Chapter 2
Draven
Carnage had sunken its claws into my reign at the Frostgrave Battle, and it hadn’t let go since. It clung to the air in my lungs and to the crimson-stained snow, where yet another of my soldiers fell to her death.
Although fell was too placid a word for the way the monster hurled her body vindictively behind itself, blocking even the barest hope of aid from reaching her.
The creature was learning. Adapting to the way Noerwyn had pulled several half-dead soldiers from the fray, doing everything in its power to ensure she couldn’t save the rest.
And unlike other frostbeasts I had battled, the ones that were consumed by the need to devour and hunt, this one was distinctly malicious.
Like it was toying with us. It didn’t want to eat. It wanted to destroy.
For hours, it had tested our strength, ever since it sliced into palace wards that no fae or monster had broken through in a millennium. We were keeping it at bay, just barely, and only because Everly had shown me the creature’s weaknesses.
The vision she sent had given me the edge I needed to wound the monster before it could decimate the wards around my palace completely.
Korythid. That’s what she had called it. An Elderborne frostbeast that shouldn’t exist at all… One that supposedly the Shard Mother herself had eliminated in order to protect the fae.
And yet. Here it was… this massive, armored abomination with a scorpion-like tail and eight spider-like legs that towered over soldiers mounted on Velgrun stags.
Well, seven legs, now.
One of its severed limbs still twitched in the snow like a grotesque afterthought, the muscles spasming against the thawing frost.
The Korythid had made sure I paid for the loss of that limb with the blood of my soldiers, though. I ground my teeth as I sent out blast after blast of mana, throwing icy shields up to protect my soldiers with one hand, and calling on massive hailstones with the other.
Winter storm winds surged above us, snow and sleet whipping through the field like shrapnel loosed from the sky, all aimed at the beast that refused to die.
Two hours ago, I’d been memorizing the curves of my wife’s body, swallowing the sounds of her pleasure as I wrought them from her again and again.
But now… Now I was drenched in blood and ice, surrounded by the sounds of death while I tried to keep the very realm from collapsing around her.
Another blast of mana split the infantry line down the middle, forcing them apart just as the Korythid stumbled backward, its tail lashing low and wide in a strike meant to catch them unaware.
Frost speared out from my open palms, erupting across the field in explosions of ice. Shimmering waves of power joined from my right, entwined with the liquid fire that was far too deadly for the mere emissary Soren Redthorne pretended to be.
Nevara was at his side, the line of her mouth unusually tense. Her starlit eyes swirled as she mapped the monster’s movements through mana, sound, and the subtle tremors in the ground beneath our feet.
Behind her, Eryx led a fresh wave of soldiers forward. They advanced with frost-forged blades, stepping over those too far gone for the infirmary, their faces locked in frozen screams, hands still lifted toward a sky that had never answered their call for mana.
My wife’s sister appeared in my periphery, her features carved from glacial ice.
Noerwyn was bleeding from several scrapes along her skin, but that didn’t slow her down.
With a sweeping gesture, she called on the wind to lift another injured soldier from the ground and carry them away from the battlefield.
The Korythid answered with a splintering screech, fury rolling through it as its prize was torn from its grasp.
Shards of frost sliced through the storm to strike at the Elderborne’s eight crimson eyes, blinding it long enough for Noerwyn to get away. The monster reared back, thrashing in fury, until a second surge of light flared beside me.
Eryx looked more furious than I had ever seen him, glancing from the still-bleeding corpses to the monster responsible for their deaths.
His ironfrost mana ignited around his gauntlets, silver patterns racing up his arms. He slammed his fists into the ground with a single strike, sending jagged spears of iron-laced ice bursting upward. They drove into the Korythid’s flank, forcing it back with an ear-splitting roar.
And yet. The monster kept on advancing. It kept fighting. Kept gaining ground and getting closer and closer to the palace walls.
The wards held everywhere but the single breach it had torn open. But I felt their strain as I fought, felt the land resisting, the mana stretched thin under the weight of this battle.
This was all wrong.
One monster did not require this many soldiers. One frostbeast did not withstand coordinated Winter mana and a sustained assault and continue to gain ground. Over the past decade, Eryx and I had slain thousands of monsters, but none had ever demanded this level of force. Not by themselves.
My attention shifted to the palace, its highest tower barely visible through the storm. Toward Everly.
Shard Mother damn me if I let any monster take away the single light I had found in this dark, frozen world.
I would sooner take the bones of Winter Court and fashion them into a pyre for the monsters to burn. And I would wear the ruin like armor if it meant keeping my wife alive.