18. Stellen
Chapter Eighteen
Stellen
Ican’t control my anger.
Gone is strategy. I have no more cold calculations. No defenses against the tumult of fear driving my actions.
“Help her?” The Ember King has frozen, muscles tensed, not more than ten paces away while the icy storm continues to churn around us. “I burn things. I don’t save them. I shouldn’t even be standing this close to her.”
I didn’t expect this level of honesty from him, but I don’t give a fucking shit what he thinks he can’t do.
“Reach her,” I snap. “Use her vision. She said she saw you. You can speak with her.”
“I can’t,” he says, more quietly than I was expecting. “She only saw me one time and we didn’t speak. I couldn’t touch her. I don’t know if she could hear me.”
“Are you refusing to help?”
I’m asking him for fucking help. I don’t expect the Ember King to understand how hard that is for me, how dangerous it is for a Frost Fae to even speak that word, let alone act on it.
“I’m not refusing.” His response is a growl as he begins pacing to the side. “She’s clearly hurt, but I’m not the one who can help her. If she comes to my kingdom—”
“I’m not giving her to you.”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m not asking you to.”
My brow furrows.
His shoulders sink. He closes his eyes when he really should keep me in his sights.
“Defy your impulses,” he mutters before he opens his eyes again. “My impulse right now is to burn you to a fucking crisp, Stellen, and take Thyra from you.”
I ignore the fact that we’ve moved on from our official titles to our first names.
“Try,” I challenge him.
Startlingly, he takes a step back from me, the last thing I expected him to do.
“Defy your impulses,” he mutters again. With another deep breath, he says, “My aunt is a healer. She can help Thyra.”
Yet again, he increases the gap between us, another step as he continues.
“The last I saw of my aunt, she was waiting at the northern edge of my kingdom, helping to keep this freeze at bay.” He gestures at the storm.
“She made her way through the snow, determined to reach me, even though that was dangerous for her. She told me to defy my impulses and bring Thyra to her. If I know my aunt, she’ll be waiting there still. No matter the threat to herself.”
Warily, I take note of the information he gave me. “At the northern edge of your kingdom?”
Which would mean avoiding traveling too far into Ember, making it easier to get out again.
“She can help Thyra and then, if you wish, you can turn around and take Thyra away again.” Maxim speaks through gritted teeth. His shoulders are tense and he sucks air before grinding out, “Defy your fucking impulses.”
With that, he takes yet another step away from me.
He’s retreating.
Too fucking unexpected.
“I’m returning to my aunt now,” he says with barely a backward glance. “My serpent is waiting for me outside the worst of this. It’s up to you if you follow me.”
He turns on his heel, blasts fire through the malicious energy, and leaps into the maelstrom.
Through the gap, I catch a glimpse of stars trying to shine and the vast emptiness of the eastern plains, endlessly dark and swirling with black dust. All of it through the haze of Maxim’s fire before the storm takes over again.
A second later, Maxim’s gone.
Nara has stopped growling. She gives me a worried whimper.
“I have no choice,” I say.
Dropping my chin to the top of Thyra’s head, I squeeze my eyes closed and try, fruitlessly, to calm my bone-deep fear.
This dread can’t be buried, no matter how hard I try.
“Go, Nara,” I call. “Follow the Ember King.”
As my wolf surges forward and the storm moves with us, I lean low and whisper to Thyra, “Hold on, Thyra. Please.”
For two more hours, all I know is fear.
The storm doesn’t ease. Thyra doesn’t wake.
Nara runs like a demon, her speed so fast that she keeps up with Maxim’s serpent with ease.
Of course, with visibility at zero, the only reason I know this is because I manage to isolate the serpent’s hisses from the storm, gauging how close we are to the beast.
I focus on that beast’s breathing as a way to keep myself from going out of my mind while we continue down the charcoal mountain range.
Finally, we turn west, heading along another mountain range, this one covered in sandy rocks. Clearly the border between Iron and Ember.
We race down a sharp incline and then we hit the sand, a confounding contrast to the snowstorm we’re bringing with us.
Suddenly, in a mere blink, the snow-filled air clears ahead of me.
A wave of heat rushes through toward us, forcing the icy-blue energy to dissipate at the front of the storm.
In that moment, I take in the confronting sight of Iron and Ember Towers turned to rubble along the border. Bodies buried beneath the snow. Ice piled up around broken stone.
The impossible warmth billowing toward us blossoms across my body, heating my cheeks, not entirely uncomfortable.
Directly ahead, a bright glow soon consumes my view, a source of heat that forces a tunnel of warmth to form, along which we’re now running.
“Nara!” I call, wary of what we’re headed toward. “Go carefully.”
She was already slowing down.
A rush of fire across the air above us reveals Maxim riding his golden serpent, the beast snaking through the air before he disappears from view again.
Only with my sharp hearing can I hear the sounds of his descent to the dunes at least a hundred feet away from the source of the warmth, which I can finally make out.
My eyes widen.
Rows of female figures.
They’re standing ahead of us with their arms outstretched, the glow of a midday sun radiating out from their bodies and defying the freezing blizzard we’ve brought with us.
