Chapter 31
The Eastlander whirls, catching my wrist with a firm hand before I can land my mark. I draw a deep breath and push harder, but from beneath the cloak, a familiar face stares back at me.
Not an Eastlander.
Hel.
Fear rips through me like a blazing fire, my body locked in indecision. Shadow wraith. That’s all I can think as her eyes search mine.
“It’s me, Raina. Just me.” Her voice is her own, and her eyes are vivid and aware, her wild spirit returned. There’s no rotten smell wafting from her, no unnatural quality to her movements, and her skin is just as cold as mine.
The tension in my muscles ebbs, disbelief clinging to me like a bad dream.
Her brows knit together, tears welling in her eyes. “Can you just hug me now?” She presses her forehead to mine, and I catch a glimpse of her ochre-tinted witch’s marks, flowering up from behind her collar. “Tuetha tah,” she whispers, releasing my wrist.
I drop my blade and fold my arms around her shoulders, squeezing her so tightly that she laughs around her tears.
“You’re going to break me,” she says, and I let her go, smiling so hard my cheeks ache.
Grabbing her hands, I check for frostbite. There’s some, but it’s not severe.
I clasp her face. She looks exhausted, and her skin is chapped and reddened from the cold, but otherwise, she looks…whole. Healthy. And though a hint of sadness shadows her eyes, she’s smiling.
I’d worried that there would be nothing left of her by the time we returned, that the wraith would’ve turned her mind enough that she no longer remembered who she was. The relief inside me is overwhelming, enough that I can’t help but draw her to me and cry.
Once we’ve both shed a host of tears, I pull back.
“How?” I sign. “How are you here?”
She shrugs and wipes at my face, then sniffles and scrubs at her own.
“I don’t know. Whatever that thing was, it left a day or so after you.
Time is impossible to follow here. I felt it leave me like a sucking wind, and off it went, screeching into the wood.
After it was gone, every part of the cage that held me captive withdrew, and a heavy cloak appeared, hanging from a tree limb.
” Her eyes go wide with wonder. “Was that Nephele, too? Like the lake?”
Raising my brows, I nod, understanding her dismay, though I fear I’m about to slay her with all the new information she needs to know.
She’s about to learn my secrets and Alexus’s, too, and stories of the Frost King and Fia Drumera and the gods and the God Knife and—the possible end of life as we know it.
We could soon live in an age of gods. At least an age of a god.
But we won’t let that happen. We won’t.
As long as Alexus can keep Neri contained, that is.
“How did you find me?” I sign, stunned by this girl’s fortitude and stalwartness, though I shouldn’t be. She’s young and naive at times, but a fire lives inside her that few possess. She truly could be a warrior for the North. She just needs the freedom to let that fire inside her burn.
I suppose she has that freedom now.
“I headed toward the mountains,” she answers, “and came upon a group of dead Eastlanders. It wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t pretty, but I removed one’s clothes.
” She tugs at the leather jacket covering her torso.
“I had to, or I was going to freeze to death with them. The cloak was wonderful, but not enough.” She rubs the smooth place above her brow where a gash had been before I healed it days ago.
“I’d hoped that General Vexx would be among the dead, but that wasn’t the case, best I could tell anyway.
” She holds up her hatchet. “At least I filched this.”
The Eastlanders we found beneath the trees. I almost killed Hel with one of their blades.
“I came across a campsite under a rocky overhang,” she goes on.
“Too fresh to belong to the Eastlanders, who’d already been dead for days.
After that, I picked up your trail like Father taught me while tracking deer.
There were only two sets of hoof prints where the snow hadn’t covered them.
I held out hope that it was you. At one point, the tracks led forward, but a quake rumbled through the ground, and the tracks vanished.
I kept going until I came to a hole blown into the earth.
There was only one way to pass, so I followed.
Not long after, I entered the ravine. I saw smoke rising from this cave.
It could’ve been anyone, but I had to know if it was you. ”
Amazed by her, I tug my hair over one shoulder, thinking about what it would’ve been like to have endured the wood alone, but Hel’s blinking eyes catch my attention.
She touches the backs of my hands, my neck, my chest, her eyes wide, like she’s only now noticing my witch’s marks. And I suppose she is.
“What in gods’ stars, Raina?”
I gesture toward the smoldering fire. “Come. Sit. We need to talk.”
I tell her everything, beginning with my abilities.
I show her my new skills in fire magick and healing, drawing out her frostbite and giving her fingers, toes, cuts, and bruises new life, as well as mending the wound on my side.
When that’s done, I tell her what happened during the attack and everything after.
Even how difficult it was to watch that wraith take her away from me.
When I tell her about the God Knife and that Alexus is the Un Drallag from eastern lore, she stops me, an unsettled look taking over her face as though she’s piecing things together that I can’t see.
“Raina, the prince’s men had that knife because of me.”
I tilt my head and frown. “Explain,” I sign.
“After I left you at Mena’s, I headed for the fallow fields like I said I would. I had Finn and Saira with me at one point, but we got separated.”
I remember this from her tale at the lake, but her memory had been broken, probably because the wraith divided her reality.
“I made it to our cottage,” she continues, “but my mother and sisters were already dead. I started toward the fields, but that’s when I ran into Vexx.
” Again, she touches her brow, remembering.
