Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Sylvi
Jack’s sword was in his hand before the scream had even finished echoing across the lake. Jumping to his feet, he said, “Go to my pavilion and—”
“If you think I’m going to cower in your tent while the camp is under attack, you’ve lost your mind,” I snapped.
“I wasn’t sending you there to hide,” he bit out, eyes narrowing. “I had Varik drop off your trunk, where I hope you’ve stashed Moonshadow.”
Scrambling to my feet, I shot him a steely look. “I did. But you think I’d be walking around at the edge of the Wildlands bladeless?”
I lifted the hem of my tunic, and his eyes flicked to the thigh holster hidden underneath, where I drew a dagger.
It was a smaller weapon than my seax but easier to conceal, though no less deadly.
I spun it over my wrist a couple of times, its blade catching the firelight, the runes etched along the blade flaring faintly.
A feral smirk tugged at his lips, and gods help me, the way his eyes darkened sent ripples of awareness down my spine. That molten gaze—raw, wild, and possessive—scorched through every layer I wore as if he’d never seen anything more devastatingly beautiful, more tempting and captivating.
My knees wobbled at the memory of what had just happened between us.
Jack and I had just…kissed? More than kissed?
Skadi save me, if his mouth against mine and his tongue licking my neck had scattered my sanity like snowdrifts in the wind, I couldn’t fathom what it would feel like to have him worship every inch of my body with his lips.
And that tongue… Winter’s Grace. This prince had just opened the door to a place I didn’t even know existed, and now I wasn’t sure if I could ever go back to a time where that kiss never happened.
Despite the scream that had split the night wide open, my body still thrummed with want, with a maddening ache to finish what we’d begun. Our gazes stayed locked in a silent battle, neither of us ready to break the spell, neither willing to abandon the sanctuary we’d carved from ice and fur.
His chest heaved with a ragged breath, and with one look, without a single word, he swore—If the world wasn’t falling apart around us, I’d lay you back down and remind you exactly who you belong to…
A trembling, desire-soaked breath escaped my lips.
More panicked sounds piped up from the camp, snuffing out the smolder in Jack’s eyes, replacing it with frozen granite.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice no longer carrying the saccharine timbre of the prince whose lips had promised to consume me, but that of the Prince of Skadgard ready to unleash his deadly magic on whoever had dared to threaten his people.
We sprinted toward the heart of camp, snow kicking up beneath our boots. Shadows skittered between tents; steel rang as swords were drawn, hooves stomped in panic, and pages scrambled to calm the startled horses.
Varik stood near the fire pit, barking orders. “Sweep the perimeter! I want this entire camp on lockdown. No one sleeps until we know what we’re dealing with.”
I nearly stumbled when I spotted the dead bodies strewn near the lake’s edge. Four soldiers, still as stone, contorted, their limbs bent at unnatural angles.
My stomach turned.
They didn’t look dead.
They looked drained of life.
Their skin looked dry and leathery, gray and black like rotting fruit. Eyes sunken, mouths frozen in silent screams. One had claw marks raking across his chest, but no blood, only the hollowed wreck of who had once been Lieutenant Ivar.
Oh, my gods…Ivar. It was like his spirit had been leached out of him like marrow from bone. He was barely recognizable, as were the other three victims.
Sascha hovered nearby, shivering, dressed in a white nightgown, her healer robes forgotten, her medicinal bag clutched to her chest, lips pressed together, blue from the cold.
It looked like she’d dragged herself out of bed and had run to the scene to lend her aid.
Sadly, there was no poultice or tonic that could bring these soldiers back from this… whatever this was.
Ingrid stood next to her, whimpering softly, her cheeks and nose red from the bitter wind, eyes staring at Ivar as if her breath had been stolen, too.
“What did I miss?” Ravin asked, suddenly beside us, breath ragged, hair tousled, shirt wrinkled, looking disheveled in a way that made me wonder if he too had been interrupted.
Then I caught the fleeting glance between him and Sascha, and the unspoken words that practically crackled in the air almost singed my skin.
Oh, yeah. They’d both been clearly up to something—together.
I shook my head. Poor girl. If his rakish reputation proved true, hers wouldn’t be the first heart he broke, and certainly not the last.
Heat suddenly rushed to my cheeks as more memories of my own fevered interlude with Jack surged forward. His ravenous mouth tracing over my jaw, my neck, his fingers brushing over my ribs, his hand palming my breast, the weight of his large frame—every inch of muscle perfectly molded, rippling.
