17. Maxim
Chapter Seventeen
Maxim
The burned-out mountain range stretches out below me, a cascade of protrusions like enormous black bones as my serpent races north toward the Frost Kingdom.
To my left, the snowstorm continues to beat across the Iron Kingdom and, if anything, it’s getting worse. To the point where I could believe the center of the storm was heading right for me.
A gust of freezing air buffets my serpent, blowing him off course while the sky suddenly fills with sleet.
Damn. I thought I might dodge the worst of the storm flying along these burned-out cliffs. At the very least, I’d evade any fiery calamities since these mountains have already turned to ash, but now the air is growing icy and snow coats my skin.
A tornado appears ahead of me on the wide mountain ridge, ringed in icy-blue energy, the same sizzling power that swung like a scythe across my land, except that this time, it’s spiraling up through the air in a wide, circular motion, at least fifty feet in diameter.
I can’t risk my serpent’s life.
“Down!” I shout, leaning right.
He banks sharply in that direction, diving down toward the side of the nearest steep cliff.
I’m on my feet in seconds, leaping from his back and throwing myself onto the edge of the mountain range as he passes by.
From the corner of my eye, I register the way he jolts and begins flying back to me.
Too fucking loyal.
I don’t plan on running the rest of the way on foot, but I can’t risk the energy within this tornado striking out at us even if we try to fly around it.
My arms pumping, fire gathering in my palms, I race straight for the base of the whirlwind at its central point, my bare feet pounding on the sharp stones. I pay no attention to the pain as I leap as high as I can and into the tornado.
Streams of icy power cut across my arms and legs as I soar through the outer layer.
An instant before I’d be torn to shreds, fire explodes from my palms, burning through the streaking energy and striking through the whirling shards of ice.
Heat bursts around me.
But my eyes are widening.
As I sail through the tornado’s outer layer, I find myself in clear air.
An open space now filling with my heat waves.
I land at a crouch, my right fist hitting the blackened ground, and there I freeze.
Directly ahead of me, not ten paces away, a snarling white wolf has pulled to a stop, its claws gouging the rocks, its lips pulled back from its teeth.
On the wolf’s back is the fucking Frost King.
His face is splattered with blood. So is pretty much every other part of him that I can see. He carries his pearly swords at his back but doesn’t draw them. Probably because he’s holding someone in his arms.
I can’t see who that fae is because they’re wrapped up in a thick, white cloak, only the top of their head visible. Brown hair, also clumped with blood.
Fire bursts around my hands again. I’m ready to strike first and ask questions later.
Stellen extricates one of his arms fast enough to cast his hand forward in a flash, ice crackling over his palm.
“Stop,” he roars, “or I’ll cut your fucking head off.”
His voice is clear and loud, the sound colliding with my mind like a physical shove that compels me to plant my feet. Stop.
Fuck-damn.
Not his voice. His Voice.
The compulsion to obey him vanishes a heartbeat later, a comfortingly short time, but it’s unsettling that his Lethian power worked on me at all.
Before I can retaliate, he shouts again. “Cage your flames, Ember King. Unless you want to kill the Oracle.”
That’s Thyra?
I lurch forward before I can stop myself, a fresh burst of fire growing around my hands. The amount of blood clumping her hair is an alarming sight. “What the fuck have you done to her?”
The Frost King grits his teeth, appearing as feral as his wolf, but he doesn’t try to stop me again. No burst of ice as he threatened. No more shouted commands.
Only a quiet statement that stops me in my tracks. “She needs your help.”
Fuck. Me.
He sounds terrified. And angry. In the way of a man who will fight to the death before he loses what matters to him most.
The clear emotion in his voice startles me most of all.
He nudges open the white cloak, exposing first more of Thyra’s head, nestled in the crook of his shoulder, and then her face, as bloodied as his.
Her eyes are open the barest of slits, but the amber color of her irises hits me hard. The deepest flame. The color of quiet fire. A gentle warmth I will never achieve.
The fact that her countenance is not her own alarms me greatly.
“Blade vision.” I snarl.
“You recognize it,” the Frost King says, a hint of relief in his voice now. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“We’re all affected by her blade visions,” I snap.
In different ways, but all significant.
But I’m shaking my head, speaking without guarding my words. “No, it can’t be. I’m still conscious. My heart isn’t tearing apart like it has every night for the past week.”
“Something changed this morning,” the Frost King says. “The nature of her blade visions altered. I don’t know why. But that isn’t why I’m here.”
Stellen tugs the cloak further down Thyra’s side.
My chest squeezes at the way she’s leaning into him, an unwanted strike of envy cutting through my heart, the same dark emotion I experienced the last time I saw her in a blade vision.
She was lying next to Stellen, nestled naked in his arms, both of them sleeping peacefully, a closeness between them that I can never have with another fae.
All self-pity vanishes when the Frost King draws the cloak further down to expose Thyra’s right hand resting against his chest.
Her fist is covered in blood. Thick and seeping into Stellen’s gray robes.
Within the mess, I make out the shape of some kind of band, a strip of material wound around her hand and crisscrossing her wrist.
Faint, golden energy pulses slowly back and forth through the gore.
I catch my breath. “What the fuck is that?”
The look on Stellen’s face is indecipherable. His ghostly eyes are whiter than white, his cheeks gray and gaunt, and the blood in his hair is gruesomely dark against his white strands.
“She’s hurting,” he rasps. “But I can’t make it stop.”
With that startling admission, he grinds his teeth again, his left hand flying back up, a fresh layer of frost snapping across his palm.
“You’re going to help her.” He snarls. “Or I will fucking end you.”