14. Stellen
Chapter Fourteen
Stellen
Awareness comes to me in pieces.
A thump of energy striking my heart, forcing the muscle to contract.
The shriek of wind. Snowflakes biting my cheeks.
A gentle tickling sensation at my chin, and the scent of Thyra’s hair like white roses. Her voice whispering urgently, coming at me like an echo…
Maxim.
A blanket lies over us, a cocoon of—
My eyes fly open, my ears clear of deathly silence, and the chaos rushes in.
A fierce blizzard rages around us, shards of ice striking at my legs, arms, face. And at Thyra’s back where she lies as if she were trying to protect me.
She’s curled over me, her head tucked under my shoulder, her hand on my heart. She’s breathing, but barely.
“Thyra!” I jolt into a sitting position, wrapping my arms around her and keeping her close, turning my back into the worst of the storm, trying to shield her. “Thyra!”
I reach for her face, only for her head to tip back over my arm, her eyes closed and her lips blue. A trail of blood is frozen where it must have trickled from her mouth.
Deep, dark blood.
“No, Thyra! What did you do?”
That’s when I catch sight of her right hand where she presses it to my heart.
A band soaked in blood is wrapped across the back of her fist and around her wrist.
I don’t understand what I’m looking at until I spot the small sliver of yellowed material on one edge.
My sister’s ribbon. Seeped in a song carrying my darkest anger and cruelty.
My worst sins now clutched in Thyra’s hand.
I told her I was capable of horrors.
All my pain…
I thought those horrors would die with me. I wanted Thyra to have the anvil, to break the curse, as she’s destined to do.
I wanted to believe, just as I did for my family, that my death could bring Thyra safety.
“No, Thyra, no…”
Brave, determined, kind Thyra.
I rock forward, my hands shaking and my heart pounding, sensations I haven’t felt since my family was killed.
Panic. Fucking panic.
And fear. Soul-destroying fear.
For the first time in years, I don’t know what to do. I strategized only to the moment of my death, choosing the path that would give Lilis justice and Thyra another piece of her fate.
I don’t know how to fight the chaos of emotions flooding my heart and mind, and I don’t know how to fight the malevolent force beating around us.
I put away my power because I couldn’t control it. I was too angry, too destructive. I hurt fae who didn’t deserve to be hurt. I destroyed lives.
And now…
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Nara!” I roar into the wind, seeking my white wolf. “Nara, I need you!”
She appears from within the blizzard, crawling toward me, painstaking steps, her whimpers becoming joyful when she sees me, then alarmed when she nudges Thyra’s back.
I’m relieved to see that Nara still carries the two satchels, one of which contains Thyra’s Alak-Teahan coat.
“Thyra’s cloak,” I shout, at which Nara turns and crouches low, enabling me to reach into the satchel to pull out the thick garment.
I need to get Thyra warm.
This simple purpose gives me something to focus on, and I grab hold of that clarity, pushing through my fear and panic, concentrating on my physical actions as I pull the coat around Thyra’s body.
It’s only as I tug her right arm beneath the material that I make out the faint glow of golden energy pulsing back and forth along the inside of her forearm, a sign of a blade vision. A slow, continuous pulse.
My focus snaps to her face, seeking the telltale change in her features. “Thyra?”
Very slowly, the appearance of her face changes, but not into the icy beauty I’ve seen before and which I expected to see now.
Thyra’s skin gradually tans and her hair turns a luscious, shining brown. For a moment, her eyes crack open, her faded blue irises brightening to a deep amber, the color of sultry flames.
This is the countenance of an Ember Fae.
If I thought she saw me, I would be reassured, but her gaze is sightless. Absent. Beads of sweat form on her brow, only to quickly freeze.
The echo of her voice returns to me: Maxim.
She told me she’s seen him in her blade visions. He’s the only king who has appeared to her within them.
My heart plummets at what this could mean.
Can he somehow stop this storm?
When he and I first fought, our powers neutralized each other. Fire and frost dissolved on contact, sizzling into nothing, neither continuing to rage.
But it would mean taking her to him. Right now. With this bloodied band strangling her wrist and her whole body engulfed in tremors.
How can I do that?
Maxim is my enemy. I may have made a fragile peace with the Iron King, but the Ember King is a dangerous unknown. I’ve already lost my kingdom. The Winter Strife is done. By law, I’m no longer King of Frost, but Thyra is my family and—
That thought alone would drive me to my knees if I weren’t already hunched around her.
She is my family.
I would do anything for her.
I press my forehead to hers, a new weight on my shoulders as I remember what Antony said to me during our first civil conversation. An exchange that feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
We have power over her fate.
It doesn’t matter what I want or fear. What matters is what she needs.
If she were awake, I would ask her, but until she’s conscious, I can only act on what’s in front of me.
I pray I’m not making a terrible mistake as I make my decision.
Holding Thyra close, I reach for Nara, sliding onto her back as sleet crashes around us.
“Nara,” I call through the deluge, hunching low and protecting Thyra as the white wolf rises to her feet again. “Take us to the eastern mountains and then south. As close to the Ember Kingdom as we can get.”
Without them trying to kill us.
We’re already near the charcoal mountain range in the east, and we can travel down it without fear of encountering Iron Fae along the way.
Even if some Iron Fae were to venture into their forest-covered eastern mountains, they would never travel so far as to reach the burned-out cliffs that stand between their kingdom and the dead plains in the far east.
Nara raises her head to me as snow whirls around us, giving me a questioning snarl.
A final moment of choice.
“This is what Thyra needs.”
Nara doesn’t hesitate another second.
She takes off at a run, pushing through the storm. It’s only when we’re twenty paces from the gravesite that we pass the anvil. It must have been knocked all the way across here in the storm.
My family’s names now face the snow-filled sky.
I vow I won’t lose Thyra like I lost them.