Chapter 40
Neri cuts his eyes to me again. It’s impossible to look away from his snarling, wolfish face.
“Tell him that I did save you.” He growls behind the words.
“Tell him that if not for the great God of the North, he would have lost you on the road south. Tell him that if not for Neri’s mercy, you would be nothing more than a bloody stain in the snow.
Tell him I will not save you forever. You can both rot in earthen graves for all I care.
The White Wolf’s debt is paid. Do not summon me. ”
His eyes shift, lifting to stare intently over my shoulder, the expression on his face one of torturous indecision.
Then there’s a shrill, tinkling sound—like glass shattering on glass—and just like that, Neri is gone, leaving behind nothing but a fading, cloudy vapor and a bitter, metallic taste on the back of my tongue.
His wolves even retreat, vanishing into the wood, and the white mist he rode in on dissipates through the forest.
His power lets go of me, and I exhale in a rush. Quivering, I shake the blade from my hand, the icy metal sticking to my skin.
I try to puzzle together Neri’s words. He meant for me to tell the Frost King all those things? Why?
Colden groans and gets to his knees, shrugging off his broken chains. Long moments pass as he utters No, no, no, no, no over and over before extending a quickly reddening, trembling hand.
He splays his fingers wide and focuses his gaze straight ahead. The veins in his temples and neck pop from the strain, standing out sharply in relief against his fair skin. His whole body shakes from the effort.
Nothing happens.
Panting, he drops his head, blowing out a ragged breath. He curls his fingers into a tight grip and pounds a white-knuckled fist against the ground. “Well, fuck all. We’re balls deep in trouble now.”
Whispers of uneven breathing and the crunch of footfalls across the icy wreckage behind me send me scrambling for my dagger. The cold hilt is in my hand, its sharp tip aimed at a slender neck in the time it takes a heart to push out a beat.
Just as fast, a hand grips my wrist. I gasp and draw back. I’m on one knee, the woman above me wide-eyed as a startled doe.
Nephele.
I shove to my feet and crush her to me, ready to take her and run, just like Rhonin said.
“Raina!” She squeezes me tight and pulls away to look at me, smiling, stroking my face with her thumbs. “My sweet girl! You’re really here!”
It’s been so long, yet she feels the same. Sounds the same. Smells the same. Gods, I’ve missed her so much. So much that it takes all that I am not to break down into a puddle of tears right here on this godsforsaken road.
How did we get here? Two farmers’ daughters from Silver Hollow fighting a truly evil man to save Tiressia? Breathing the same air as an ancient god?
I hug her again. My heart has so many wounds—it’s shredded—but I swear, being here with Nephele, hearing her voice, seeing her face, looking into her eyes, has already begun a sort of mending.
Some witches from her wagon stumble alongside the road while others help those in need. I look Nephele over. A knot swells on her forehead, above her eye, and there are bruises and cuts, visible in the moonlight. She looks so very tired.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “Is anyone badly injured?”
“I am fine,” she signs. “We are fine. Battered and drained, but we have endured worse than a wagon tumble.”
A wagon tumble. Was it an accident? Or…
No. Neri did this. Neri and his mist. He could’ve killed us. Maybe that’s what he intended. Or maybe he was only coming for Colden, his nemesis. Either way, Colden was right. Neri left his people here, abandoned in the wood of his land, with Eastlanders.
I hate him even more than before.
Colden clears his throat. “This is a truly lovely reunion, but I’m fairly certain that the battle for the end of Tiressia is happening just up the way. So if you ladies would care to join me, we still have a fight on our hands.”
Amid everything, Nephele darts across the remains of our destroyed wagon where Colden now stands.
When she flings herself at him and throws her arms around his neck, he sweeps her up into an embrace, and then she kisses him right on the mouth.
Colden smiles, too, even while he kisses Nephele in return.
There’s actual joy in his expression. The frigid Frost King, grinning like an imp, even after facing Neri and having his power torn from his chest. It’s almost as alarming as seeing the naked God of the North form from fog.
Nephele presses her forehead against Colden’s. “I didn’t know what happened to you after they took you. And then I saw…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I saw. I couldn’t have seen what I think I saw. I must’ve hit my head harder than I believed.”
“I’m fine.” He kisses her once more, setting her on her feet. “You did see it. Neri was here, which makes absolutely no sense, but it was real.”
“But how is that possible?” Concern edges Nephele’s features as she looks him over. “And what did he do to you?”
