Chapter 37 - When it Hails
Callan
The rush of frigid air was euphoric as I unleashed my magic.
This was magic that always pressed at the confines of my flesh, begging me to set it free.
So, I did. The hair rose on the back of my neck as the full strength of it surrounded me, ready to be directed.
Ready to destroy, to freeze, to kill. I had only released the reins on my power—truly let all restraint go—one other time with devastating results.
The deciding battle of the war. The one which left the elves victorious and the humans slaves.
I’d been making calculations for how to take my fortress back on the flight.
The required strength to alter the massive panes of ice that made up the majority of my fortress, the tax on my focus, whether I’d have any remaining strength to defend myself.
I came to the heady conclusion that it didn’t matter.
I would use every scrap of my power before I was inevitably killed.
I knew what the plan had always been. I would sacrifice myself to save my mother.
I braced my weight on both legs before summoning my magic again, a third spire of solid ice erupting from the snow at an angle perfect to impale the windows of my throne room.
In the time it took me to destroy half my fortress, the rebellion fighters had managed to break themselves free of the frozen wall I’d caged them behind.
More poured from the front doors, drawing weapons as they rushed toward me.
But my mind was moving to the next attack.
I yanked at the sky, pulling the cold from the air, and with it, hail the size of my head.
It slammed into the ground, the fortress, and fighters alike, cracking skulls and denting armor.
The shrieks of elves sent a shiver down my spine as they were bludgeoned to death.
I hadn’t wanted so much destruction, but it was obvious my magic was meant for it.
This was what I was made for—to destroy.
To freeze the very thing that gave every living soul on our continent life and use it to kill.
I stepped past the dead and dying, their skulls crushed in, bodies mangled, bones shattered and ruptured from fleshy prisons.
Others ran in their attempt to find shelter as the hail continued to pummel anything and everything, breaking through thick beams and blocks of ice as easily as through bones.
One woman was brave enough to draw her blade, but I slipped beneath her swing with ease and reached for her wrist, freezing her instantly.
Hail crushed her into a thousand fragments of ice a second later.
The next fighter tried to approach from the side but scrambled back, tripping over one of his dead comrades and falling on his ass, only to have his brains splattered across the snow the next instant.
Walking through the front doors of my fortress this time felt different. This was not my sanctuary anymore. Where once the beautiful, faceted walls of ice and etched motifs had brought me peace, all I could see now was betrayal. My peace was on the back of a frost phoenix.
I walked with purpose down the eerily empty hall, glancing into the throne room as I walked past, satisfied by the shaft of ice protruding through the throne and halfway into the room.
The massive windows laid in pieces as the frigid wind whipped the last shreds of curtains around what remained of the exterior walls.
Screaming echoed down the hall as massive hail smashed through ceilings and into upper rooms. When I was finished here, there would be nothing left.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t staying. I no longer needed my fortress of ice to protect my sanity.
If I lived, I would find the frost elves.
I’d do as Wrenora told me to do. Stop the blight the right way—by learning to control my magic.
I’d make everything right. I’d free every human and destroy the hatred between our peoples. And maybe someday, I’d see her again.
If I lived.
I let my helm melt away from my face as I walked. It left me vulnerable, but I’d already shed my gauntlets. I needed my skin exposed if I was going to freeze anyone. After the night I’d spent with Wrenora in my arms, I worried I’d lost the ability.
And the fact that I thought of it as an ability and not a crippling hindrance was invigorating and terrifying at the same time.
The way she made me think about myself was terrifying—a man and not a monster.
Capable of doing good things instead of destroying everything I touched.
A harbinger of change amongst the elves instead of the frozen tyrant my father had tried to force me to become.
Two figures at the end of the hall melted from the shadows. I set my focus on them but stopped short; my breath caught fast in my throat. It was Magdala. Beside her, with a knife held firmly to her throat, was my mother.
“Quite an entrance, Highness.”
I swallowed my anger. Nothing good would come of it now. I had come to face my future by whatever convoluted means I’d thought possible.
“I’ve come to make my choice,” I said, doing my best to strip every ounce of emotion from my voice and hoping the sound of my fortress being smashed into millions of ice chips would disguise the slight warble of fear.
“I think we’re long past that,” Magdala said with darkness in her voice.
My mother flinched as Magdala pressed the knife harder into the tender skin of her neck, and I took another step closer.
“Let her go, Magdala.”
“How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as I have? I know the strength of your power.”
I nodded slowly. “Do you wish for me to kill myself in front of you?”
“I wish for you to pay for your crimes.”
“What crimes have I committed that were not direct orders from my king?”
She let out a strangled bitter laugh. “Oh, Callan. The fact that you let your father manipulate you for so long.” She shifted her weight slightly, my mother wincing. “Admit it, you liked killing all those humans.”
I squeezed my eyes, taking in a long, slow breath. This wasn’t the time for me to explain to yet another person that I wasn’t a sadistic murderer. “If you truly think I enjoyed any moment of the war, you’ve never listened to a word I’ve said.”
