Chapter 22 #2
Ravin fought like a godsdamned assassin, blades slicing through the air, blood and fur coating his leathers.
Torin and Varik fought back-to-back, though Torin looked like he’d taken a beating, blood gushing from a wound at his temple.
Vigmund had also been knocked off his horse, and he cried out as one of the beasts slashed its claws across his face.
Blood sprayed, painting the thin blanket of snow crimson, the warrior falling back into the shadowed brush.
One of the beasts charged at me, but I slashed its throat in one swing. The wound did nothing to stop it; it simply snarled and lunged again, unfazed.
Steel wasn’t working. The monsters just kept waving off the attacks. At this rate, there was no way we could outlast this ambush.
I sheathed my sword and, in one breath, summoned my magic. A spear of ice formed in my hand, jagged and cold. I hurled it into the chest of the beast charging for Ravin. It howled and dropped dead.
Finally.
“Only magic-forged weapons work,” I hollered over the din of growls and grunts.
Ravin yanked the ice spear from the Nyrvendir’s chest and used it to stab another beast in the skull. “Two down!”
Astrid was knocked off her horse and was cornered against a tree. I yelled out to her, hurling a frost spear. She jumped up and caught it just in time to jab a beast through the gut.
“We need to retreat,” Varik hollered.
But before we could regroup, the shadows shifted again, and from them emerged the true terror.
Tall, wraith-like figures materialized, skeletal and fluid, like smoke given form.
Clawed hands, hollow faces. The magic that radiated off these creatures skittered over my skin like thousands of insects, awakening the unseelie magic in my blood—that thick, viscous darkness that seemed to flood my insides like liquid night.
Astrid’s face grew pale, her broad shoulders sagging as she stared at the monsters, her body completely paralyzed by fear, and I knew then this was what she’d seen, these were the creatures who had killed the soldiers by the lake.
“Release us…” they hissed in my head. Not a request, a demand.
I fell off my horse, clutching my head in agony as the sound grew louder and piercing, my skull feeling like it would implode. My entire body trembled as I fought to get the sound out of my head.
From the corner of my eye, I watched as Ravin got tossed like a rag doll, air bursting from his lungs as he hit the ground.
But I couldn’t do anything, crippled by the pain in my brain.
I hollered, trying to break free of the voices, but white bursts flashed behind my eyes, as if the sun was burning my retinas.
Ravin’s pained bellow rang through the forest as one of the wraiths grabbed him by the throat, lifting him into the air.
His body convulsed, his skin paling as the wraith made a horrid sound, as if the hollowness of where its face should be was a blackhole sucking the life out of my friend.
It almost looked like his face was being stretched toward the wraith, color draining, his life leaching out in real time.
Fuck.
Something inside me cracked wide open. Not just fear, but rage. Desperation. The sheer instinct to save my friend.
I slammed both palms to the ground, fingers clawing into the frozen soil, and reached deeper than I ever had.
Past the veins of frost embedded in the ground.
Past the familiar hum of Skadgard’s ancient ley lines.
I tore open the earth and felt it—that buried, forbidden river of unseelie magic, coiled beneath the roots of this forsaken land, like a black serpent asleep in the dark.
And it woke.
Power flooded me like a broken dam. Like a surging river of unstoppable magic. Black veins snaked across my arms, tendrils of living onyx that slithered over my skin like threads of smoke and ink, twisting with the ice already radiating from my core.
The pain was terrifying. The power…exquisite.
My breath caught in my throat, my vision splitting, my thoughts fracturing under the sheer weight of the magic in my veins.
It wanted to devour me, to take more than I could afford to give.
But I forced it to bend, to merge. My ice wove into the shadows, fusing with their darkness until it became something new—an abomination and a miracle.
I stood and faced the wraiths, and with one breath, I let go.
Ropes of frozen shadow lashed from my hands, glowing with a terrible, unholy blue light. They cracked through the mist like whips, wrapping around the wraith that held Ravin, others curling around the ones looming over Vigmund and Astrid.
The Helvaktír screamed, horrible, keening shrieks that scraped down my spine and rattled the marrow in my bones.
Ravin dropped to the snow like a stone, coughing violently. Astrid crumpled beside him, groaning, her axe slipping from her grip.
But Vigmund...
His body fell limp to the ground with a lifeless thud. Face and eyes caved in, completely hollowed out. His spirit gone.
Panting, I dropped to one knee, my body shaking, the ground ice-slicked beneath me. My hands shook as I stared at the black veins still snaking under my skin. What the Hel had I pulled from the depths of this place?
