55. Chapter Fifty-Five
Iwasn’t quite sure if she knew.
But I also wasn’t sure if she cared. I know I didn’t. I could have fallen to my knees the second my nose brushed the top of her head; my tears could have melted the ravines and warmed the frozen wasteland; my heart could have cracked through my chest for her care.
She choked on a sob into my chest. Her fingers tangled into my torn tunic, and her body trembled. Her blood soiled the back of her shirt and stained my hands, but I clutched onto whatever part of her I could hold.
Only when I was positive she was real, that this wasn’t a cruel, twisted turn of my imagination, did I rest a hand on her shoulder at Sapphire’s appearance. She was limping, her skin so pale, it looked like she’d woken from an eternal rest. She, too, brought me into a hug.
Only she didn’t sob.
She merely whispered, “I never thought I’d be so happy to see your stupid face.”
My laugh cracked into the air. “And I never thought it’d feel good telling you that you look like shit.”
“What can a girl do?” she said, her voice a sunken rasp compared to what it had just been. “Aurelie did just wake the dead.”
Sapphire parted from the hug and cleared her throat, turning to stare at Aurelie. I wasn’t sure if I was breathing, but I knew my heart had slowed to a rhythm so slow, it may not been beating at all, and I wouldn’t know the difference. I turned to her with wide eyes, and her bottom lip puckered.
She faced Sapphire and gave her a hug. My cousin chuckled weakly and tapped her on the back. “One hug’s enough, Aurelie. We aren’t done yet.”
Another tremor rocked through the ground, and when I looked up at the sky, I saw that crimson iris poking through midnight clouds again. A terrible shudder overcame me, but as my focus lowered to the streets ahead, I had to prepare myself.
Dozens—perhaps one hundred—men stomped down the street. They were bleeding, some with their bones poking through their skin as they wept. With each march closer, the trembling grew stronger. Instinctively, I moved in front of Aurelie and prepared to unleash an icy hellfire upon them, but they stopped before the cobblestone turned to dirt.
The general in the front took a knee, his skin clawed off the bone and drooping down his face. He made the most pained expression, the metal of his sword clattering against the ground, and I recoiled at the sight of the exposed muscles.
The icy tempest within me still itched to break free. The snow turned to hail once more, and when the general’s mouth opened to speak, nothing louder than a croak came out. I hadn’t felt such raw power since my reign—it made me wonder if Aurelie felt this way as she learned to harness the magic within her.
The fae were most powerful in their own domain. Halflings, however…they could control it all if they wanted it badly enough.
The men behind him followed suit, taking a knee and lowering their weapons. My rage dwindled, and with it, the hail lessened. My skin no longer stung with the piercing pellets, but I had no reason to trust these people. They’d just tried to lay waste to a place that didn’t deserve their wrath.
My gaze raced to the back, finding the vision of a beast hunched over, glistening silver eyes staring ahead. Behind him was a woman with two daggers in hand.
But before the general could find his voice, he fell onto his face. Blood seeped into the thin layer of ice that coated the cobblestone. I hadn’t done it, and when I turned over my shoulder to look at the others, their look of shock told me they hadn’t either.
Casynox’s laugh roaring in the background told me all I needed to know. A few of the men cowered onto the ground before one crawled forward, and I shot a wave of ice at his wrist when he got too close to the sword, prowling closer and bending over to hiss down at him.
“Make another stupid move, and it’ll be your balls next.”
“I wasn’t—fuck, I wasn’t going to—”
“Speak. Quickly.”
The man cried out when I so much as flicked my wrist, collapsing flat onto his stomach in preparation. My lips twitched into a small smile, and I glared at the men behind him. They all cowered, heads bowed toward the ground submissively. These soldiers weren’t dressed in Winter Court armor—no, the sun patches on their shoulders and chest plates told me all I needed to know.
But none of them made a move to harm me, even if they had me outnumbered tenfold.
“Bow, you fucking fucks. Bow your fucking head to the king!” The man’s voice cracked into the air like a whip, and one by one, the rows of men did just that while he wept into the ground. My power was halved of what it had been centuries ago, yet they cowered underneath my boot as if I”d done anything noteworthy. If they wanted terror, I could give them terror.
They’d only seen the beginning of it.
My face fell, and I slowly straightened my posture. “You turn your backs to the Summer King?” I said only loudly enough for the sobbing man. He lifted his head toward me slowly, yanking at his wrist frozen to the ground. I merely cocked my head and narrowed my gaze into slits. “Why shouldn’t I kill you here? You could all be silently scheming my death.”
“Because if the gods chose your whore of a—”
Wrong words. My glare turned frigid, and I kneeled in front of him slowly. He was shaking his head frantically, stammering to try to reverse what he’d just said. I grabbed his jaw with one hand, forced his mouth open, and grinned.
“The first man who told me she was a whore had his kneecaps broken. The second man nearly lost his tongue. I think it’s time I try the best of both.”
He screamed at me to stop, but the second my fingers slipped into his mouth, he froze from the inside out. The ice spidered across his skin like a web, his voice muffled as it turned his saliva into a gag shaped just like his throat. He’d suffocate long before it melted.
