Chapter 10 Stellen
Chapter Ten
Stellen
Icouldn’t cut her hand.
I had what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to kill the Iron King, and I couldn’t…fucking…cut the Oracle’s hand.
I couldn’t hurt her.
I wouldn’t.
The corners of my mouth turn down as I stare up at the empty sky where the Iron King’s eagle flew away only moments ago, carrying the Oracle with him. Maxim followed them on his serpent, but the Oracle is lost to me for now.
I tell myself that Antony or Maxim may claim her first, but I won’t let them keep her.
The sunlight catches my sword’s white blade as I return it to its scabbard at my back. I wear the two blades passed down from Frost King to Frost King, and I know how to wield them well.
In the far distance, the remaining Ember and Iron Fae disappear beyond the mountain range, their serpents and eagles still embattled.
I let them go, focusing on calming the unusually rapid beat of my heart.
The Oracle’s commands echo within my ears, unsettling me: Come for me when the stars go out. Find me where the light hides.
I smother a curse. I don’t know what she means.
The stars had blazed brightly on the night of her birth, but what does it mean if they go out?
I try to quickly work through it, conscious that Lilis and my warriors are approaching me, but it’s impossible for me to think logically right now. Being so close to the Oracle and then letting her slip through my fingers has triggered an unrest in my soul.
I tell myself to be patient. I must regroup and plan. Ever since I became king, I’ve acted with purpose, calculating every move, remaining strategic above all else, but now there’s growing turmoil in my mind.
The more the echo of her voice bounces around my mind, the more unbalanced I feel. Impatient as I have never been before.
I close my eyes, clamp down on my rapid breathing, force my thoughts to slow, and finally stop them in their tracks.
Chaos will not control me.
Fear will not control me.
Loss will not control me.
No more.
As my heartbeats finally calm, I open my eyes and narrow them at the blue sky and the smoke wafting lazily across it. The fires burning within the village haven’t abated, the crackling and popping of wood remaining sharp in my hearing.
“My lord.” Lilis’s voice cuts through, along with the footfalls of her wolf.
I don’t need to turn to know she’s on foot, her beast following her cautiously and hesitantly.
My other two warriors are nearby, keeping their distance, their breathing heavy and heartbeats quick in my hearing.
“I failed you,” Lilis says, her voice strained.
She did, but I will make her expand on it.
I ask, without turning, “How so?”
“The Oracle was within my grasp. I had her cornered. I didn’t know it was her, or I would have cut her down—”
My hand lands on Lilis’s shoulder within a heartbeat, my fingers squeezing so tightly that I dent her armor. She chokes back a gasped breath at the sudden contact.
I rarely touch what I don’t intend to kill, and she knows it.
My question is sharp. “Cut her down? You?”
Her eyes are wide. I recognize the fear in them, a fear she only has of me. It’s fully warranted. I have proven myself crueler even than she is.
Beneath her fear whirls confusion. I read it in the pinch of skin between her eyebrows. Perhaps she doesn’t realize the extent to which she insulted me just now.
Perhaps it will come to her more quickly if I squeeze my fingers even tighter, allowing a trickle of ice into my hold, priming her armor to shatter and, beneath it, her flesh to freeze and her bones to break.
Her pupils dilate. More fear. But then the pinch in her forehead clears, and she goes limp in my grasp. Her eyes lower, and her voice becomes a barely perceptible rasp. “Forgive…”
I release her, but she knows better than to move away quickly, staying right where she is, as best she can, even though she teeters on the spot, while my hand continues to hover in the air above her shoulder, dangerously close to her neck.
I want to roar at her: As if she could cut the Oracle when I could not. But my silence will frighten her more than a show of anger ever could.
I may have lifted her from a life of desperation many years ago, but I have made it clear to her that I am not her savior.
She swallows visibly, her eyes remaining lowered even as she tilts her head and offers her neck to me. “Forgive me.”
My gaze slides from her pale face to the nearest burning building. “Your penance will be to put out every flame in this village. A task I’m sure you’ll consider is beneath you.”
“Nothing is beneath me if you command it,” she says.
I lower my hand, and her back straightens. She stands tall once more, her cheeks regaining their color.
“And Lilis?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Bring me whatever chieftain or ruler leads this village. You’ll find me at the northern boatyard.”
