Untethering Dark

Chapter Fifty

A bullet to the chest was nothing compared to the flames that immolated her throat and stole her screams. Summoning cold, Astrid tried to drive her claws into the woman’s hand, icy daggers meant to skewer and rend, but Heldin’s fire magic neutralized the cold, and her flesh resisted, hard as iron.

Too powerful. The final ritual hadn’t leveled the playing field nearly as much as she would’ve liked. She became a hag, yes, but a baby hag against a two-thousand-year-old witch—who’d honed her skills in the Otherworld, driven by revenge and the fight for freedom—was turning out to be no match at all.

Tossing her to the ground, Heldin stepped on Astrid’s throat, heel crushing mercilessly.

White-hot agony blotted out sight and sound. Sucking in air through her nose, and choking on ash, her own scorched flesh , she twisted and clawed at the foot holding her down. Anything to try to throw her off.

Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.

A terrible, roaring filled her ears, eclipsing all other sound.

Then the pressure on her throat lifted, and she rolled over onto her stomach, gasping and coughing up smoke. Everything was getting hotter. Sweat beaded along her skin, the snow melting beneath her. Clasping her neck, a soundless scream tore through her windpipe as she used the cold to draw out the heat. The pain surged, then passed, her airway and vision clearing.

A towering ring of fire surrounded her, trapping her inside.

The roaring continued as a dark shadow slammed against the flaming barrier, again and again, trying to get inside. Gudarīks .

She opened her mouth to call out, but only a raw wheeze escaped. And yet, he heard. Two crimson eyes, brimming with so much fury and anguish, found hers and her heart skipped a beat before it tore in two. He watched her die once already. To see it again...

Gudarīks redoubled his efforts, burning his hide raw and bloody, trying to get to her. No, no, no, no, no. Weakened as he was, the effort might kill him. Please, stop.

Words failed in her ravaged throat, so she mouthed them, over and over, begging with her eyes.

As the air grew thick and cloying with smoke, Heldin drew a circle around them, followed by familiar runes painted in blood.

The final hag ritual.

Two thousand years old or not, if Heldin hadn’t been taking hag potion in the days since her resurrection, completing this ritual would kill her. And she was welcome to it. But as far as Astrid could tell, the rune work was correct, and it’d be foolish to assume her enemy didn’t know the rest of the rite.

Astrid crawled toward the edge of the fiery ring, frost limning, then melting on the ground with each drag of her claws. Even if it killed her, she’d get through to the other side.

Heldin would not have her sacrifice.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Astrid was yanked back sharply by one of her new antlers, both jarring the tender flesh atop her head and straining the raw flesh at her neck. Heldin hoisted her to her feet. “I’m not done with you yet.” The words were spoken softly against her ear. Whispered like sweet nothings to a lover, but with a ceremonial dagger pressed to her throat. “How fitting that I undo your mother’s spell with your blood. And how fitting that I take your crown, your power, with this sacrifice. The forest is mine.”

So, this wasn’t just about freedom and revenge. The witch wanted to rule.

Closing her eyes, Astrid tilted her head back, letting Gudarīks’s screams and Heldin’s chanting fall into the background. Her arms fell limp at her sides. Fire blazed all around, but not above. There, clouds swirled overhead, the atmospheric moisture beckoning, calling upon its Mistress Winter.

And she was nothing less.

Astrid flipped her hands, palms facing up.

Gusts of frigid air shot down, as unforgiving as a lightning strike, and whipped round and round, kicking up snow and clods of dirt. They buffeted hard against Heldin’s fires, smothering, rather than fueling the flames. The once-towering ring halved in size, then quartered, before flickering and guttering out completely.

And with it, dissipated the winter winds.

“You forgot something,” Heldin snarled into Astrid’s ear, drawing the dagger across her throat and letting go.

