Chapter 32
Draven
Ihad never expected to face a Korythid again. And I had certainly never expected to go looking for one.
Nor did I even really know if it was possible. But between the years I’d spent tracking monsters through the snow, and this supposed skill my wife’s skathryn had, I hoped we’d be able to find… something.
And the plan was simple enough. Icewalk there. Send word of the location to one of our outposts to call in reinforcements if—when—we found the beast.
Ice cracked beneath our feet in a clean, crystalline spiral as Everly and I stepped out of the palace’s shadow and into open frost. The world blurred in the way it always did when I icewalked, the distance folding in on itself, the wind tearing past us in a wild roar.
Everly molded against me with quiet certainty, fitting into the curve of my arms as though we were pieces meant to lock into place. Traveling with her had become… easier. Natural in a way that unsettled me more than the beasts we were hunting.
She anticipated each shift of my momentum now, bracing before I moved, leaning when I needed balance, her breath brushing the hollow of my throat like an anchor I didn’t know I relied on.
A part of me still warred with the decision to bring her on this hunt, to take her anywhere near danger. Instinct clawed at the back of my mind, urging me to keep her behind stone walls and ward stones and even my wolves, anywhere the rest of the world couldn’t touch her.
But the deeper truth, the one I no longer tried to deny to myself, at least, was that having her here eased something primal in me.
I needed her close.
Close enough that I didn’t have to wonder if the next distant scream meant I’d already failed her. That I’d lost her, too.
And it wasn’t noble, or kingly. It was nothing but selfish instinct. A raw and territorial hunger that settled low and certain in my chest, one that was never sated unless she was close enough to touch.
And I sure as hells wasn’t going to apologize for it.
Not when the world was breaking around us, and she was the only thing that felt sure beneath my hands.
We landed near the top of the Frostmere ridge between the pine trees that framed the abandoned cabin. The pale logs were half swallowed by drifted snow, and there was no sign of the desecrated limbs or old blood that the monsters had left behind for us to find.
I thought back to the night Noerwyn and I came upon it all and recalled the eerie feeling of being watched. Being tested.
When I scanned the clearing just beyond the cabin, my gaze snagged on the gaping wound in the frozen earth. There were gouges in the rocks, the trees leveled and split wide by something far larger than a Tharnok or a Mirrorbane.
No, these marks were familiar, carved by a frostbeast more ancient and far more deadly. Sure enough, the closer I looked, the more I found evidence of inky black venom.
“Is that?” Everly asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
I gave her a single dip of my chin in answer, moving closer to examine it.
“It won’t be enough for Amias,” Everly added after a beat.
She bent down to scrape some of the venom into a vial, but it was old and crusted over with frost and dirt. I cursed under my breath, but I knew she was right.
Besides, it never would have been this simple.
A low rumbling sound echoed beneath our feet. Everly’s eyes widened in fear, and I didn’t hesitate before scooping her up and icewalking us several yards away.
The ground where we’d just been standing collapsed inward, stones crumbling and crashing inside the chasm. We waited for several stilted heartbeats before daring to move again.
There was no Korythid, just the fragile ground continuing to give way. Some of the stones knocked loose the blanket of snow suspended in midair. Or not in midair, but rather in a nearly invisible web.
Gleaming white bones sagged in a net of webbing that had been half-buried beneath the freshly fallen snow. Black streaks marred the ivory wherever venom had seeped through, and acidic fissures spread out along the bones like dead rivers.
Even the smaller beasts caught in the snare bore the same charred marks, their remains warped and brittle from the monster’s venom.
Everly studied the destruction with a low exhale. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t think that will be enough either,” she said. “We need to find a live specimen if we want to extract enough venom.”
I agreed, unsure if I was relieved it wasn’t close enough to target my wife, or just more furious that it had been here but also had slipped past our reach. “It’s moved on.”
The skathryn shifted on Everly’s shoulder, claws pricking through leather as she turned her head toward the east. She clicked once, low and insistent, wings tightening as if the decision had already been made.
I hesitated for only a moment. East had never been a direction I favored… not when every ghost of my past lay at the end of our eastern borders.
