Chapter 38 #2
Killian peers outside. When the woman turns around, her face is grim. She stalks across the small space and grabs my arm. “Come on. Let’s get her to the wagons.”
Rhonin tightens his hold on my wrist and levels a cerulean glare on Killian. Everything about him takes on a defensive air. “I’ll take her.”
She tilts her head, her flat, gray eyes assessing. Not in the least bit intimidated, she drops her free hand to a ring of iron keys dangling at her hip. “We’ll take her. Because I’m carrying her south. Like the prince ordered.”
The moment we step beyond the tent, wolves howl, their voices united in one terrible, wailing cry that seems to stretch and stretch.
Rhonin and Killian pull up short, and my skin prickles, gooseflesh rising along my arms. The energy I felt at the ravine has returned in full force, that unnatural presence rolling in on a cold, white mist hugging the ground, floating over our boots.
A chill wind nips at my face and rustles the boughs above us, whistling and meandering through the snowy wood.
Rhonin looks down at me, wary as we start up the torchlit path, the flames struggling to survive the wind.
Everything feels wrong, and hesitance traces my steps.
Killian glares at me and picks up her pace, all but dragging me.
The prince and Vexx are nowhere in sight, but ahead, across Winter Road, the camp is alive, the tall shadows of warriors bustling in the firelight.
As I scan the wood, I notice that the attendants have abandoned their posts, leaving the injured men, their buckets of wine haphazardly discarded along the roadside. I can hardly distinguish the men’s wounded forms in the frosty fog, but I hear their moans plainly.
When we reach the camp, the warriors are ready, eyeing the wood and trees, prepping their weapons, and lighting more torches.
There’s chatter and murmurs—discussion—and enough apprehension tightening the air that it would ping if I could pluck it.
The prince and Vexx are inside the tent from earlier, their bodies reflected in silhouette behind the canvas.
Vexx is on his knees, clearly begging mercy, the prince curled over him in a threatening shape.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m almost thankful I’ll be locked away for it.
We rush past the campfires to the wheeled prisons where warriors hurriedly harness horses, hitching them to wagons. The conveyances are solidly built, wood on all sides reinforced with steel frames. The doors are fastened with heavy chains and padlocks.
Killian starts toward the middle wagon.
“Wait.” Rhonin thrusts his chin to the right. “That one might be better.”
The woman pauses. “I can’t imagine how.”
“I don’t think we need to put her with her sister, is all,” Rhonin replies. “And the other wagon is already packed.” He jerks me forward. “She’s valuable. Valuable enough to be”—he juts his chin to the right again—“in there.”
An icy finger of dread trails down the back of my neck as I slice a glance at him. Of course, I need to be with my sister. What’s he playing at?
Killian mulls over her fellow warrior’s words and sets to unlocking the padlock sealing the wagon to my right. My pulse picks up. I feel like I’m being thrown to the wolves.
Behind us, the camp explodes into activity, warriors running toward the path where the injured lay in waiting. Killian yanks the wagon door open, jerks me away from Rhonin’s hold, and shoves me inside.
I land splayed across the slatted floorboards in a spill of fractured moonlight.
As the chain and lock rattle from the other side of the door, I scramble to my knees and struggle to my feet, darting to the tiny, barred window to see what in gods’ death is going on.
Rhonin walks away. Killian must be tending to the horses.
Rhonin tosses a glance over his shoulder, and though I wish to the gods that I could read minds, I don’t need to. He rubs his wrists together and heads toward the tent where I’d seen the prince and Vexx.
I work my hands free of the ropes he left loose and take in the foggy scene—the way the warriors form a wall on the path, facing east, like something is coming from that direction. The direction of the ravine, if I’m correct.
“Grand. Just what I wanted. Company.”
On a gasp, I spin around, flattening my back against the wall. In the corner, tucked half in shadow, sits a man, long legs bent. Slants of silvery moonlight pour into our little jail, feathering across the dark leather of his trousers.
There are chains—hobbles on his ankles and manacles on his wrists. His hands look lovely. Lovely and deadly. They rest between his legs.
“At least you seem handy,” he adds. “A woman who knows her way around a bit of rope. Always a good thing.” He pulls his torso forward, an effort under the weight of iron, until the bunched gold-ribboned cuffs of his blue velvet coat shimmer in the light.
He looks up at me with the darkest, haunting eyes I’ve ever beheld.
“Unless they threw you in here to kill me.”
I take in that pale, golden hair, that sculpted face, and the iron collar at his throat. Though I’ve never seen him, and though he’s so very far from the image my mind has conjured since I was a child, I know exactly who he is without a second of doubt.
The Frost King.