Chapter 41
Wherever the prince was before, watching me from beyond, he is not there now. Now, he’s here, like he stepped from one world to another.
From invisible to visible.
Alexus, Rhonin, Colden, and Hel stare with eyes wide—at me, at one another, at the prince, at Nephele. The scene is as quiet as midnight in the vale midwinter, save for the rushing of our breaths.
The last ash from the crows settles over the wood, coloring the white world gray. Cinders crumble to dust in my hair, on my skin, on my clothes, the death scent heavy in my lungs. Damp forest, pungent rot, and burnt feathers.
But there’s more. New scents. New deaths.
The Witch Walkers are gone. The snow where they stood is gone, too, replaced by a dark stain of ash that trails along the fringe of the wood, then fades.
“Raina Bloodgood,” the prince says. “Did you really think that you could take from me so brazenly and not pay?”
It takes a moment for his meaning to sink in. He isn’t talking about Nephele.
That hot wind. Summerlander magick.
He destroyed the Witch Walkers. Burned them to ash the way I burned his crows.
“This needs to be between us,” Colden shouts. “Leave everyone else out of it.”
He and the prince hold one another’s gazes, and for a long moment, the air is tight with a strange, unbridled tension between them.
But then the prince smiles. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Even after all this time? For things to be just between us?”
Colden shakes his head, and his expression hardens.
He lifts his hatchet. Aims.
The prince tsks, his hand tightly wound in Nephele’s hair.
“Now that would be very foolish, especially for a king.” He trails the tip of the bone blade up the side of my sister’s face to her temple and angles it just right for penetration.
“Unless you want this talented witch of yours to make her way to the Shadow World sooner rather than later.”
He means it. His shadows coil around Nephele, binding her hands, closing over her mouth. I’d wondered why he didn’t just ride in on his red cloud and take Colden from Winterhold instead of going to the trouble of sneaking an army across the Northlands.
But now I think I know why. The prince must be close to what he wants if he means to take it.
It’s why he couldn’t just find me in the wood and steal the knife.
His magick is not so simple as sifting across the world and arriving wherever he wishes.
Other than watching him move through shadows here in the wood, I’ve only ever seen him vanish.
All magick has limitations, and I have to wonder if this is his.
It must be, and that leaves me with the worry that if the prince decides to leave us, he’ll take Nephele with him—and she won’t be able to fight.
Not only has he silenced her voice, but he’s also subduing her power. Her witch’s marks are gone.
“What do you want?” I sign in a flurry, too scared to move toward him but knowing I need to maintain some semblance of control over the situation.
Alexus stands beside me, rigid and on guard, every thick muscle in his torso tensing. “She asked, What do you want?”
Smiling like a fiend, the prince answers.
“Well, for starters, I want you, Raina Bloodgood. I didn’t at first, but now, as we’ve discussed, you have use.
I also want Neri sent back to the Shadow World, but someone made a wicked deal with a wicked wolf to make sure that can’t happen.
Not easily, anyway.” He gives Alexus a sharp glare.
“And you did it all because you wanted to save this little witch from Silver Hollow who’s caught your ancient eye.
You set a god free for a woman you hardly know.
I’m certain your people will be so thankful. ”
Gods and stars. That’s what Neri meant when he said to tell him that he did save me. He wasn’t speaking of Colden. He must’ve made a deal with Alexus—his freedom from Alexus’s prison in exchange for my safety.
The prince sets his eyes on Rhonin and Hel.
“And oh, how I wanted this God Knife once I knew it existed. And now I have it, no thanks to you two, thief and spy.” His gaze slides to Colden.
“Then there’s the infamous Frost King. A pawn in a game I plan to win.
” He arches a brow. “I want you, too, though I sense no power inside you anymore. Just useless immortality.” There’s a pause, that same tension between them pulsing wild.
“What’s the point in living forever if you’re boring?
” the prince says. “Do you even have skill?”
Colden scoffs, a deadly grin forming on his face. He stands rigid, ready to lunge at any moment. “Let Nephele go, and I’ll show you just how much skill I still have, you pathetic piece of shit.”
The prince laughs and jerks Nephele’s head back.
“I can’t do that because, you see, I need power.
The mage whose life has fed me for quite some time is fading quickly.
I require a new source of life. It could’ve been one of my own.
” He glares at Alexus again. “Un Drallag, the mighty Eastland sorcerer, would’ve provided enough power to make me something next to a god.
Sadly, all that magick is dormant for now. Isn’t it, Alexi of Ghent?”
Alexus clenches his jaw. “It won’t be asleep forever, know that, and when it awakes, I swear you’re going to regret ever coming here—if you even live through this night.”
Damn it. There’s not enough power in any of us to keep this moment from escalating.
“I need a source of life who’s young,” the prince says.
“Someone who will thrive longer than the old mage. Someone with enough magick in her veins to enchant an entire forest.” The prince looks down at Nephele, caresses her unmarked cheek with the God Knife.
“Don’t even pretend that vast magick wasn’t all mostly you. ”
Heart hammering, I take a step. The prince’s mage is dying, which means the eastern lord is in a weakened state. He needs Nephele—not just later, but now.
I peer into my sister’s soul. The threads of her life glimmer golden, but a bloody infection creeps along their edges.
He’s siphoning her magick. He’s going to tangle the vibrant threads of her life with his poisoned, decaying tatters, use her up until she’s nothing but a shell chained to a stone table in a tower or a disregarded husk of spirit floating in the night sky.
I cannot let that happen.
The prince’s eyes are on Nephele, but her wide and steady gaze locks on me. After all these years, I can still read her face, but I refuse to answer the stern glint in her watery stare, the pinched determination in her mouth. She’s telling me to end her so that he cannot use her.
But I just got her back. Over my dead body will I lose her again. We’re smarter than this. Better. Stronger.
Faster.
With a slight shake of my head, I arch my brow and let my thoughts radiate from my face to give her a warning. I’ve been stealthy all my life, and my aim is sharp, so I slip the tiny dagger from the loop at my waist and bolt toward her, leaping over bodies, my arm primed for a throw.
In that sliver of a moment, so many things happen. Hel screams my name, and Alexus reaches for me. His fingertips slip off the bloody fabric at my elbow.
I fling the blade down the path with all my strength.
The Prince of the East looks up. Leans left. Flares his shadows.
My blade sails right through them, then he and Nephele vanish in a plume of red smoke.
The crimson shadows remain, though, and I’m moving too fast to stop. They fling out, monstrous tentacles latching onto me.
An arm clamps around my waist, yanking me to a halt. Whoever has hold of me twists, trying to pull me in the other direction, but the shadows wrap around my ankles and tear me away, slamming me to the earth, knocking the wind from my chest.
When I look up, Colden’s wild stare meets mine. After everything—after all the nights I lay awake thinking of how I would one day kill him—the Frost King tried to save me.
Scarlet shadows whirl up and fall, wrapping around him like a fist, dragging him toward a blood-colored cloud. In a blink, he disappears.
There’s a hard tug on my body, and I dig my fingers into the ash-covered path at the exact moment that Alexus runs and slides, calling my name, reaching for my hand.
But I’m sucked away into a red mist.