“Like calls to like…” an ethereal voice echoed in my brain.
I shook my head, needing to gather my bearings. The wraiths hadn’t died. They’d simply retreated, slinking back into the fog like smoke drawn into a siphon, which meant they could return.
Gasping and bloodied, Ravin turned his head toward me, and his jaw dropped. “Jack…your eyes—”
I blinked, disoriented. My heart thundered against my ribs.
I wasn’t sure what he saw, though given the way he was looking at me, it couldn’t have been good.
I clenched my jaw and forced the magic still burning in my hands down into the pit of my core, burying it until I needed to draw from its dark well again.
“We need to move,” I rasped, staggering upright. “Now. Head toward the lake.”
And as if summoned by my words, growls broke through the darkness again.
“Run!” I hollered.
The horses had vanished, and we had no choice but to take off on foot. My chest sank, and I prayed to Skadi for Draulmskelmir to find his way back to camp.
Branches cracked. Underbrush crunched. The trees groaned around us as heavy shapes rushed toward us beyond the edges of our vision.
Astrid hauled Ravin up, and he grunted as he struggled to put weight on his left leg, a deep gash scoring across his thigh. “I’ve got you, pretty boy,” the tall female said, winking at him.
I shook my head. Even in the middle of peril, the rake had a way of charming people.
Torin was bloodied but alive, and I pushed him forward while Varik bolted ahead like a spooked deer. How had this asshole been chosen as Sylvi’s second, let alone captain?
“Don’t look back,” I ordered, covering the rear.
“Release us, Son of Ice… Undo what was done…”
My knees buckled and I went tumbling, the pressure in my skull pounding unlike anything I had ever felt. Every whisper sent throbbing agony pulsing through my brain.
Something grabbed me, raising me off the ground like I weighed nothing, pinning me to a tree, claws around my throat. I gasped, trying to pry its iron grip from my neck. “Helvaktír…” I managed to whisper.
The wraith leaned in, its breath like the void between stars, colder than the ice in my veins, emptier than death, a voice like scraping metal hissing from its non-existent lips. “Break the curse…Son of Ice, or we shall drain all life from your world.”
“Let him go, asshole!” Sylvi’s voice burst from the shadows, the seax I’d gifted her gleaming. She slashed at the creature, but the wraith hit her with a backhanded blow that sent her body flying. She crashed into a tree with a sickening crack.
“Insolent pup!” the wraith hissed, releasing me from his hold and charging toward Sylvi.
Rage detonated behind my eyes, white-hot and blinding.
I roared, summoning the last dredges of my strength—not just the frost in my blood, but the slumbering, feral beast buried deep in my core.
Shadow and ice poured from my hands like twin rivers of smoke and frost, spiraling around the wraith and trapping it like a soul in crystal.
I screamed, channeling every ounce of pain and fury, hate and love, until it bled from my veins and into the ribbons of frozen magic that constricted around the creature.
It shrieked, the sound so high it nearly burst my eardrums, before it exploded into ash, disintegrating. Though I wasn’t convinced I’d killed it.
I collapsed.
Sylvi was at my side in an instant, slinging my arm around her strong shoulders. My limbs were useless, drained of power, my lungs seizing with every breath. “Why am I not surprised you didn’t listen?” I rasped as growls rose behind us.
“You’re the idiot who thought he could trap me inside a frost cage,” she grunted, hauling me up.
“Ice fortress,” I corrected.
“Same difference.”
“I was only trying to protect you.”
She scoffed. “And yet, here I am saving your royal ass.”
“I totally had that under control.”
“Totally,” she deadpanned. “Where are the others?”
“The lake…” I said through labored breaths. “We need to get to the lake.”
More growls and snarls echoed around us as we moved through the footpath, but for some reason, the beasts were keeping their distance. “We’re being stalked…”
“I gathered as much, but what are they?”
“Nyrvendir.”
“Wonderful. Being tracked through the Wildlands by mythological death hounds wasn’t on my fortune card this past solstice.”
We stumbled over a large, exposed root. “Fortune card?”
Sylvi heaved as she readjusted my arm over her shoulder. “Cora and I visited a soothsayer’s tent during the Hrímblot Festival. She said I’d find love, truth, and adventure.”
“This qualifies as adventure.”
“Guess I’m one out of three, then.”
We paused as we came to a fork in the path. “What do you think is holding them back?” she asked, looking around.