Chapter 13 #2
I picture the city as a frozen sculpture, every human paused mid-breath, frost rimming their lashes, their last expression etched forever in ice. One cold flex of my power and they would shatter, all that arrogance reduced to glittering shards under my boots.
All for daring to touch what’s mine.
My stomach twists with the knot of tension that’s been lodged there since the moment I saw where the tracking spell placed her on the map.
“Once we get her back,” I say softly, almost to myself, “maybe my insides will stop feeling like this.”
Riven glances at me sideways, a muscle in his jaw softening. “You’re not the only one,” he says.
The seriousness in his tone draws Azyric’s attention.
“You’re both fools,” he mutters. “Blinded by the way she smiles at you when she wants something.”
“You would know,” I quip back as my eyes narrow. “You’re the one who watches her the closest when you think we’re not looking.”
His shadows flare violently and then pull tightly around his boots, as if they’re restraining him.
“She walked away,” he says, more to the snow than to us now as he looks down. “She didn’t tell us anything. She didn’t let us help.”
Riven’s voice drops to a level as icy as my powers. “If you think that makes her cruel, you haven’t been listening to a single thing she’s said since the day we met her.”
The storm stirs above us, restless. I lift a hand and close my fingers, feeling the snowfield shift under my command. The clouds thicken in the direction of the human city, a denser veil that will hide Torryn’s approach until the last possible moment.
Riven’s words roll through my mind and the words come out of me before I can think better of admitting such a thing to them. “There is nothing she could do that would make me stop trusting her.”
The statement settles heavy and solid in my chest, an anchor amidst the storm. “She chose to walk away, and I…” My throat tightens for a moment. “I still trust her.”
Riven’s mouth curves in something that’s not quite a smile, but close. “Good. She deserves that.”
Azyric exhales, breath misting in the cold.
His eyes are hard, but there’s something almost…
tired in the set of his shoulders. “You’re both fools,” he says, but there’s no heat in it.
“Blind fools. The only reason I’m here is so I can be present when the three of you realize she’s not the gentle, innocent little thing you keep insisting she is.
You’re so busy worshiping her, you can’t see how easily she’s played you. ”
Riven is suddenly in front of Azyric, leaning in just enough that his breath fogs between them. “If you truly believe she’s chosen humans over us, the shadows are already at your beck and call. Feel free to slip back into them and let the rest of us handle this.”
“What happens if you’re wrong?” Azyric bites out. “What if someone as powerful as her decides to help the humans in their plight of eradicating us? I came because if that happens, someone should be ready to do what you three won’t.”
My magic snarls beneath my ribs at the implication of killing Wren. Riven’s fingers flex at his sides, nails biting into his palms.
I’ve had enough of this particular dance.
“Enough!” I say, letting the command thread through the word.
Frost crawls out from my boots as I walk from the treeline to the road, cracking across the asphalt in a spiderweb of pale veins. My hands clench at my sides as I desperately cling to a sense of logic that allows me to focus back on our plan.
We aren’t here to kill anyone. That is the compromise I have made with myself, with them, and with the thin threads of morality Wren stitched into me.
A roar suddenly splits the air and my head snaps toward the direction of the city. The storm I’ve drawn over it ripples, the clouds shuddering as Torryn suddenly cuts through them.
“That was fast,” I murmur suspiciously.
Once again my stomach flips and nerves claw up my throat, squeezing tightly.
“We agreed he’d stay unseen for as long as possible while scouting the entire city,” Riven tacks on, confusion bleeding into his tone the same as mine.
“Yes,” Azyric mutters, calling his shadows up around his body as he does before he travels within them. “And I intend to find out what changed his mind.”
So dramatic, that moody boy.
I let out an annoyed scoff, “No need to get lost in the shadows when you don’t even know where you’re going. I’ll gently part the storm so we can see.”
We stride down the road together as my snow whips around us, tugged by the same currents of Torryn’s wingbeats that pull my attention forward.
I lift a hand and make a small, precise cutting motion and the storm in front of us gently fades enough to see. Clouds peel back in a narrow strip, a fleeting corridor of clearer air that looks directly at the human city and the stretch of wall above their main gate.
What I see there robs me of breath.
Torryn is a streak of bronze and green against the gray clouds. He twists through the air just beyond the wall, wings flaring in a violent burst that sends snow and wind exploding outward. The humans on the wall are tiny figures, but the center of my attention belongs to two people.
One is a human man in uniform, shoulders squared, stance braced, every line of his body screaming command even at this distance. The other is a figure just in front of him on the edge of the wall, hair whipped back by the force of the storm, hand braced on the stone.
Wren.
I know her by the way she stands at the very edge of danger as though she was born there, unafraid of whatever comes her way.
The world narrows to that one small shape, that one patch of stone beneath her feet.
For a heartbeat, the snow storm around us halts as I lose focus.
I have to consciously will the snow to keep falling so the humans don’t look up and realize there’s another magical force at play here, putting them on further alert.
“She’s on the wall,” Riven breathes.
Of course she is. Of course she walked straight to the highest, most dangerous point when danger approached.
Torryn’s loop completes and he comes around again, lining up with the gate. Even from here I can tell his focus has shifted. He’s not looking at the soldiers, the tanks, or the weak points in the wall as we discussed. He’s looking at her…and I can’t blame him.
Beside me, Azyric is very still. “I thought,” he says quietly, “that you two were so certain she wasn’t on their side.”
“What’s your point?” I ask, though my throat feels tight.
“Why is she standing on the wall with that human man next to her, looking every inch a free woman, facing down Torryn like she’s defending them?”