Part of me wants to stop their conversation and tell Nephele that it’s possible because Vexx killed Alexus, their friend. How do they not realize that? That Alexus’s death meant Neri’s freedom? Should I tell and risk upsetting them right now?
Nephele runs her hand over Colden’s ruined coat and tunic, tugging the fabric back enough to reveal a portion of a pink starburst blooming on the niveous skin of his slender yet muscled torso. The mark is just like the one I saw on Alexus’s chest in the ravine.
Colden shrugs his bloody shoulder. “I have no godsdamn clue how it’s possible. As for what Neri did? Let’s just say I’m not exactly deadly anymore, but if we can find a sword or two, that can quickly change. Let’s search the Eastlanders.”
Nephele gives Colden a worried look. “He removed the curse? Your power? That’s what I saw him doing?”
Colden nods, raising his brows. “Thus, we need all the weapons we can find.”
With a new weight settled on her shoulders, Nephele hurries to her wagon while I go looking for Killian. I tuck Rhonin’s dagger into a leather loop at the waist of my trousers, my mind racing around too many things to sort.
The second general lies about ten feet from the horses, body half on the road.
She’s sprawled in such an awful manner that she must be dead.
Her short sword is still strapped to her side, so I take it, along with her ring of keys, and meet up with Nephele and a handful of Witch Walkers. Together, we start toward Colden.
He’s at the wagon closest to camp, on his knees next to the Eastlanders trapped beneath their horses. It isn’t lost on me that—when he breaks the warriors’ necks—none of the Witch Walkers flinch. They keep striding toward him, as though all of this is perfectly normal.
Colden snatches a hatchet and uses Killian’s keys to unlock the rear of the last wagon. Seven Witch Walkers climb out, uninjured and primed to fight for freedom, but they look haggard, tired as Nephele, and I wonder if any of them—my sister included—can even wield magick right now.
I suppose I’m going to find out because minutes later, we’re running into the chilly night, through Frostwater Wood—me, my sister, the Frost King, and strangers I’ve never met—heading for the eastern side of the camp.
My blood pumps harder and faster the closer we get, our speed increasing. The unknown looms ahead, but I smell the scent of death. It makes my eyes water.
Warriors fight on the path, where the wounded waited for my healing. The torchlights that lit the area still burn, illuminating a couple dozen figures, lending an amber tint to the scene, a color I will forever associate with Neri’s eyes and the Stone of Ghent inside the God Knife.
The clash in the near distance looks like a painting—a war painting—but I can’t tell who the Eastlanders are fighting.
Until we break through the trees.
I stumble to a stop at the edge of the forest, heart hurtling into my throat, stealing my air. Colden and Nephele keep moving, straight into the bloodshed, but the weaponless Witch Walkers come to a standstill like me.
Colden slams his hatchet into a warrior’s neck and throws the man to the ground as though he is nothing. The body falls, landing amidst so many others, and Colden continues fighting.
I can’t begin to count the dead, the fetid aroma of fading life thick and too familiar. Eastlanders cover the snowy path, the white streak in the wood now marred with the red handprint of their deaths. Some of the wounded must have tried to fight.
Above, near the tops of the trees, dozens of silky, fibrous masses float, billowing in the wind. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I know what those masses are.
Souls. Lingering in this world.
Pulse thrumming, I take in the chaos on the path. Raging, the final wave of warriors closes in on Rhonin, Colden, Nephele, Hel, and—Alexus.
A jolting flush of shock tingles through me, sweeping violently from my head to my toes. My heart stops. I cannot break my stare. Surely I’ve slipped into a dream, some distortion of reality.
I saw Alexus die. Saw the God Knife enter his chest—the scarred chest now bared to me.
He wears no tunic.
No chains.
No death wound.
Neri. Neri is free. I hadn’t been sure what might become of him if something happened to Alexus, but the fact that the northern god stood a mere step from me means that Alexus let him go—in what I’d believed to be death’s release.
At the ravine, a mark painted Alexus’s chest in an angry, starburst welt—a mark that’s still imprinted in his skin and looks like Colden’s.
A kiss left behind from a removal of power. Alexus’s mark had to be caused by Neri’s exit. And yet…
The welt had been there before Alexus died. He freed Neri before Vexx stabbed him—when his voice bellowed across the ravine, and the earth rumbled.
I will come for you, he’d said in the moments before I lost consciousness. Trust me.