Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Stellen
Ihave heartbeats to act.
Seconds to pull the Oracle away from the cliff’s edge before she falls like a wisp of silver into a black sea of vampyrs.
I’ll only have moments before the Iron King becomes aware of my presence, where he levitates—fucking levitates—in the air opposite us, his focus on the swarm of undead converging on the tunnel, all of whom appear determined to defy him.
Less than a heartbeat to stop the blood flowing from the Oracle’s neck.
Her life is draining from her body, her pale eyes meeting mine as her head tips back.
Without mercy, I wrap my hand around her throat, press two fingers over the puncture wounds, and squeeze. A harsh pressure. Frightening in its savagery.
But I have no choice.
Not if I want her to live.
The punctures are deep, her veins brutalized.
All I can do is freeze the puncture sites, cauterizing them with an ice burn. A dangerous fix. Too much ice and I’ll kill her. Not enough, and her body’s warmth will reassert, and her blood will flow again.
She’s too weak to struggle, but her forehead pinches, and I recognize the flash of fear in her eyes before the fight leaves her and she passes out in my arms.
Her hands and arms are covered in blood. Her cheeks are colorless. A thick, crimson trail leads all the way back into the tunnel, evidence of her determination to escape. Only to end up here.
I’ve seen enough death, caused enough death, to know that her chances of surviving are slim.
With one arm wrapped firmly around her waist, the other at her neck, guarding against fresh blood loss, I pull her backward, her feet dragging on the floor but protected from scrapes by the Lethian silver wrapped around her body.
I fight its song, remaining focused on the threats around me, resisting the urge to scoop her up into my arms.
I can’t. Not yet.
First, I need to deal with the Iron King.
His focus swings to her, and the shifting color of his eyes is dizzying. From inky black to emerald green and back to black, his irises flicker between colors while his brow furrows deeply and his shoulders hunch.
He gives his head a shake, the heel of his palm shooting to his temple, his inhalation short and sharp, eyes widening as his focus finally falls on the Oracle.
And then on me.
He gives a snarl, lunging at me, but I haven’t been idle.
His hesitation gave me the time I needed to call on my power, gathering it in the palm of my left hand, that arm outstretched so I won’t hurt the Oracle while I support her weight with my lower body.
I risk another heartbeat as my power pools in my palm.
Just as the Iron King would reach me, I blast my power outward.
Two attacks in quick sequence.
An icy spear shoots outward, right through the Iron King’s chest.
It should explode through him, shattering his body, but it barely slows him down before his flesh heals around the wound.
I was prepared for that possibility, employing my second move. More defensive than I’d like, but it’s my best chance of escaping with the Oracle.
As I backpedal, I let loose the full power pooling in my palm, pouring ice across the tunnel’s opening.
I catch the Iron King’s frustrated shout before he’s knocked backward.
I don’t stop moving, pulling the Oracle with me, continuing to pour my power outward, my ice exploding across the entrance, freezing and filling every gap, creating a thick wall between us and the Iron King. I doubt he’ll be able to get through it, no matter how strong he is.
Neither will the other vampyrs. Not without losing their lives to the frost.
As for the Iron King, it’s clear he doesn’t have the same weaknesses other vampyrs do. It’s already apparent he can tolerate light. Now, it seems he can survive frost. More concerning might be the absence of blood flowing from the slashes across his chest. Even regular vampyrs bleed black ooze.
I don’t have time to ponder it. I have to plan for the worst: that the Iron King will get through the ice wall or, more likely, that he’ll simply abandon it and come at us from the other end of the tunnel.
We have to get out of here before we’re blocked in.
Scooping the unconscious Oracle up into my arms, my left arm beneath her legs, my right hand supporting her head against my shoulder, I race back to my wolf.
Nara crouches fifty paces away, backing as fast as she dares toward me while keeping guard of the giant eagle collapsed on the tunnel floor.
The Iron King’s bird barely stirs, the wound next to its left wing gaping so wide that any other bird would have perished already.
But, like its master, the bird isn’t bleeding from its wounds.
This creature isn’t like any other bird I’ve encountered, although I’m not sure what sorcery made it this way.
Its gleaming, red eyes crack open at my hurried approach, its head rising as its focus pins to the Oracle.
