Chapter 42
There’s nothing. Nothing but darkness. My murky vision corrects—or tries to correct—the blurry world around me. I blink into focus. The world isn’t blurred; it’s filled with moving shadows.
Wicked pain crawls up the base of my skull. I’m on my hands and knees on black, rocky ground, surrounded by souls, like the husks that floated above the wood. There are thousands, billowing against a dismal, cloudless slate-gray sky. Even if they don’t have eyes, their attention pierces me.
Keeper, they hiss. Seer. Healer. Resurrectionist. Murderer.
Witch.
Beyond them lies a craggy mountain that goes on forever. It’s guarded by a gate, a massive creation, neither steel nor stone, but something my mind can’t give name to.
Because I don’t belong here.
I know it.
The souls know it.
This place knows it.
A wraithlike being in a red cloak ushers souls through the gate. Some go left. Some go right. Some go straight through. Then he looks up with two glowing orbs for eyes and spies me.
Trespasser.
I try to get up, to run, but everything is all wrong. It’s like I’m moving through water, my motions dragged down by some invisible weight.
I turn. Nephele and Colden are behind me, on their sides, still secured by crimson shadows.
Both wear expressions of panic. I want to go to them, but a shadow loops around my middle, holding me tight.
It’s struggling, because I’m tethered elsewhere, a tremendous pressure on my insides, in my chest—around my heart.
Like something’s pulling the organ in two.
More crimson shadows glide across the ground in bright tendrils. I sit back and jerk my hands away as one creeps over my shoulder.
Then comes that chilling, jaw-clenching laughter, slipping in with the shadows, curling up and over and into my ears.
The Prince of the East looms like a jailer, like someone who does belong here, God Knife strapped to his hip.
“Welcome to the Shadow World, you three,” he says, the seeping gash in his face a reminder that this is not a dream. “We can’t stay long. This place likes to keep interlopers, so I only use it when I absolutely must. The question is, where to go from here?”
Colden jerks up like a snake and strikes out at the prince. The shadows holding the king bound coil tighter and tighter until he cries out, his body flung back to the hard ground.
“Try that again, handsome,” the prince says, “and you’ll wish you were next in line with the dead. I have to keep you alive, but I don’t have to make it a comfortable existence. You would do well to remember that.”
I close my eyes, trying to steady my thundering heart, but something happens. Something strange. I might as well be one of the souls hovering over Frostwater Wood, because suddenly, I’m there. I can see the bloody path, a red slit cleaving the white forest.
Swooping like the prince’s crows, I move closer, a bird’s eye view. My body is there, on Winter Road. And yet…I’m here. In the Shadow World.
Alexus sits in the snow, his wounded leg outstretched. I’m lying before him, my head resting in his lap. Hel and Rhonin kneel at my sides. The look on Hel’s face is one of conflict and desperation as she hands Alexus a dagger—Rhonin’s dagger. The blade I threw at the prince.
With the steadiest of hands, Alexus presses the sharp tip to the thick muscle of his chest, a smooth patch of skin next to the runes I’d so eagerly dragged my teeth across the night we almost took one another, runes I’d touched with tender fingers in the cave.
He carves a sign into his skin, two bleeding, parallel grooves with a single dot in the middle, joined by a V-shaped line.
Lowering the dagger, he pushes my hair away from my neck and runs his hand over the swell of my breast. Then he cuts me, just under my collarbone, making the same mark. Thin rivulets of blood spill from the wound.
He gets to his knees, wincing from the pain in his leg.
Reverently, he threads our fingers together and lowers his forehead to mine, rocking gently, a similar ritual to the one he performed that night in the wood, when he killed all those men.
He’s pleading—or praying. I can’t tell which, but I feel him so wholly.
He’s trying to bring me back to the other side.
I open my eyes, my heart pounding harder. But I’m still in the Shadow World.