When he rolled onto his side, I pressed my boot against his knees and looked at the others. His cries were bellowing into the air, muffled and afraid. “I hope this reminds you all to choose your words carefully while awaiting my judgment,” I hollered. Then, with the slightest push, the man’s kneecap shattered. The few closest to him cursed and fell into those behind them. “Because the next bastard to defile their queen’s name will face wrath much crueler than a few broken bones.”
I’d hugged Casynox as soon as his bestial form faded. He was my brother in every way except blood, and I hadn’t realized how much weight his absence had caused until he stood in front of me.
Now, though, Casynox and Lyra commanded the rebels like it was as easy as spreading jam over bread. One by one, I watched the enemy soldiers willingly accept their fate, cuffed with what few supplies they could find, bound by rope, torn clothes. My stare lingered after Lyra, though. I was hesitant to believe the story that she was wholly innocent.
The larger castle dungeon would be far too close for comfort, so their fate was still at my mercy. They’d slowly be transported to the fortress in the mountains, where they would be piled into the few cells like a tin of fish.
Or I could send them on the ship Casynox had commandeered and burn it to bits, but there was still a kinder part of my soul that wanted to give them a second chance.
After all, what else was there to do when you were forced into serving a king who’d rather have your head than your respect?
Aurelie and Sapphire were slowly making their way farther from the crowds. I didn’t have a clue how long we’d have reprieve from the gods looming in the sky, let alone more of Sólkon’s men, but I couldn’t storm into the castle when they’d been victim to so much harm. Not yet—not until I knew it was as empty as it looked.
Casynox’s bestial form faded, leaving him with a torn shirt, weathered pants, and tattered boots. I hadn’t made it more than ten paces toward him before he opened his arms with a glistening smile.
“Snowman!” he cheered, smashing his flat palm against my back. “I don’t think you understand how much you owe me.” I chortled as Cas glanced toward the men and flashed his brow. “How much fun am I able to have with our new pets?”
My own eyebrow cocked in disbelief before watching the imprisoned Summer Court soldiers squirm. I knew that wasn’t the last of them—probably more than a few managed to escape. It was no telling how fast they’d make it home. Why they surrendered, though, I’d never truly understand.
Not yet. I’d get it out of them one way or another.
“However much fun one can have while keeping them alive, Cas. Alive is the key term there.”
“Fantastic, just how I like ‘em,” he said. “One of the generals said the gods were making them mad and one of them just kept crying Aurelie’s name…over, and over, and over.”
I thinned my lips into a line and crossed my arms over my chest. My focus shifted beyond him, to the castle nestled atop a hill further from town. There wasn’t a single sign of life past those iron gates—not even the distant candlelight bleeding through the curtains.
It was dark, abandoned even.
I ground my teeth together. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand, really, but I know it’s related. It has to be.”
“Let’s just hope the giant god looming over us practices patience while you figure that one out, Eero,” he said as he smacked a hand on my shoulder. “But, in the meantime, let us rally some men and reclaim that castle formally, aye?”
I turned my attention to the prisoners. There was much we could do with them—we could make them mine in the mountains, dig their own graves so they knew what fate loomed after them, or even just let them rot away in frigid darkness…but I didn’t have the energy to think about that right now.
“Make sure they’re locked up tight,” I said beneath my breath. “These subjects have endured enough.” My eyes flitted toward a few families who had crawled out of their hiding holes, staring at me with wide eyes. Some looked fearful, others curious…but all were uncertain. “I won’t let another ounce of innocent blood be shed tonight.”
Casynox nodded, and I gave him a pat on the shoulder before he parted to strategize with Lyra. I walked after Sapphire and Aurelie, a hand loosely resting over the handle of my sword. When I’d made it to them, though, Sapphire’s face had sunk into the sort of dread I’d seen only a few times.
It was the kind that loss caused, whether that be the kind of loss that we mourned or not. My gaze flicked between the two of them, but it was Aurelie whose lip trembled.
“I’m so sorry, Saph,” she muttered.
Sapphire shook her head slowly and turned away, continuing ahead, her hands trembling at her side. I blinked in confusion, clearing my throat. It didn’t earn Aurelie’s attention, though. Her gaze lingered after my cousin with the grimmest frown etched into her smooth face.
“I killed her sister,” she finally whispered. “I had to kill Yenira.”
My chest tightened. I knew Sapphire wouldn’t mourn her sister—not in the way a normal sister would mourn their deaths, no. She would lament in the same way I reckoned Aurelie would. What if would be the biggest question in relation to the violent reputation Yenira left behind.
But there was no question in my mind whether she had to die. It wasn’t even because of my throne, which had been greedily held in her slimy little hands. No, it was because of the darkness that swallowed her heart.
And as I turned over my shoulder to watch Lyra help Casynox round up more enemy soldiers, I thinned my lips.
“Do not waste unnecessary tears on her, Aurelie,” I said quietly. I didn’t intend to sound so cold, didn’t intend to make light of her death. But my words were true—Yenira was undeserving of their sadness. There was nothing we could do differently given the fate she’d come to accept with Myrthana’s madness. “No more than needed. I have no doubt in my mind you did what was right.”
But when I looked back at her face, I didn’t see sadness—I saw rage.
“I know what I did,” she uttered. “But in no world will her death be right. Not until that bitch of a fae goddess is dead.”