Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
EMORY
“ I ced tits, it’s freezing.” Driscoll shuddered at the blistering-cold wind that rattled past us.
“Iced tits?” Leoni shot him a sidelong look from under the hood of her black cloak, a single red tendril of hair escaping from it. “You know, your curse words have gotten more inventive the longer I’ve known you.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment. And also a challenge to invent even more.”
“How lovely,” I said drily while Leoni just smirked.
We’d been following the bone collector for a week now. One week of trekking through the frost court toward the Glacier Mountains. We’d camped at night, all of us huddled together in whatever shelters we could find, waking up early and finding his trail. It wasn’t hard with all the snow, his bootprints fresh and thick. He hadn’t bothered covering his tracks. Why would he? He probably would never expect someone to be following him, especially not when he was going toward the mountains, known for their freezing temperatures, harsh terrain—and other threats like snow bears, wolves, and mountain lions .
“Why couldn’t he be heading somewhere warm?” Driscoll asked, teeth chattering. “Would it kill him to take the bolt to a beach where I can lay in the sand and drink all day?”
We came to a stop at the base of the mountains, harsh gray stone dusted with snow, the range rising so high and stretching so far it seemed like they went on forever. The wind howled around us, snow flurries swirling, thick and cutting. The closer we came to the mountains, the worse the weather had become. It would only get harder to stay on his trail, and I didn’t need any distractions.
I turned toward Driscoll and Leoni. “You’re both welcome to turn around at any time. Truly. I’m used to following him. By myself.”
I tugged at the blue scarf, still wrapped around my throat, covering my bruises. I let the words hang between us, hoping my meaning was clear.
Leoni scowled. “I promised Princess Poppy I would take care of this. That I’d get that bolt. I’m not leaving until I fulfill my promise.”
Driscoll raised a finger. “I, on the other hand, made no such promises. So, you know, it might be time to say my goodbyes.”
Maybe with one of them gone, I’d get some peace and quiet. Driscoll was the main talker, Leoni only responding out of annoyance or exasperation or sometimes amusement. I could see that they were close, had formed a bond over the events they’d been through. Not that I knew much about those events. By the end of every day we’d all been too hungry, too tired, too cold to do much talking. Well, they’d been too cold. I’d withstood the elements with much more ease than either of them.
Leoni came to an abrupt stop. The wind gusted past us and lifted the hood off her head, snowflakes catching in her hair. “You want to leave?” she asked Driscoll. “After everything we’ve been through, how far we’ve come? You just want to give up?”
“Of course I do! I told you back in the sky court: I’m not a hero, and I don’t want to be.”
Leoni opened her mouth to respond when I caught sight of a familiar black cloak far above and gasped.
Leoni and Driscoll looked at me .
“What?” Driscoll braced his legs, looking around. “Is it a bear? Or a wolf? Because I’m not into furry creatures that want to eat me.”
Leoni raised a brow. “I don’t think anyone is.”
“No.” I pointed at Maverick's form as he scaled the side of the mountain.
“The bone collector,” Driscoll said. “We actually found him.”
Maverick stopped and slowly turned, but surely he couldn’t have heard us from so far above.
“Or he found us,” Leoni murmured.
“Can we use our magic to get his satchel?” Driscoll whispered.
I lifted a hand over my eyes, arching my neck to look up. “He’s too far. But we know we’re on the right path at least.”
Leoni cocked her head. “What is he doing?”
He pulled himself up onto the edge of a plateau.
Before, in his office, he’d stared at me with curiosity, with a kind of awe and wonder. Now, all of that was gone, his gaze hard and cold as he glared down at us.
I wondered what had changed. Maybe me stalking him. Trying to best him. But that was nothing new. This was what we did. I wanted to say something, but without that hood over his head, it was like I no longer knew him. Like he was a completely different person. The truth was I didn’t know what to say.
I snapped my mouth shut as he slowly raised out his hand, and my stomach twisted into a tight knot.
“Is he about to use his magic?” Driscoll asked.
Fire appeared in his hand, and I squinted. “I think so, but we’re so far away, what could he hope to achieve? He can’t hit us from this far out.”
He knelt down and threw the fireball toward the area underneath the plateau. It blazed, melting the snow.
“Is he thirsty or something?” Driscoll asked. “Kind of a weird time to take a drink. But okay, Hot Professor. You do you.”
“He’s up to something.” I tilted my head. “But I don’t know what.”
All we could do was stand there like idiots and wait to see what in the bloody frost he was doing. He threw another fireball at the snow, and once again, it began to melt, softening .
“Tell me, white rabbit.” His voice boomed. “Have you ever heard of the Battle of Sofor?”
I stiffened. So he’d figured out my identity, and by using my nickname, he’d as good as revealed his. Obviously, I’d already suspected all of this, but now that I knew it was 100 percent true, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Relieved that I was on the right track. Confused that this great scholar was the bone collector. For the first time since we started our little game so many years ago, we were laid bare before each other. Officially on an even playing field. It was so odd hearing Maverick's voice, knowing that I could put a face to this mysterious nemesis I’d competed against for so many years.
“The fact that you even asked that is an insult to my intelligence,” I said. “It was a battle that happened in the Old World between frost elementals and fire elementals, right here in the Glacier Mountains.”
Though they’d been called something different thousands of years ago. Maverick probably knew the official name of those who wielded fire and frost magic, but I didn’t.
He threw another fireball at the snow below him. “Look at you. Almost like a real historian.”