“When I came to, it was still dark. I ran to the green, and you were there, but I thought you were dead. You were lying so still, next to the Witch Collector, and I was…mindless. There was blood everywhere. And that knife, the one with the white hilt, lay on the green next to your hand, and I wanted some part of you with me, so I took it.”
A sigh escapes me, and I press my hand to my face. Gods’ death. No wonder I couldn’t remember what I did with the knife.
“After that,” she says, “I went east and found a way through the barrier the Eastlanders erected, a wedge of an opening filled with thorns. I ran through Frostwater until I couldn’t run anymore.
” She glances at her hands, nervously picking at a nail.
“I was devastated. I wanted to make someone pay.”
I reach across the space between us and take her hand. I know that feeling. I know what she went through.
“I stumbled upon Vexx’s men at the tunnel mouth, and they captured me.
When Vexx saw the blade I carried, he confiscated it, but I don’t think he knew what he had until much later.
There was no urgency until the next day, after we crossed the lake.
He stalked out of the woods and ordered one of his men to bring him the knife.
After that, we traveled harder and faster.
They wanted to catch up to the prince; I remember that now.
He was ahead with another band. Vexx wanted to kill me or at least leave me behind, but there’s a red-haired warrior in that group.
Rhonin, they call him. He seems important, though not as important as Vexx. He demanded that Vexx let him keep me.”
“And of course, Vexx agreed,” I sign.
“Of course.”
Disgust roils through me. I want to kill both men, and I don’t even know them.
Hel looks up, and that fire of hers flickers in her eyes.
“I realized by the way Vexx was acting that the weapon was important. I just didn’t know how important.
Still, I managed to catch all of them unaware in the middle of the night.
Even with my hands tied, I stole the knife from Vexx’s thigh and ran like the wind. ”
She smiles, and I smile, too. “And Rhonin let you go?”
“It seemed that way. He came after me, and there was a moment when he was mere strides away, watching me through the trees. He could’ve taken me, but he didn’t do anything.” She shrugs. “He just told me to run.”
“And after?”
After was the shadow wraith.
Hel pales and takes a shaky breath. “Still unclear. I remember seeing you. Being with you and Alexus. And I remember when the wraith left.”
The prince had to be watching. He had to know where she was. Why turn back inside the construct when his wraith could possess Hel and force her to return the blade? Why endanger his men any further for a hunt?
I’m glad Hel doesn’t remember; she would struggle with the memories of having that wraith inside her. I pray they stay buried forever.
Speaking of praying, I tell her about Neri. When I finish, she sits in shocked silence.
“Neri is here,” she says. “Inside the Witch Collector.”
I feel guilty. Alexus’s stories were difficult for me to absorb, but Hel is coming to terms with even more.
I’ve lied to her and everyone else who knew me for years, yet she seems to forgive me so easily.
Reconciling what she’s always believed about the God of the White Wolf with the truth provided by a man who knows him intimately is what seems to shatter what remains of her belief.
“Neri has been such an important part of my life,” she says. “If what Alexus says is true, then…”
Then Neri wasn’t such a good, protective god like our history lessons wanted us to believe.
“Neri was manipulative and greedy,” I sign. “Toying with the lives of Northlanders over his desire for a goddess. He did not give us the Frost King for guidance and authority. He gave us Colden Moeshka, a product of his revenge.”
Resting her elbows on her bent knees, Hel buries her face in her hands. I don’t press or say anything more. She’s lost so much. Now she’s losing the god to whom she prays.
She looks up and exhales like she’s clearing her mind. “We can’t let the prince get that knife, and we can’t let him reach Colden.”
My face falls.
“What?” she says. “Why that look?”
I glance at the scrying dish. “Before you arrived, I saw the prince on Winter Road,” I sign. “He was on his way to Winterhold.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here.” She gets to her feet. “Where’s Alexus?”
“Gathering kindling, but he should be back by now.”
“He wasn’t south. I would’ve crossed paths with him.” With nervous energy rolling off her, she sits again. “I think a storm is coming. There’s no thunder out there, but there’s lightning. It could get dangerous, and we need him.”
The lightning. I forgot.
Grabbing Mother’s dish, I hurry outside, returning with a bowl of snow, nestling the vessel in the last of the fading embers.
Quickly, I summon the powers of Fulmanesh, and in a matter of minutes, I have a bowl of snowmelt.
Again, I prick my finger and stir my blood into the warm water. “Nahmthalahsh. Show me Alexus.”
Hel watches in wonder as the water swirls and slows, and a picture condenses on the violet surface.
Alexus. Unconscious. Face swollen and bleeding. He’s being dragged by the neck of the gambeson through the ravine by a mountain of a man wearing bronze leathers—a man with flaming hair.
Hel gasps. “That’s Rhonin.”
A cold sweat breaks on my brow, and my heart kicks in my chest. I blink, praying this vision is wrong.
More men follow with weapons slung over their shoulders. They wear prideful smiles like poachers after a kill. I can’t tell which way they’re moving, but it must be north—like Hel said—because the ravine looks different from what I remember.
“Eastlanders,” I tell her, my fear and worry morphing into fury. “They have him.” I stand, not sure what I’m about to do, but a cyclone of rage brews inside me.
Hel’s eyes glimmer, not with tears but with the promise of a fight.
“Well, they aren’t going to keep him, now are they?
” She collects her hatchet, my blade, and Alexus’s sword.
“Put your boots on, get your cloak, and ask your sister for any help she can provide. We’re going hunting for Eastlanders. ”