It was a lethal cut. The kind that doesn’t just sever the carotid arteries, but goes a little bit deeper to the windpipe, cutting off a scream before it even forms. A cut that leaves its victim gurgling. Seconds before unconsciousness. A minute before massive blood loss and a stopped heart delivers a swift end.

Yet, as Astrid tripped forward, Heldin’s weight at her back vanished, replaced by the splash of something warm. A small smile curled her lips.

Foolish. So foolish.

Heldin’s blade fell to the ground.

It had skated harmlessly across a hard film of ice—a protective barrier Astrid had made the moment it touched her neck.

And the warmth at her back...

She reached over her shoulder, hand coming away red, and turned.

Heldin hung three feet from the ground, arms limp at her sides, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Four bloody prongs sprouted from her torso; she was gored on Gudarīks’s antlers. The moment Astrid’s winter winds settled, he charged.

With a ferocious shake of his head, he dislodged the ancient witch, and she fell to the ground in a broken heap.

Astrid crouched beside her, brushing the red curls from her face. Her eyes were glassy, all the fire gone.

She checked for a pulse, too, just to be sure, but Heldin was still, and growing colder by the second, life’s heat vacating the body. Not even the faintest trace of a heartbeat.

It was over. Their loved ones safe.

They could’ve been peers for how young Heldin still looked, features smooth and unblemished by time. So much power and knowledge wasted. So misguided and unchecked. A heroine and queen to her people, but a monster to all else.

What kept Astrid from falling to this same fate? Was it Mutter? Her friends, Johanna and Suri?

Gudarīks sank to the ground, trembling as he brushed a hand over her forehead. Tilting his head this way and that, he examined her burned throat, then cradled her face. “You’re alive.” His voice broke on the words.

She reached for him, desperate to pull him into a crushing hug and never let go, but drew up short, her own hands unsteady.

Large patches of fur had been burned away in his attempts to rescue her, leaving the skin underneath red and raw. Some of the wounds were already beginning to scab over and heal, but many were not. Her hands continued to shake as they hovered over them, heat radiating off each.

“She didn’t cut me,” she rasped. Talking tickled her throat. “But you’re hurt.” She sucked her teeth at a particularly painful-looking burn and cupped his bony cheeks, wet with tears, the only safe place to touch. It wasn’t until her cheeks tightened with their own frozen tears that Astrid realized she was crying, too. “These look bad.”

“They’ll look better once I’ve rested,” he assured, pressing his forehead to hers. “Are you all right, Liebe? Your hands are shaking.”

“Yours are, too.” She held on tight, soaking in what touch their wounded bodies allowed. “We almost lost each other today.” Twice over. Before their lives together even began.

“I know.” His voice was thick. “But we didn’t, because we have each other.”

“Stronger together.” She brought a hand to the center of his chest, as close as possible without touching skin, drawing away the heat of his burns. “This should help with the pain and reduce swelling.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can survive a little discomfort. Conserving your strength is more important.”

Astrid made a hushing sound.

“Allow me to tend to yours in return.” He brushed back her hair and cupped her chin. “What can I do?”

“Could use a glass of water,” she joked, turning her head to cough up another cloud of smoke.

“Poor throat.” He traced a finger down her chest, stopping short of the semi-sealed bullet wound, careful not to touch any tender skin. “Did you get him?”

“His head’s in my living room.”

“Good. Does it hurt?”

“A little sore, but nothing time and calendula oil won’t fix. Think it’ll leave a cool scar?”

“If you’ve absorbed my healing abilities, not much of one.”

“Ah well, can’t have it all.”

Pulling back, something caught on her antlers, roughly jerking her head.

“Oof, careful.” He winced. “Our antlers are caught on one another.”

Astrid laughed. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

With some careful maneuvering, they untangled themselves.

“They’re cute,” Gudarīks said, tracing a claw along her prongs. “Fierce, too.”

Astrid bared her teeth. “And these?”

He chuckled. “You wear your sharp edges well.”