The volcano he’d left raging at my core reignited in vivid, dangerous detail.
Gods, Sylvi. Focus.
There are dead soldiers here.
Jack swiveled his head toward me, nostrils flaring slightly.
His eyes darkened with that same lustful gaze he’d drowned me in right before we’d kissed.
I’d forgotten his senses were hypersensitive.
Had he’d been able to catch the scent of my desire, or been able to hear how fast my heart was beating?
I dragged in a breath and shoved the memory of our bodies writhing with pleasure into the deep corners of my mind, folding it away like a lover’s letter I couldn’t afford to reread, at least not right now.
The Frost Prince could be my ruin if I allowed those sugar-drunken images to derail me from my duty.
Jack coughed to clear his throat, and I didn’t miss the way he nonchalantly readjusted his trousers to hide what I didn’t dare try to confirm with my eyes. With his fingers tightly wrapped around the hilt of his sword, he shifted his attention to Varik. “What happened?”
Varik stepped forward, his armor clinking.
“We were winding down for the night. Most had turned in when the scream came from the lakeside. One of the pages found Ivar like this.” He motioned to the body.
“We thought it might’ve been a mountain beast…
until we found the others. Same condition—no blood, just… drained.”
I glanced at Jack. He didn’t say a word, but the look he shared with Ravin made the hair on my arms rise.
I nibbled on the corner of my bottom lip, trying to figure out what those two were hiding, when Jack must have sensed the heat of my stare and craned his neck toward me, his lips flattening, eyes like liquid silver. Later.
Gods, how I hated when he did that.
Astrid emerged from the dark, her axe strapped to her back, face pale as bone.
Varik nodded for her to speak, but Astrid looked at me as if I was still the one in command.
“I was first on the scene,” she said, breathless, her brows drawn in disbelief.
“I’d been on patrol and ran as soon as I heard the scream.
That’s when I saw it.” Her eyes drifted to the others gathered around the lake’s edge, then to the dark forest.
I’d never seen the female warrior so shaken before. “Astrid, what did you see?” I asked, placing a hand on her shoulder, my voice soft.
She seemed to flinch at my touch, then she stared at me, ice-cold terror frozen in the depths of her eyes. “A shadow. Except it wasn’t. It was darker than night, thicker than fog, like it had a form, though it moved like smoke.”
“Did you see anything else?” Jack asked.
Astrid glanced at the prince, slowly shaking her head.
“I chased it. Gods, I chased it into the trees like a fucking fool. But it was like the woods swallowed it and then it was gone… Yet, I could still feel it looking at me from the darkness. Felt its impossibly cold gaze on my skin. It was daring me to go inside the forest.”
She paused, her jaw trembling. “Then it breathed. I don’t know how I know, but it breathed, and it was like the mist came alive, and it enveloped me, a wet coldness that felt wrong, twisted, wrapping itself around me like a snake, its icy fingers reaching for my throat.
I felt the air in my lungs get sucked right out of me, and that’s when I ran back, faster than I’ve ever run in my whole damn life. ”
“Frostwraith…” one of the soldiers gathered whispered.
Teeth clattering, Sascha shook her head. “Frostwraiths live under the ice, not in the trees.”
“And they drown their victims,” I added. “They don’t hollow them out, not like this.”
Ravin slid his coat around Sascha’s shoulders. “Besides, we haven’t had any frostwraith sightings in over a decade.”
Wrapping the coat tighter around herself, Sascha offered Ravin a weak smile. “Thank you.”
Varik looked to Jack. “We’ve been on high alert since you told us something was tracking us back on the pass. Yet no one saw it coming. We had no warning.”
Jack’s eyes glided toward me briefly, then back to Varik, his chest caving, and I knew what had crossed his mind… We’d had no warning because he’d been distracted—by me.
“By the time we heard the scream,” Varik went on, “they were already dead.” He pointed to the bodies of the four dead soldiers.
“Those were some of our fiercest warriors, taken out by something made of smoke and mist? No sound, no nothing. Their weapons aren’t even drawn.
It’s almost as if they didn’t even know what happened to them until it was too late. ”
“How the fuck are we supposed to fight against something like that?” Lieutenant Torin, one of Varik’s bootlickers, asked, uncomfortably shifting on his feet as he peered into the dark forest across the lake, the snowflakes melting on his heavily tattooed bald head.