The prince stares at me, runs his eyes over me, his smug smile falling. “Un Drallag never gives up, does he? Well, two can play at this game.”
He walks away, flicking a hand over his shoulder. His shadows writhe, and me, Nephele, and Colden are drawn upon once more, being bled from the earth—through the Shadow World toward some great divide, fading further from the Northlands. Further from safety. Further from home.
This realm is only a stop. A path. A portal.
A risk, but still a way for a man made of shadows, souls, and sins to escape with what he wants.
But where is he taking us?
One of the tiny darknesses inside my chest hums and churns and sparks, a little lightning storm fluttering around my heart. It’s strange, that connection, that reaching out of energies, but I cling to it.
Cling to him. Alexus.
I reach for Nephele’s hand and then Colden’s, even though they’re bound in shadows. I seek the heat and light of Alexus’s stolen death, the white-hot power living there, the bond that’s connecting us even now.
I’m weak and tired, but I can’t let the prince have Colden and Nephele. I must fight.
I think of the sword of amethyst light. I know I can conjure it. Lunthada comida, bladen tu dresniah, krovek volz gentrilah. I think the words over and over again, but nothing happens. Too much fear intrudes my mind. Or maybe my magick is no good here.
The prince turns a dark look over his shoulder and angles his head. His contempt is palpable across the red, shadowy distance between us. I have to dig deeper. Down to the deepest part of me, the force of life within.
Swallowing all fear, I look for my own threads, the threads of my heart. Like the ones I pulled from Alexus the night he taught me to summon flame.
Fulmanesh, iyuma tu lima, opressa volz nomio, retam tu shahl.
Fire of my heart, come that I may see you, warm my weary bones, be my place of rest.
I carry the song in my heart. Hear it. I won’t let it fall silent.
Flames form, a flickering ball of heat roaring before me. The prince heads my way, malevolence and violence rippling off him in waves. I imagine this blazing fire rising and pouring down on him, envision him burning like he burned my village. But first, I must make the fire do what I want it to do.
Alexus’s words come back to me. Think of the thing you want most in this world. It’s where true power comes from. We often hold the most will for our strongest desires.
This time there’s no hesitation. I know what I want most.
I want peace. To be surrounded by those I love. For them to be safe. To know joy. To know passion. To know serenity.
That’s it. That’s all. Peace—in all things.
The fire obeys.
With Fulmanesh, iyuma in my mind, flames race along the rocky ground, consuming the crimson shadows between me and the Prince of the East. Those same flames roar around him, not like the shield he made in the wood, but a wildfire wreathing him in torturous heat, licking up his bronze leathers, melting them to his skin, kissing his damaged face.
He roars and flails, throwing himself to the ground to pound out the flames, sounds of misery echoing across this waiting place filled with souls—a place that feels like it wants to either swallow us whole or spit us out.
The tether to my heart tugs again. Harder. Colden and Nephele are still in my grip. I close my eyes and will us away from this Shadow World. I can see the wood, and gods, how I long to feel the snow and Alexus’s voice drifting over my skin.
But when I open my eyes, we’re still here.
The Prince of the East rises and steps past the fire, stalking toward me, dragging flames with him, chest heaving as he stares at me like some sort of creature, more walking corpse than man.
His face has changed, and not from the fire. It’s old. Older than old. Sunken and colorless, like the man in the cell by the sea. His eyes are voids, something from the deepest, darkest parts of the Nether Reaches.
He brings his hands together and then swoops them out at his sides as though he’s parting a river. Colden and Nephele are ripped from my hold.
The prince lunges for me. One burned hand closes around my throat. He shoves me down, my back to the rocky ground, his hollowed face an inch from mine, reeking like rot and ruin. For such a withered thing, he’s solid and immovable, wholly unnatural.
Swiftly, he unsheathes the God Knife. “What did I tell you when I stood over you in your village?”