I quickly scan for threats, but as far as I can see—which isn’t far, given how narrow the tunnel of warmth is—the women appear to be alone, surrounded only by sand dunes, the amber granules gleaming within the heat rippling from their upraised palms.
I count seventeen women and the same number of distinct heartbeats, along with Maxim’s heart, a deeper beat. There are no others hiding in the dunes. No ambush waiting to happen.
Still, Nara tosses her head, snarling a warning.
One of the women breaks away from the others and runs toward us, her ochre-colored silks billowing around her petite form, an amber streak in her hair fully visible.
Nara pulls to a stop without me needing to ask.
The woman slows down as she gets closer, both of her arms held out at her sides, her palms pointed away from me. An awkward but non-combative pose.
“Frost King,” she calls. “My name is Miriam. I was sister to the Ember King’s father. It seems my nephew has defied his impulses. Now I must ask you to do the same. Will you allow me to come to the Oracle?”
I guess she hasn’t missed the way my arms have clamped more tightly around Thyra.
“She’s hurting,” I say, the icy tears that froze on my cheeks hours ago melting in the warmth pouring toward us.
“I can see that,” Miriam says.
The cloak has slipped from Thyra’s head. No doubt Miriam can see her face. Not the Ember fae facade Thyra currently wears for me. Her real face. Her determined, furious, compassionate self.
“I will not crowd you or your wolf, Frost King.” Miriam stops a few paces within the clear air around us, keeping a close eye on Nara. “Will you bring the Oracle to me?”
Taking deep breaths, trying to drag calmness into my body through the mere act of inhaling air, I slide to the sand, holding Thyra close.
The ground crunches beneath my feet, and I’m reminded of the beach alongside the village where I first laid eyes on Thyra.
“Stay there, Nara,” I say, meeting the wolf’s ever-more worried eyes. “Trust me. I will spill blood if I have to.”
Nara doesn’t appear comforted by this, reluctantly lowering herself to the sand, her head on her paws as she watches me carry Thyra to Miriam.
“Kneel,” I command the Ember woman, using my Voice to compel obedience.
She slides to the ground without fuss. “Whatever it takes for you to trust me, Frost King.”
“I will never trust you, Sister of the Former King.”
I heard about the dishonorable acts Maxim’s father committed, including sending an assassin to murder Antony when he was just a boy, only to burn his younger brother instead. Of all the horrors I perpetrated in my rage, I didn’t harm children.
I can’t be certain Miriam wasn’t complicit in her brother’s crimes.
Carefully, I lower myself to the sand opposite her, pulling the cloak slowly from Thyra’s trembling form.
I don’t expect Miriam to be able to see the Dragonstone Blade or the blood bind. We three kings are the only ones who can see them, but Miriam’s focus immediately flies to the bloodied band strangling Thyra’s fist.
The older woman gasps. “Murdered blood!” Her focus snaps up to me. “A family member?”
“My sister’s blood,” I say, suddenly chilled to my bones. “She was innocent.”
Miriam cranes her neck, studying the blood dripping from Thyra’s fist. “This blood is in a state of creation.”
My throat is tight. “What do you mean?”
Her deep-brown eyes are troubled. “I mean, this is blood magic. In its most fundamental state of formation, its final form as yet unknown.”
I can’t stop the impulsive tightening of my arms around Thyra, the sharp inhale that drags at her clumped hair. “No.”
Miriam’s focus is suddenly on my hands, where I can feel my power gathering.
Fucking brave of her to persist. “Contact with unburied blood like this is dangerous at any time,” she says, “but this darkness must have been triggered by a deep trauma on the Oracle’s part.”
She looks to me, as if I’d have the answer.
Goddess help me, I wish I didn’t.
“My death,” I whisper.
Miriam’s shoulders settle and her expression softens. “The Oracle loves you.”
“She shouldn’t!” I snap, but angry tears fill my eyes, hot and unfreezing.
“Too much grief.” Miriam dares to reach for me even as I snarl at her outstretched hand.
At which her expression hardens again.
“We must extract this blood before it takes its final form. Whatever that may be,” she says. “We may already be too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Creation,” she says. “Pure darkness. A terrible evil born from the blood of innocence and the trauma of violent grief.” Then, in the next breath, she says, “Now. Let me examine her.”
Without waiting for my permission, Miriam shuffles closer, muttering to herself as her hands waft through the air above Thyra’s body without making contact.
“Lethian armor. Unusual cloak. Other blood, not her own and not tainted.” Miriam’s hands glide through the air over Thyra’s face, past her right arm, and toward her legs. “But these daggers…”
She pauses for a curiously long moment, studying the wood-handled daggers that block Thyra’s Oracle power.
Miriam’s voice becomes even quieter. “A terrible crime.”
The daggers weren’t my greatest priority and I didn’t think it would make a difference whether I put them in one of the satchels or left them secured to Thyra’s thighs.
“A terrible blade for a dreadful betrayal.” Miriam is suddenly motionless, her outstretched hand suspended above one of the daggers.
Lilis betrayed me with those blades, stabbing one of them into my heart.
Without warning, Miriam’s hand snaps down, closing over the dagger’s hilt, wrenching the blade free.
My instincts fire, but the older woman moves impossibly fast.
In a flash, she stabs the blade at Thyra’s heart.