Magdala let out another laugh before her expression turned dark.
“You could have walked away. You could have refused to use your magic. You could have freed all the thralls in your fortress—or tried to free all the humans for that matter. You could have refused to take the humans as slaves in the first place.”
“As though I was the one who shackled every human myself—”
“You could have stopped it,” she yelled, her voice echoing off the ice. “You or your mother. One of you could and should have stopped it all.”
I shook my head, biting my tongue. There was nothing I could say to change her mind. She was right in a way, but fear does strange things to people. And that’s what my father was good at—cultivating fear to control those around him. His wife, his son, his entire kingdom.
“Let my mother go.” The muscles in my arms tightened as I squeezed my hands into fists. “She’s innocent in all of this.”
Magdala sneered, dragging the dagger across my mother’s skin, leaving a thin red line. My disgraced advisor shook her head slowly.
“Your mother stood by your father’s side, doing nothing as he ravaged Telrain with his hate and tyranny.
She sat in her gilded castle and watched her people starve and die.
She closed her eyes as her only elfling was sent away because his magic was out of control, then watched as he was made to fight in a war that no one wanted. ”
“You know, as well as I, that she had no choice in—”
“Everyone has a choice, Callan! Just like you had a choice and chose the woman your father selected for you,” she said, her fingers digging into the sleeve of my mother’s dress where she held her in place.
“She knew we were in love, and she turned away. Her precious lady-in-waiting for over half my life, and she threw me away. She allowed your father to sell me to the highest bidder so your precious frost elf fiancée could monopolize your attention.” She turned her lips against my mother’s ear as she spoke the last few words.
“She is far from innocent in all of this.”
“Magdala, I was never in love with you.”
My mother took a sharp breath as Magdala’s grip tightened.
“You can’t tell me you fucked me for years—years—and didn’t love me.” Her voice shook with anguish. “I truly mean nothing to you?”
Every moment I’d spent with her came flooding back.
Every touch, every word. The way she’d approached me the first time we’d kissed.
I’d been sixteen, and she’d been a mature woman.
She’d coaxed me, guided me, and shown me how to pleasure a woman.
My father might have been cruel, but she had taken advantage of that cruelty, knowing she could have whatever she wanted from me by showing me the tiniest bit of affection.
And now she stood before me, acting as though I had been the one to use her.
I started walking again, my steps smooth and calculated. I sheathed my sword as I let the rest of my armor disintegrate into the air.
“I was a stupid boy, and you were old enough to know better.”
“Fuck you.” Her voice wavered with so much pain. “I loved you. I still love you.” She swallowed a sob. “I wouldn’t have dealt with your spoiled royal ass if I didn’t. I would have killed you in your sleep. I would have poisoned you slowly, letting you suffer.”
I stopped several feet away, holding Magdala’s glare. “I’ve come to accept my punishment, and for you to set my mother free. You can execute me yourself if it will help you feel better.”
She blinked hard a few times, as if remembering what she’d been doing in the first place. “What have you done with Wrenora?”
“She’s safe.”
“You’ve never been good at lying, Callan. Did you leave her frozen corpse somewhere? I’ve seen the way you glare at her as if she’s a filthy means to an end.”
I shook my head. I’d done my fair share of staring at Wrenora, but it had never been with disgust.
“She’s on the way to the border on the back of my phoenix. It was the only way I could ensure she’d make it there safely with all the assassins you’ve sent after me.” I narrowed my eyes. “What is Wrenora to you?”
“I’ve tried to save all the humans in my care.”
“Yet you let Heirod spread rumors and recruit for the uprising, knowing full well I’d make an example of him.”
She tipped her chin up. “Heirod was an idiot.”
“Seems he’s not the only one.”
My mother cried out in pain as Magdala dug the knife into the soft flesh under her chin. “I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in, Callan. Don’t fucking lie to me. Where is Wrenora?”
“I told you, she’s on the way to the border. I would never hurt my Soul Tied.”
Magdala’s eyes grew wide at my words. Words I hadn’t even accepted myself.
I knew what Wrenora was to me the moment I’d seen her.
The moment her shackles had been removed from her wrists—confirmed the moment I’d touched her without the suppression gem.
Some piece of me hadn’t wanted to admit it.
I didn’t believe in fate or the preordained, but this was the only thing that made any sense as the ribbon that tied our souls together pulled tighter.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“She’s my—”
“How could you know? You’ve hardly said three words to the girl.”
“I assure you, conversation has nothing to do with it.”
Magdala’s face turned a brilliant shade of red, her hands shaking as my mother’s eyes grew wide.
I saw it happen in slow motion, and I reached, sending a blast of frozen air to try and stop it.
But I was too far away. I couldn’t keep the blade from sinking into flesh.
I couldn’t save my mother as Magdala slit her throat.