I don’t need to search my memory. That night is so permanent in my mind, branded on my soul. We’ll meet again, Keeper, he’d said. And when we do, I’m going to drive that knife into your heart and inhale your soul.
Clamping my hands over his, I bring my knee up between his legs, praying that he is, in fact, somewhat human. It’s enough that he draws back for a fraction of a second and stumbles, but the God Knife slips from my reach.
I force myself to my feet, his shadows and the odd weight of this world trying to drag me back down. He looks at me, and I know he wants to kill me, regardless of what power I can offer him. He’ll probably inhale my soul right here, with the entire Shadow World watching.
Air shudders out of me on the edges of fury. I need him dead, and I need that God Knife.
I charge him, teeth bared. The prince does the same, his empty eyes wide and wild.
But I’m moving too slow, like I’m not real. Like this place isn’t real.
Just before we clash, the prince spins, grabbing my arm, and kicks my feet out from under me, landing me flat on my back with a jolt that rattles my every bone. He comes at me, but I ram the heel of my palm into his nose, sending him staggering back.
We have to get out.
I grab Colden under the arms and drag him closer to Nephele. Dropping to my knees, I clasp both their hands, keeping my eyes on the prince.
He starts my way, and I pray that I can do this, though I don’t even know what this is.
Before I can do anything, however, the prince bursts into a red cloud and reappears before my eyes. He falls on me like a mountain lion on a doe, straddling me.
Red, riotous shadows seethe from him. They stretch and crawl and creep toward Colden and Nephele, bloody, nebulous rivers flowing across cracked earth.
In an instant, those same shadows writhe around my sister and her king, trying to tear them from my grip again, but I hold fast. I strain and pull, gritting my teeth as I cling to their hands.
The tether around my heart tightens—Alexus, working to bring us back home.
This time, I will not let go.
“Such a disappointment.” The prince raises the God Knife once more. “I tried to spare you. You could’ve been of such great use to me. Now I must leave you in the Shadow World while I head for the Summerlands so I can bring this empire to its knees.”
The prince leans close and brushes his decaying lips against my cheek. “At least your soul will restore me. I bet it tastes like smoke and starlight.”
I close my eyes. I refuse to witness the murderous look that must shine in his dead eyes as he rears back. I only feel Alexus—his tether and our runes pulling me even as the icy God Knife buries to the hilt between my breasts, just like Vexx did to Alexus.
Gasping, I snap my eyes open. The pain is unfathomable, a bright, burning thing tearing through me, melting the bones around my heart.
I’m dying. I must be.
But it isn’t the knife. The knife isn’t even there. I’m surrounded by darkness, thick as ink. The only light comes from the burning lines and grooves of the rune on my chest. The sigil burrows into me, spreading heat through my veins, its power claiming me.
I’m in an in-between place, the void between two worlds. Alexus marked me, and now he’s summoning me, his voice a whisper in the back of my mind. Colden and Nephele aren’t with me, but I can still feel them at the edge of my grasp.
“Just let me go!” Colden demands. “Save Nephele! This is the only way!”
Though he sounds a million miles away, they’re so close, their hands in mine. I refuse to let go. I’m strong enough. I can do this!
But I’m not given the chance.
The fingers clutched in my left hand, fingers I know belong to the King of the Northlands, pry loose from my grip.
The second he’s gone, the moment I feel him sucked away, I cry out for him in my mind.
There is no victory without sacrifice, but this isn’t how the story was supposed to end.
I wasn’t supposed to fail. The prince wasn’t supposed to win.
The Frost King wasn’t supposed to be willing to give all—for us.
For me. For my sister. For his people.
On a sob, I grab the other hand still clenched in my grasp—Nephele. With all that I am, I heave and heave until I’m no longer alone in the dark.
I cling to my sister, both of us crying and shivering in this abyss. Closing my eyes, I focus on Alexus’s prayers, on his tender voice and the promise of his rune.
And let him guide me back to the light.