We’d always made jabs at each other, but this one hit different. It felt like an actual insult.
My nails dug into my fists. “The Battle of Sofor,” I said, “where the fire elementals were retaliating after the frost elementals froze their dragons. They wanted to steal Spirit Frost’s axe and hoped to use it to kill him.”
There were multiple sources that told this historical tale. A soldier’s record-keeping of this battle was one of the first sources we had that detailed it all.
The fire elementals surprise attacked the frost elementals here, in the mountains, since most of the elementals lived in villages around the base. The frost elementals made it snow on the fire elementals as they attacked from above with their fire magic. The frost elementals started turning the tide of the battle, the snowfall so heavy it reached the fire elementals’ waists, making it harder for them to summon their fire magic. But the frost elementals’ plan backfired because?—”
I stopped, my stomach dropping straight to the ground .
“Well, why did it backfire?” Driscoll asked. “I slept through most of the history lessons in school.”
My gaze trailed up to Maverick, to the melting snow. The snow that was now beginning to shift and move.
“The fire elementals melted the snow to cause an avalanche.”
A smile spread over Maverick’s face. “Very good. I believe that’s my cue. Don’t follow me again. I’m done playing games with you.”
He bounded away, coat fluttering behind him as he disappeared. “ Done playing games with you .” He was angry with me, and I had zero idea why. I also had no time to think about it as the mountain rumbled above us.
We all froze, and my gaze swept upward, where the snow shifted again, beginning to move, to fall.
“It’s an avalanche,” I screamed above the thunderous sound.
“Yeah, I kind of got that from the impromptu history lesson,” Driscoll said.
The snow heaved, barreling toward us with a thunderous roar, rocks falling from the side of the mountain and crashing down around us. “We have to move!” I yelled.
Driscoll looked around, nothing but a flat frozen expanse behind, the nearest village at least an hour away. “Where?” He waved his hands wildly. “There’s nowhere for us to hide!”
I’d lived in frost court my entire life. Climbed these mountains as a child, playing with others, hiding in the crooks and crannies of the giant rock. “We have to climb.” I lodged my foot into the stone. “And fast.”
I heaved myself up, Leoni and Driscoll joining me.
“It really seems counterintuitive to go toward the avalanche,” Driscoll yelled over the sound of crashing snow.
“We have to find somewhere to hide,” I said, then my gaze locked on a long ledge jutting from above us. I pointed. “Up there!”
We climbed, boots and hands slipping on the icy rock, making our ascent slower while the avalanche came closer. It would be upon us in minutes.
“Can you use your magic to slow the snow down?” Driscoll’s eyes darted upward to the mass of white rolling down the mountain .
“I can’t stop an avalanche with my magic,” I said. “Something like that is too strong, too powerful.”
“Well my magic is useless,” Leoni said as she reached an arm up and pulled herself ahead of me.
We both looked at Driscoll and he sighed. “Of course it’s up to me.”
“What about a vine?” I asked. “Something that we can climb faster than on this mountain?”
Driscoll pushed out his hand, and a trellis of thin wisteria began creeping up the mountain, over the snow and ice. We wasted no time, all of us grasping onto the trellis and climbing as fast as we could. It was much easier to grip onto than the rock had been.
The avalanche crashed toward us, the ledge that we could hide under getting closer.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Leoni said from above me, her words punctuating heavy breaths.
“Well, I can only do so much,” Driscoll yelled from below. “If one of you would like to step up, that would be great.”
I’d almost been choked to death by my husband. I didn’t survive just so another man who didn’t see my worth could kill me. Something told me that he wasn’t trying to kill me. That he knew my strengths, knew what I could handle. That thought alone gave me the confidence to do what I needed. I lifted my hand and tugged at the magic inside of me. A frozen thread that I could pull, that would unfurl in body and spread through me, then manifest into whatever I needed.
A wall of ice crackled over us, extending the ledge that hung over our heads. “Keep climbing,” I shouted to Driscoll and Leoni, who had stopped to watch my magic at work. “It might buy us time, but it won’t save us if we don’t get to safety.”
They heeded my warnings, clambering up the trellis. I was now behind both of them, attempting to climb with one hand and maintain that thick wall of ice that hung over our heads with the other. I would find the bone collector yet. If I survived this entire mess.
The thunderous sound grew to a crescendo, crashing, crunching, chaos, all raining down over us. My magic faltered, and that thread inside of me threatened to snap under the pressure of the avalanche hitting the ice. Leoni clambered onto a little crevice in the mountain below the ledge, then pulled Driscoll up behind her.
I was falling behind.
Crack.
I slowly arched my neck as a long fissure split the ice in half under the unrelenting snow. The thread of magic inside me snapped. Ice exploded into a million pieces, raining on top of me, cutting at my face, battering my body. The rush of snow drowned out Driscoll’s and Leoni’s shouts, and I flattened my body to the mountain as the avalanche fell straight toward me. Something snaked around me, pushing me into the mountainside, fastening me to it. But it didn’t matter.
The snow was too heavy, too smothering, too much. It filled my nose, my mouth. I tried to inhale and sucked in more of the wet, slushy substance. It clogged my airways. My lungs contracted, squeezing, burning, screaming for air. My entire body felt weighed down, smothered. I saw nothing but white, which soon turned to black as darkness washed over my vision.
The last thing I thought before falling into unconsciousness was that if the bone collector and I had been playing a game, I’d finally been the one to lose.