She gives me a firm nod and, without another word, shouts orders at the other two warriors, even though both of them can’t have missed my commands. I let her regain her sense of agency and control, even if it’s an illusion.
One day, I’m certain she will attempt to stab me in my sleep as many assassins do, and I will be forced to end her, but until that day, she will remain a useful tool to me while she, herself, reaps the benefits of her position in my army.
Within minutes, she and the other two hurry toward the village, their icy power flaring.
I tell myself that the dousing of the flames is not a mercy. It isn’t because the Oracle chastised me for my lack of action. It’s because I want to keep Lilis busy while I return to the dead man whose body was propped beside the workshop.
Uttering a low whistle beneath my breath, I call to my wolf, who makes her way down the mountainside. She pauses at my call, her head rising, her alertness visible even at this distance. Now that I’ve got her attention, I give another low whistle, a forlorn melody this time. Follow me.
Her alertness remains, her quick progress resuming as I head back toward the northern end of the village. Slipping past the nearest homes, I avoid encountering any villagers as I approach what remains of the carpentry workshop.
I need to study the body of the man the Oracle appeared to be shielding. I hope he wasn’t incinerated in the explosion of power between Maxim and me. At the time, I didn’t look back to see.
It’s eerily quiet on this side of the village, but as I round the final corner, the man’s body comes into view.
A splatter of ice melts across his slumped form.
The top of the carpentry workshop has been blown apart, while the bottom of the structure remains miraculously standing.
Judging by the disappearing ice, my power must have reached the man first, preserving him as well as protecting that portion of the building so that Maxim’s flames didn’t cremate him.
When I first stood in this clearing, the Oracle consumed my focus, but I didn’t miss the fact that this man must have been the carpenter who fell victim to the lowborn I encountered on the beach.
At that time, I couldn’t be sure who the dead man was to the Oracle, if he was her father, a brother, or a guard.
Now I kneel a short distance from him, studying his features.
Fascinating.
Just like the Oracle, his physical appearance is that of any other lowborn. I would never have picked him from a crowd.
The Oracle only gave away his identity when Antony grabbed her. She’d wrapped her arms around Antony’s chest, reaching back as he ran away with her, stretching toward the dead man.
Within the ear-splitting collision of my frost power with Maxim’s flames, I’m certain Antony could not have heard the grief-filled whimper the Oracle uttered.
A whimper that sounded as clearly as a bell within my acute hearing: Father.
The fact that her father died only today is extremely significant.
There is only ever one Oracle at a time.
When the previous Oracle dies, the next will rise.
This means that the woman standing before us, brandishing the Dragonstone Blade, has only just come into her power.
She is new.
That makes her incredibly vulnerable.
The question is: How vulnerable?
I reach carefully toward the dead man, scrutinizing the dagger.
It’s of a simple construction with a wooden hilt, a darker color than I’d expect of the trees along the coast, and with distinct whorls spiraling across its surface.
The wooden hilt appears untouched by the fire, but if there are any identifying marks, I certainly can’t see them.
Allowing a hint of ice into my fingertips, cooling my skin, I turn my focus to the wound itself, lifting the torn edge of the man’s tunic to study the blade’s entrance point.
A skillful strike. Right into his heart. As clean as a trained assassin would make.
He has no other cuts or injuries that I can see. No defensive wounds to indicate a struggle. The blood that must have flowed from his chest has become tacky, its consistency no doubt altered by the influx of cold, then heat from the battle.
Regardless, it would seem the former Oracle was struck and died right here.
The villager I encountered on the beach, who was trying to wash blood off his hands, didn’t appear to me as someone who would be so coldly skilled with a blade. Not judging by the way his hands were shaking.
What’s more, the angle of this knife’s hilt would mean it was nearly horizontal to the ground when the former Oracle was standing up. This wasn’t a downward or upward strike.
It’s very possible it was pitched at him from a distance. A clean and sudden kill shot.
Again, not a strike I’d imagine a simple villager could make.
Unless…that man was not a simple villager.
I recall the odd lilt to his voice, the unfamiliar accent, along with the absence of a tan on his skin. I’m not completely familiar with coastal culture or customs, but both of those stood out as unusual.