But the skathryn insisted, and I had learned over the past few days that ignoring her rarely ended well. So east we went.
We broke the icewalk at the next village. Even as the world blurred into frost and motion, Batty remained rigid atop Everly’s shoulder, her attention fixed on something beyond my sight. Near the end of the walk, she stilled abruptly and gave a sharp, cutting sound until I freed us from the icewalk.
When the world reformed around us, the devastation stole the breath from even my lungs. The village had been torn open from below, the ground split wide as if something enormous had passed beneath it and forced its way upward.
Nearly half the houses lay tilted toward a yawning fissure, their foundations sheared away. Frost-blackened beams sagged beneath collapsed roofs, and doors hung loose and hollow, framing nothing but shadow.
Everly stepped through the ruin with careful, deliberate attention. Her gaze traced the hooked gouges lining the soil.
“There were monsters in the Wilds, too” she murmured, her voice turning thin and almost brittle. “Things that hunted us. But this… Draven, nothing I saw there compares to this.”
She stared at a half-collapsed cottage, its roof caved inward, frost-blackened claw marks slashing down the walls. And for an instant, barely a breath, I saw her flinch. A flash of remembered terror sparked behind her eyes, raw and sharp. She wasn’t seeing this village.
She had the same haunted expression now as she always did when she was thinking of her sister’s estate. When she could still hear the screams of the Wretches and smell the rot of the Tharnok’s breath.
She hadn’t seen this kind of horror in the Wilds because this kind of horror didn’t exist there. And it hadn’t always existed in Winter either…
That was my fault. But I hadn’t found a way to tell her that yet.
I pressed a hand against a shattered doorframe. The wood being splintered outward showed that something had burst from the inside, tearing through everything that stood between it and its prey.
“As long as there have been Seelie, and Unseelie, there have been monsters.” I said. “But yes, they are worse now, in Winter, at least.”
Everly searched my expression for several long moments before asking her next question. “Worse since when?”
I crouched and brushed my gloved fingers across the jagged claw mark frozen into the snow. The ice responded with a low, mournful hum. An old resonance, like a memory stirring in its sleep.
Ice had the ability to remember things the living try to forget.
It kept a tight hold on whatever sins and tragedies had been pressed into its depths. Trapping them beneath layers of cold like secrets waiting to be discovered. Touch it long enough, and it will whisper them back to you.
Closing my eyes, I called to the ice, listening as the distant echo of screams drifted up from the ground. I could see the ground split open beneath frightened feet that were too slow, too stunned to run. I watched as a Korythid erupted from the floorboards in a storm of claws and venom.
“Did something change after the battle?” Everly pressed gently, her voice calling me back to the present.
I pulled my hand away from the snow.
“Was there a moment you can remember where things changed?” she continued. “Something that made them different? Anything that might help us understand them, or help us figure out how to stop them or track—”
She stopped when she saw my face.
Something inside me cinched tight, locking into place with the slow, inevitable shift of a glacier grinding to a halt.
Because yes. Something had changed. And I had been the faultline where that change cracked open.
Me and the shards-forsaken Frostgrave Battlefield.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Not with the field that haunted my nights now looming like a shadow just beyond the horizon.
A villager staggered into view before she could try again. He bowed so fast he nearly toppled over, his gaze flicking between us with a dizzying blend of awe and terror.
“Your Majesties,” he rasped. His eyes caught on Everly, widening with a fragile sort of hope. “You came.”
Everly stepped toward him, voice steady despite the devastation around us. “We’re tracking the beast that attacked your village. Do you have somewhere safe to go?”
“My sister lives near the ridge.” His voice cracked. “Please… kill it. Kill all of them.”
Everly shook her head, sending a sick, twisted dread brushing along our bond. “No. The ridge isn’t safe. You need to get to the palace. Can you do that?”
The male nodded. “I can try.”
“There is an outpost not far from here. Just south of the lake. Go there, and tell the guards we sent you and to escort you back to the palace,” I added.
He nodded again and fled, half-running, half-stumbling, until the frost swallowed him from sight.
As soon as he was gone, I swept us back into the ice, tracking the Korythid’s path of destruction for as long as I could before we needed to land once again.