Chapter 7 Stellen
Chapter Seven
Stellen
The Oracle’s accusation hits me harder than I thought possible. Her voice filled with loathing. “You stand idly by while your ice could douse the flames.”
She speaks with a furious indignation and a compassion I’m incapable of experiencing. Emotions, I would give anything to feel, even if they brought self-loathing. Even that, I would welcome, because it would be real.
For a few powerful heartbeats back on the beach, I felt sensations of love and happiness, sorrow and pain, hope and soul-crushing desire.
All of it pouring from her.
All of it within my reach.
But now, despite the shortened distance between us, she is like a crystal rose set within a glass case, fully visible but caged, her presence taunting me. Her enraged gaze taunting me. Her defiant body taunting me, daring me to step closer and lay my hands on her.
She stands with her back to the wall, gripping the blade so tightly that her knuckles turn white. Her eyes burn with conviction, her posture thrumming with purpose.
Nothing about her is plain. Nothing is simple.
She may look like any other lowborn, such unremarkable features that if she weren’t holding the blade, I wouldn’t believe she was the Oracle, but her heart?
I may not be able to feel what she feels, but I recognize her determination and the sheer fucking, trembling courage that must be raging through her as she raises her head, glaring in defiance at all three of us.
She’s breathtaking to behold.
Before I can respond to her accusation, Maxim’s voice sounds sharply from her other side, coming from within the gray shroud he carries with him, and it seems he isn’t taking her accusation lightly.
“You place responsibility for this destruction on our shoulders when you are the one who could have stopped it before it began.”
He isn’t wrong. If she had chosen to reveal herself to us years ago, to surrender herself to one of us at any time in her life, destruction would not have come to this village today.
Her focus flies to him, and her back turns to me slightly, and suddenly, I’m presented with an opportunity.
I can seize her while she’s distracted. In a heartbeat, I work through my strategy.
I will leap from the smoke, draw on my icy power, blast Antony back first, then Maxim, and hold both of them at bay for the seconds it will take me to snatch up the Oracle and race away with her.
My wolf is ready for my call and will reach me within moments.
The Oracle won’t be able to fight me off, no matter how angry she is. I’m certain that her power is in her visions, not her physical strength. Even if she’s been trained in combat, nobody but another king could challenge me.
As I leap from the shadows, ready to claim her, the Dragonstone Blade flashes.
An explosion of golden light fills my view, consuming everything around me, washing the world in gold just like it did on the beach.
But this time, it’s only an instant later that my vision clears and my surroundings return to normal.
Nothing appears to have changed.
I prepare to continue my attack, but I jolt once more to a stop.
No. All is not what it was before.
Maxim and Antony haven’t moved from their positions, that’s true, but the Oracle now stands only three paces away from me, facing me, as if she anticipated my attack and stepped right into my path.
The force of my icy power billows around her slender form, a snowstorm plucking at her clothing and dusting her skin and her hair with white powder, making her body appear suddenly porcelain.
Tear tracks freeze on her cheeks, lines of grief now painted white. Despite the danger I pose to her, her head is slightly bowed, and her eyes are closed.
I freeze, my instincts roaring at me to be still, even though my mind tells me my chance to claim her is still right in front of me, and I should act immediately.
Then, a stream of golden light courses up the inside of her right arm, pouring from the dagger’s sharp edge, all the way up to the Oracle’s neck and disappearing beneath her hair.
“You have a choice to make, Stellen, King of Frost.” Her voice is strained as she tilts her head back and finally looks me in the eyes.
I startle as her appearance transforms in front of me.
Her irises fade even further from a dull blue to a pale gray that quickly becomes pearly. Shiny. Fucking perfect.
Her eyes are suddenly the same flawless color as the polished stone that the ancient Frost Fae carved and set atop our most sacred hill. My sister would go there to sing her songs. It’s the only place I ever felt any kind of peace.
Together with the transformation of her eyes, the Oracle’s hair bleaches to glistening white, becoming like snowflakes spun into strands, which waft around her shoulders and cling to her perfect curves.
She is everything I could desire. A physical perfection that could drive me to my knees and shatter me into worthless pieces.
And yet, her transformation makes me wary of her for the first time since I responded to her scream.
Every account of the only other female Oracle—the one known as the False Queen—warns of her beauty. Her power to beguile and charm and betray.
