Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jack
“What in Náldrún’s cursed realm kind of cruel joke is this?” I growled as a fireball streaked across the night sky, slicing through our moment like a knife.
Sylvi’s gaze snapped upward in horror. “Jack,” she whispered, her voice laced with dread, replacing the saccharine lilt that had been so close to causing my downfall. “I think we’re under attack.”
Fuck. Not again.
I set her down instantly, and we scrambled to redress, her trembling fingers trying to smooth out her hair as I yanked my trousers back over my still raging cock. She found her dagger in the grass, clenched it tight, her expression hardening.
Gone was the Sylvi who had been soft and mewling in my arms. Back was the stone-faced captain of the guard.
Screams erupted from the camp, accompanied by the clang of steel, the hiss of arrows, and the roar of something burning.
“I should’ve been at camp…” she muttered to herself, eyes wide, panic coiling behind her words. “Gods, I should’ve never left. This was reckless. Irresponsible. The queen was right to strip me of my command. I’m not fit to lead if I leave my post to chase—”
“Stop.” I caught her arm mid-run, forcing her to face me. “Don’t you fucking blame yourself for this. I was right there with you. And I wouldn’t change a godsdamned thing about what we just did. I’d let the world burn to do it again.”
“Then we’re both fools,” she said bitterly. “Because nothing is more important than the safety of those entrusted to us.”
“Don’t ever tell me anything is more important to me than you.” My voice rumbled from my chest. “Nothing, Syl. Nothing is more important to me than you. Everything I’ve done—every choice, every sacrifice—has always been for you. Even if you can’t see it.”
Another explosion rocked the ground, the trees shaking violently around us, flames casting wild shadows through the forest.
We both ducked as if expecting a projectile to shoot through the canopy.
Maybe right now is not the best time to argue…
We sprinted toward camp, but as we broke the tree line, Sylvi’s hand slipped from mine, and we both gazed upon the burning chaos.
Fires raged across the tents. Arrows with flaming tips arced through the air like dying stars. Steel clashed with steel. Screams tore through the smoke. And toward the far edge of the camp…mangonels were spread apart, five of them, arms cocked back, flinging more fire into the camp.
Gods, they were hurling burning pitch, bundled in oil-soaked rags and clay pots, ignited and packed to burst on impact. Fucking Hel. “They must have quietly assembled those catapults in the forest right before the attack. It’s the only way they could’ve gone unnoticed.”
“I need to find Astrid and get the pages and attendants to safety.” She spun toward me. “You need to secure the princess’s pavilion.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
“Jack, please. See to the princess. She’s your duty. Let me take care of mine.” She was gone before I could stop her, vanishing into the smoke.
“Sylvi!” I broke into a run after her, but was quickly swallowed up by soldiers trading blows, blood misting the air as I trudged across the camp, writhing bodies littering the ground, some already dead.
My pavilion came into view, half-collapsed, but I made it inside.
My sword leaned against the central post. With no time for armor, I grabbed my blade and charged back into the inferno.
Masked attackers filled the camp. No house crests, no colors. Just dark leathers, faceless hoods, and ruthless efficiency.
Mercenaries. Assassins. But whose?
I cut through them with brutal force, my blade an extension of my rage. I parried a blow aimed at one of my guards, skewered the attacker, then raised my palm and summoned frost. It shot outward in a gleaming arc, freezing another two mercs mid-strike.
Magic roared in my blood, hungry for more. But my heart hammered for Sylvi. Where the Hel was she?
Across from me, the princess’s pavilion was under siege.
Her guards had formed a half-circle around her tent, shields locked, arrows bouncing off their surface.
General Brigmir fought like a creature possessed, blood splattered across his chest, his sword a blur of steel as he single-handedly fought off half a dozen attackers.
I ran toward the pavilion. “General, the princess!”
He sliced another attacker in half with a loud roar; face smeared with soot and blood. He too had been caught without his full armor. “She’s safe. Inside with the elf and her attendants.”
Another flaming clay pot jetted through the air, landing with a loud bang a few tents down. Screams erupted as soldiers caught fire. “We need to take out the machines,” Brigmir shouted over the din of battle. “We can’t sustain this…”
He was right. We’d turn to ash unless I figured out a way to stop them.
Scanning the carnage, I realized there was only one way to end this. I reached deep into my core, past bone, past blood, into the well of ancient ice that thrummed in the marrow of my soul. The world around me faded. Screams dulled. Flames blurred.
