formed and re-formed again. Callum and Moore were merely defending at this point, pushing back those who came near.

Many had fallen, too many to count. She didn’t want to look at their faces, didn’t want to know who she had lost.

The fight would not end until Milla saw every last one of them dead. There were far too many shadow monsters—and just as many humans come to fight on Milla’s side. Laena would never best them with individual slashes, one-on-one battles. Milla would keep creating monsters until she drained the mages dry. And Laena didn’t know if that was even a true possibility.

But Milla had not seen all that Laena could do.

Risking another glance behind her, Laena caught Callum’s gaze. Ice-blue, desperate. And sorry. He was sorry for failing her, as he saw it.

She would not fail him. She turned away.

“Laena, no!” His voice was just beside her, yet it was far away to heed.

Laena raised her hands again, delving deep into the well of her magic, and pain answered.

She stumbled, a gasp wrenching her body with a jolt, but still she reached, like she had delved the crystal, like she had delved her garden, only now she was reaching deep within herself at the last layer of her power.

The dregs were the most potent.

Magic flowed from her outstretched hands, answering her call, eager to do her bidding. It hit the closest shadow monster, coating it in a wave of ice. She pushed, painting the monsters with cold, and the camp filled with the sound of cracking ice. They were too thin to stay—shells only—and they crumbled into a thousand heaps of ice, oblivious to Milla’s screams of rage.

But there were people here, too, enemy soldiers who had attacked the camp from the rear to create the distraction. Clothed in black, they still fought, but Laena’s magic knew how to distinguish them from her allies. She weaved it through the battle like a needle, arms raised, pain radiating from her center as she burned from the inside out.

No one on the battlefield felt the heat. Only the cold, unleashed from the depths of her soul.

When the magic hit the enemy soldiers, they did not crumble. They froze fully, fingers and faces turned ice-white, their black clothing crusted with frost. Too quick for frostbite, too quick to blacken the skin, the magic froze them with swords raised, ice dripping from the blades.

Milla was last to freeze, in motion to her final moment. She frozen with her arms outstretched, her mouth open in a cry of despair.

And then, silence.

Laena was on her knees. She wasn’t sure when she’d fallen; she knew only the buzzing in her head, the heat at her center, like someone had set her insides on fire. The agony of a sunburn times a thousand, only her skin was unmarred. Whatever the magic had done to her, it was burning her from within.

Landon Moore’s voice, no longer distant but close. Too close. “Arrest the whore.”

No one moved. She could see the sky now, feel the blades of grass beneath her head. When had she fallen? Something hot dribbled down her face, and she realized she was bleeding from her nose.

“She saved us, General,” one of the men said. She didn’t know which one. Only that it wasn’t Callum. Where was he ?

“She used magic .” Moore’s disbelief, his disgust, was palpable, and she was glad she couldn’t see his face.

“She did more than use it. I’d say she conquered it.”

That. That was Callum’s voice. And then, finally, his face. He appeared above her like a damn angel out of a story, his face wreathed in moonlight. He was alive .

The world blinked, and she was in his arms, her head cradled against his elbow. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

Her lips parted to say yes, she trusted him—she always had, she always would, even if her always was doomed to last only another minute—but her throat was made of fire, her voice lost to the raging pain in her body.

Again, Landon Moore called for her arrest. Callum said something she did not hear, and she wanted to tell him not to sacrifice himself for her. Whatever consequences Moore had in mind for a magic user, one who could freeze entire armies to a standstill, she did not have enough time left in this world to face it. Callum needed to think of himself.

She would not pretend she felt no fear. But she would face her death with courage. As much of it as she could muster.

But none of the words would come.