Until this moment, this Oracle was herself. She was beyond physically plain, complex in the layers of emotion beating off her.
Now, she is an icy surface. A frozen lake with nothing but more ice beneath its frosted facade.
Now, she is the Oracle I expected to confront, a heartless fae of cunning and guile who would hide within this village no matter the risk to its people.
Glaring at her, I ask, “What choice must I make?”
“A choice that will sacrifice more than you can bear.” Her voice comes as if from far away, making the hairs on my arms rise as she holds up the Dragonstone Blade between us, so near to me I could easily grab it.
Despite the temptation, a distant part of my mind is warning me…
Something is very, very wrong here.
I don’t know why Antony or Maxim hasn’t attacked me. There’s no logic to the way they’ve stayed where they are.
What’s keeping them at bay?
Even as I question what’s happening around me, my misgivings quickly slip away.
The silk ribbon wrapped around the blade sways back and forth, humming quietly, the melody of a hundred harmonious Lethian voices filling my ears, the voices of its weavers.
I’m not sure why I was concerned. The silk is a comforting reminder of my mother’s long-ago songs and the narrow ribbon she wove for my sister, a delicate ribbon my sister wore around her wrist.
I miss them. Suddenly and powerfully. I miss them.
I fight the emptiness rising within me, the hungry cold that consumes my memories, giving myself a hard shake.
A distant part of my mind is roaring at me to block my ears to the hum of magic, the pull drawing me closer and closer to the Oracle, the warning growing louder until I’m shouting at myself to resist her guile, to pull away from her flawless lips and the desire to breathe every breath she exhales until she consumes me.
Only moments ago, when I asked her what choice I would have to make, she responded with a promise that it would bring me pain, but she hasn’t told me about the choice itself.
“What choice?” I ask again, this time holding urgently onto the logical parts of my mind.
She pulls the blade close to her heart and steps right up to me, daring to press her chest to mine, close enough that if it weren’t for my armor, I would feel the tantalizing rub of her breasts.
She tips her head back, her breath coming faster, and…
Damn…
She smells like snow melting in the first sunlight of spring, a promise of warmth and pleasure.
“Come for me when the stars go out. Find me where the light hides,” she says, her pearly-gray eyes shining like the stars she says will disappear. “Stellen, King of Frost, you must earn what you desire.”
She takes a step back, and suddenly, I’m aware of a startling thread of power tugging at my heart, an icy-blue rope extending from my chest to hers.
Just as alarming, three other threads extend from her body.
An amber thread stretches all the way into the smoke, obscuring Maxim; a blood-red thread reaches across the distance to Antony’s still-concealed form; and a fourth thread, this one as dark as death, coils through the air near the dead man lying behind the Oracle.
At first, I think the fourth thread connects with him, but no, it passes over his shoulder and strikes through the wall of the building he’s leaning against, and I’m uncertain where it leads. I’m also not sure if she’s aware of it because it coils behind her, outside her field of view.
Her voice becomes harsh as she takes a step back from me, her outward beauty rapidly disappearing, her eyes fading back to blue, and her steps suddenly wobbling. “Until then, Stellen, King of Frost—”
She stops to gasp for breath, beads of sweat abruptly rolling down the sides of her face and cutting through the dusted snow. Within seconds, her cheeks are flushed, and her breathing strained, and I can’t see why.
There’s no explanation for why she’s suddenly struggling to breathe or why her shoulders are slumping, and she’s dripping with sweat, and even though I know I should be concerned about that, a small part of me is filled with anticipation because she is no longer an icy goddess, emotionless, but fierce once more.
“You must let me go,” she says.
Let her go?
A harsh laugh rises to my lips. There is no letting her go. I will not give up her complexity or her feeling or her heart, which she has so openly bared to me with her fury and indignation.
I would rather smash the sacred stone than walk away from her.
“I will not.”
I cannot.
Without restraint, my power explodes outward, a blast that washes across the clearing, spearing to either side of her while my fingers wrap around her arm, and I finally make contact.
Finally, her body is within my grasp—a heady, breathtaking connection.
But she screams, a cry that speaks of pain even though I’m gripping her only lightly.
Her scream rises above the explosion of my power, a second before scorching flames billow toward me, and an iron dagger cleaves the air, striking at my neck.