A low, sorrowful croon reaches my ears, and I detect the sorrow within the eagle’s voice as it struggles to drag itself toward the Oracle—despite Nara’s snarls and her slashing teeth.
Brave bird.
At the back of my mind, I calculate the chances of manipulating the eagle’s apparent loyalty to the Oracle and using the bird to help us escape this place.
But the wretched creature’s heartbeat is shallow and weak.
It’s close to death, and there’s nothing I can do for it.
I have no choice but to leave it here.
Behind us, the loud cracks and thumps of the Iron King’s fists on the ice wall cease.
Silence falls.
A bad sign.
I can’t let him reach the other side of the tunnel before we do.
Holding the Oracle tightly, I engage every muscle in my body to leap safely onto Nara’s back. She launches into action, racing past the bird and back along the tunnel, back toward the light.
I can’t dismount this time to guide Nara through the bright space, which means she’s forced to slow down, padding along the rocky floor, but she lowers her nose to the ground, her breathing deepening, following the scent of the path we took before and gradually increasing her pace again.
I’m forced to close my eyes the closer to the light we get, its energy stabbing at my body.
If anything, it’s brighter than it was the first time we passed it.
A second later, I realize that the Oracle’s right arm is rising at my side, slipping from my hold and extending toward the light.
My focus flashes to her, but she doesn’t appear conscious.
Despite that, her right arm pulls toward the light, and then her upper body follows, tugging so strongly that I’m suddenly fighting to keep hold of her.
The inside of her right forearm is fully visible, and I can’t stop my furious hiss.
I was already aware of the image of the Dragonstone Blade etched along the Oracle’s arm, the golden dagger surrounded by the twining ivory ribbon made from Lethian silk, but now black runes are imprinted along the ribbon.
A blood bind!
The darkest of fae magic.
Runes etched, not with ink but with blood, binding an object to whatever dark purpose the inscriber intends.
Fuck.
It’s impossible to know what this means for the blade or for the Oracle, but if we escape this place, I have to find out.
As disturbed as I am about the blood bind, it’s the pull of her body toward the light that concerns me most right now.
Her entire body strains against my hold, and the closer we get to the light’s bright center, the stronger it pulses toward her, reaching and pulling—
For the briefest moment…as my eyes squeeze shut and my arms lock around the Oracle…I think I can hear…
Another heartbeat?
Then we’re past the brightest center, and Nara’s sharp growl fills my hearing. She lunges forward, racing along the tunnel, leaving the light and its unsettling energy behind.
The Oracle’s arm drops, her body heavy in my arms once more, and now I focus on keeping her and myself steady as Nara’s speed increases until I’m leaning as low as I can, the Oracle’s body plastered to mine.
The opening looms up ahead, and I prepare for the leap across space Nara will have to make from the tunnel’s exit to the nearest mountain ridge.
An airborne path that will likely take us through a renewed swarm of vampyrs and the very real danger that the Iron King will have already reached the opening.
Our chances of getting through them all are vastly reduced because I’ll only be able to use my power one-handed—if that—and my agility is enormously hampered by my precious cargo.
I remind myself that chaos doesn’t control me.
No more.
Clearing my head, I count the heartbeats as my wolf pounds toward the exit and the darkness looms ahead of us.
In those heartbeats, I ready myself, becoming aware of every part of my body, every muscle, every skill.
The strength in my legs that can carry me far and fast. The magic in my left arm, gathering and ready to strike with icy precision.
The power of my mind, the accumulation of strategic knowledge that has seen me through countless assassination attempts…
My right arm supports the Oracle’s back while my right hand rests at the nape of her neck, supporting her head.
My icy fingers feather her wounds, which are closed and no longer bleeding.
An awareness of the softness of her skin beneath her tacky blood.
The hum of the silver threads covering her body.
The scent of her hair is like sunlit roses, overcoming the coppery tang of death… Impossible life in a field of snow…
The whispering brush of her shallow breaths against my neck, her breathing a haunted melody filling my ears until it dominates my hearing.
A painful sound that squeezes my cold heart.
I have no way of knowing what happened to her while she was in the Iron King’s possession. I saw her only once during that time, drawn into a strange vision of her, our bodies connected by an icy-blue thread.
In that vision, she was backing away from the Iron King across a white rooftop, so determined to escape from him that she was in danger of plummeting off the edge.