Chapter 32 - Bloody Snow
Wrenora
I didn’t step back. I couldn’t. I was frozen with fear and awe, my eyes wide with wonder. Prince Callan Vostbain stood before me in all his deadly frozen glory. He stepped forward, leaning down, careful not to touch me now that his magic had been unleashed.
“Thank you.”
Even in all the chaos he’d taken the moment to thank me?
Before I could respond, he slid to the side with mind-numbing speed and buried his ice blade in the abdomen of a warrior who’d been racing toward us.
He ripped it out of the man’s torso, spraying blood and entrails across the floor as he pulled his magic into a cloud of ice over his head with his opposite hand.
I’d never had the pleasure of seeing Prince Callan the warrior fight on the battlefield.
I’d only heard stories of his ability to wield magic and his sword as if extensions of his own body, a perfect melding of grace and brutality.
His ice armor froze in place as he moved, fusing together until he was entirely encased in iridescent facets.
It wasn’t impervious. In fact, the first impact he took from one of the paw-shaped maces chipped a large chuck off his vambrace where he’d blocked with his forearm.
Instead of concerning himself with it, he spun into the woman, hacking her head from her shoulders.
I was mesmerized, and for a moment, I’d forgotten where I was as he flowed effortlessly into the next strike, the next block, the next majestic barrage of his power.
I was knocked to the ground by an invisible force, the breath forced from my lungs, my head slamming into the ice so hard I saw stars.
I felt warm hands wrap around my wrists, dragging me away.
I twisted to my stomach, trying to wriggle free, but before I could dislodge myself, an icicle slammed into whatever it was, destroying the cloaking magic around a human, shackles and all.
He clutched at his chest as the shimmering magic dissipated before collapsing beside me, the massive shard of ice protruding from his back.
His eyes found me, pain and anger in them as tears streamed over his cheeks.
“Why would you...”
He was a thrall! He was like me. This was a rebellion. This was humans fighting back against a tyrannical crown. The man went limp as his life left him, but I was too stunned to move, working through his words and the choice I’d made—the side I’d inadvertently chosen.
Shouting mingled with the sound of shattering glass made me flinch as crumbled ice pelted me from all directions.
I curled in on myself, my vision still doubled from smacking my head on the floor.
My pathetic human hands had dropped my sword.
I was worthless as metal scraped across metal, the sound of crackling ice and shrieks of pain all around me.
After several seconds, my vision cleared, and I pulled myself up in time to see more fighters sweeping into the throne room from the main hall. A human woman in dark robes lifted her hands, a fireball growing above them.
“Callan. Mage.”
His focus shifted, a barrage of icicles lancing toward the woman, one spearing through her chest and nailing her to the wall behind.
The fire she’d been coalescing released into the cold air with a puff of steam.
But the momentary lapse in Callan’s attention was all another fighter needed, and a massive war hammer slammed into his chest, sending him flying back toward me before I could climb to my feet.
We tumbled back into a heap, me sprawled out on my back, and him straddling me, eyes wide with fear.
It took me a second to realize why he didn’t try to get up, why he looked terrified. I looked down at his naked hand wrapped around my wrist. Skin to skin. He swallowed, too afraid to move, our eyes locked as the shadow of the fighter that had knocked him to the ground loomed over us.
My reaction was all Callan needed. He twisted, throwing his magic back, a shield freezing around us and encapsulating the elf and his war hammer in mid swing. His brilliant green eyes remained locked on me as he suffocated in a block of ice.
Callan looked back down in utter shock as he slid his hand up my arm to my elbow, the feel of his warm skin sending a shiver down my spine.
“I can...touch you,” he said, his voice so soft.
Another war hammer slammed into the ice shield, sending a spiderweb of cracks through the center where the frozen elf was embedded and out to the edges of the dome.
“What do we do?” I asked, ripping Callan’s attention back to our current predicament.
His expression melted from shock and uncertainty to anger.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he pushed himself up onto all fours over me before he lifted the massive ice shield up with his back, frozen elf and all.
The strength it must have taken was baffling, but he hadn’t struggled in the slightest as he thrust the ice over his head and spun in place, his sword colliding with another blade.
The ice shield crashed to the floor, shattering, the fragments tripping a few other fighters who were rushing toward us.
I scrambled back from Callan and the tangle of fighters, trying to find my footing or a blade—something I could use to defend myself.
A barrage of icicles streaked through the air, and I instinctively covered my head with my arms, terrified I’d be hit by one of the frozen projectiles.
I was useless. Callan needed me, and I was utterly useless. I glanced around, momentarily mesmerized by his grace as he fended off multiple fighters at once, his blade leaving a trail of snow and mist as it sliced through flesh and cold air.
I flinched as Cassmira dove into a warrior sneaking up behind me, tearing the elf open as they shrieked in agony, viscera splashing across the icy floor.
I managed to pull myself upright, glancing around the room at the indiscriminate lumps of flesh and black armor.
I’d never seen such carnage, even during the war, when we’d left behind a battlefield littered with dead.
Callan had physically altered the room, part of the faceted walls jutting out several feet with a fighter impaled on a bloody spear of ice.
There were corpses frozen in mid swing, their steel weapons still hovering in the air.
Enormous icicles stood proud from the floor, spearing through multiple assailants.
Gore and blood were smeared over everything left behind by Cassmira as she’d rained her talons down on fighter after fighter.
Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. This was the price of war and treachery. But whose treachery? I was the human who had set the Banished Warrior Prince Callan free.
Cassmira had joined Callan on the other side of the room to finish off the last couple fighters, the shrieks of elves as they were torn apart and hacked open carved permanent fissures into my brain. I was on the battlefield again, scared I’d never walk away. Losing to the elves...again.
I wasn’t paying attention until Callan glanced in my direction, his eyes going wide.
“Wren, behind—”