I was sinking…
No…
I was rising. Becoming.
“What in the Seven Kingdoms…” the general said. “What are you about to do, princeling?”
“We’re about to find out together,” I said as snow swirled at my feet, drawn into my pull.
The wind screamed, spinning faster, faster, rising into the air with a furious crescendo.
“I’ve never done this exactly, but I’ll be powerless to an attack if someone tries to come at me while I’m conjuring.
Watch my flanks, general. My life is in your hands. ”
“Guard!” Brigmir shouted to his unseelie soldiers. “Protect the prince!”
Magic surged within me like a tidal wave, white-hot and blinding despite its glacial source. It hurt. Gods, it hurt. My skin split with it, veins glowing blue, breath stolen from my lungs as frost spiraled upward, swirling around me like a vortex.
And from the storm of snow and wind, a creature tore free.
Thirty feet from snout to tail, its body was carved from our ancient primal past. Jagged scales of obsidian ice, wings like shattered mirrors catching starlight, eyes glowing like twin moons. Wind exploded from its wings as it rose into the sky with a deafening roar that silenced the battlefield.
And I…
I was inside it.
No longer a prince, no longer fae. I was ice and sky and fury incarnate. I was…
A hrímdreki.
My sight turned blue and sharpened, my hearing enhanced.
Every beat of the dreki’s wings thudded through my ribcage like pounding drums. The chill of the clouds brushed against our scales, the heat of the fires below blooming over our belly, the stench of burning flesh and iron and death assaulting our nostrils.
When we spotted the catapults, I whispered into its mind—our mind—Hunt. Burn. Destroy.
We dove.
The first mangonel loomed below, half-shrouded in smoke, the silhouettes of its operators too slow to scatter. The dreki reared back mid-flight, chest expanding with a terrible breath, and exhaled.
Frostfire exploded from its lungs.
The flame erupted as if forged in a glacier, cold, cruel, burning blue and white as it hissed through the air, devouring the orange blaze. The fire machine shattered on impact. One soldier raised an arm to shield himself and shattered like glass.
We wheeled left, spiraling higher, wind shrieking past us. I felt every shift of the dreki’s weight, every muscle flex and contraction as if it were my own body. No barrier existed between us now. We were one.
Another target. Another blast.
This time, the frostfire hit them before they even noticed the shadow overhead. Two were crushed by falling timber. One screamed, his legs encased in ice, reaching for a comrade before a tail swipe sent them both tumbling into a pit of flame.
From the corner of an eye, I caught sight of Ravin.
Back to a broken cart, he was locked in a desperate clash against a cloaked attacker who moved with terrifying speed. Ravin’s sword flew from his hand.
No. Gods, no.
The dreki responded before I could speak into its mind.
We dove again, wind howling around us, and it snatched the masked man mid-strike in its maw. I felt the crunch of bone in the dreki’s jaws—felt it in my own teeth—before we flung the corpse into the woods like refuse.
Below, the camp burned. Smoke curled into the sky.
Bodies littered the snow, soldiers locked in chaotic skirmishes.
We aimed for the hooded attackers, swooping down and snatching them mid-run with razor-sharp claws and tossing them into the air, their screams echoing through the night as they plunged to their deaths.
On and on we went.
And still, no sign of her.
Panic ignited, fueling my rage
Where is she?
I scanned the battlefield with the dreki’s sharp eyes. Nothing.
Astrid sprinted toward the tree line, chasing something or someone, her pale braid swishing behind her, blade raised. An arrow struck her thigh, and she fell hard, a scream piercing the camp as she skidded across the dirt. She was badly hurt, but alive.
Soldiers continued to scatter, some limping, some carrying the wounded, others chasing the mercs into the trees.
My strength was ebbing. The dreki’s wings began to falter. I was bleeding magic now, leaking it like a cracked dam.
But I couldn’t let the camp fall.
Couldn’t let her be lost in this.
With the last vestiges of my will, I turned the dreki back toward the blaze. Not to kill, but to protect.
I inhaled through the beast’s lungs, feeling the strain as ice collected deep within its chest. We beat our wings and unleashed a torrent of frost. Not frostfire, but snow and sleet and a wind so bitter it could snuff out suns.
The largest fires hissed and died, smoke replaced by thick blankets of frost. Tents iced over. Flames choked beneath sudden sleet. The air turned frigid, and the screams dulled, quieted by my dreki’s wrath.
But my vision blurred, our connection fraying, my control cracking.