Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Thyra
Tears flow down my cheeks, and jagged, black rocks bite my hands as I try to crawl across the dark earth.
Such a small distance. So impossible to cross when my body won’t stop shaking and everything around me keeps blurring, and I can barely breathe.
I don’t have the strength to stop the Frost King from killing Antony. All I have is my voice, and so far, it’s done nothing to move Stellen.
I woke to find myself draped over the back of a giant, white wolf, its fur tickling my face and neck as I lie parallel to its spine.
Despite the wolf’s careful attempts to stop me, I stepped into the snowstorm raging a mere two paces away from us, only to land on my hands and knees, unable to stop Antony’s death playing out in front of me.
“I am heartless,” the Frost King says to me, the softest whisper carrying across the distance between us, his voice a beautiful hum that defies the cruelty in his icy gaze. “The sooner I prove that to you, the better.”
His focus lingers on me for another moment, so devoid of emotion, so absent of regret that the weight of darkness threatens to claim me once more.
I fight my blurring vision, the pull of unconsciousness, and the increasing hollow where hope used to live.
The Frost King rips his other sword from the ice wall, the wind plucking his gray robes, swirling his white hair, every angle of his body breathtakingly relentless as he cleaves that blade toward Antony’s neck, ready to strike his head from his shoulders.
A heartbeat. A lifetime.
Antony’s eyes don’t leave mine, and never have I seen so much truth in them as he whispers, “Forgive me.”
Yes.
Just as the Frost King’s sword would connect, a shadow rushes over them.
The top of the ice wall at Antony’s back shatters.
I jolt as chunks of frozen water scatter across the ground, one of them narrowly missing me, another crashing past the white wolf.
A new barrage of frost and snow fills the air as my hazy mind tries to catch up with what happened, focusing on the monstrous blue eagle now shrieking across the top of the ice wall, ripping at it with his talons.
The Frost King leaps backward, landing at a crouch, somehow now holding both of his swords. He must have torn the other one from Antony’s chest when he jumped away.
But… No… That can’t be a good thing…
No longer pinned in place, Antony’s body slides down the ice, his head bowed, his jagged hair falling across his face.
I can’t tell if he’s breathing.
I don’t know if he’s alive.
A choked cry leaves my lips as Azul lands on top of the partially demolished ice wall, his wings spread, his head lowered toward the Frost King, screeching at him while his talons rip at the ice. Challenging. Threatening. Protecting.
Then, far more softly, Azul calls to me. The briefest call, his focus quickly flashing back to the Frost King.
Stellen rises to his feet, standing tall between us, both swords raised and ready.
For a long moment, they remain like that, the dank wind plucking at Azul’s feathers, tugging at the Frost King’s robes and wafting through Antony’s hair as he remains, slumped and unmoving, red blood smearing the remains of the ice wall behind him.
Slowly, the Frost King lowers his swords.
Then, with a firm nod to the eagle, he says, “I will leave you with your dead.”
No.
He continues. “But the living will come with me.”
Azul’s gaze swings to me, but the bird remains where he is, his wings now closing in a little as if he would cocoon them down and around Antony.
The eagle sends me another soft call.
Maybe he wants me to defy the Frost King and come to him.
Maybe…he’s saying goodbye.
Tears burn my eyes, but I’m too dehydrated to shed them. Too depleted to do anything more than slump to the rocky ground.
I’m barely alive. Barely awake. Unable to move, let alone fight. Let alone feel…
Nothing.
Far better to feel nothing.
Step by step, the Frost King returns to me, the ring of steel sounding as he slides his pearly-handled long swords back into their scabbards.
Still facing Azul and Antony, he pulls me up into his arms as if I weigh nothing, drawing me to his chest. My left arm is squished between us, and my right arm rests along my side.
He draws my head to his right shoulder, cradling me far more gently than I expected.
A quiet whistle leaves his lips, haunting in the heavy silence, and a moment later, weightlessness overcomes me, a sensation of lifting into the air before gravity takes hold once more, and I sense we’ve landed on the white wolf’s back.
Air rushes across my back as the powerful animal launches into a sprint and speeds along the mountain ridge.
Away from Antony and Azul.
I can’t see them, my face pressed too close to the Frost King’s chest.
His voice hums in my ear. “Use these moments to breathe, Oracle. The vampyrs will not let us go so easily.”
A moment later, we’re weightless again, my mind catching up with my body as we soar across a gaping darkness—a ravine. The wolf lands smoothly on the other side, turning and racing along the next ridge.
My best view is of the black sky above us.
A view that tells me danger is coming for us. Fleshy, white specks surge along behind us. And ahead of us.
And on either side of us.
As the white wolf speeds down a slope onto a flat plain, four swarms converge across the sky, filling the air with the chilling sound, not of shrieks this time, but of flapping material. Dark robes, torn and mangled, catch the air as they fly toward us.
The white wolf doesn’t slow, her growls reaching me through the black air, along with the Frost King’s whisper.
“You’re tired,” he says, a low murmur that makes my forehead pucker as I seek to see his face, but from this angle, I can only discern his sharp jaw and stern lips. “I know you want to sleep.”
More than anything.
His voice remains a whisper, a murmured hum. “You must not fall asleep.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is too dry, my lips working but no sound coming out.
His focus remains on me. Dangerously so. Confusingly, not paying attention to the vampyrs who will reach us within heartbeats.
“My power is almost spent.” The first hint of strain has entered his voice.
Is it pride? Or frustration? I can’t tell.
“It’s now up to you whether we live or die.” His focus finally flickers to the vampyrs, but he remains impossibly calm. Not a crease in his forehead, no widening of his eyes, no growing tension in his arms where they’re wrapped around me.
Softly, he adjusts his hold, and I shiver as his hand trails down my upper arm—my right arm—his fingers stopping to wrap around my wrist.
He lowers his lips toward mine but doesn’t make contact, his wintry breath cool and crisp, brushing across my cheek, my chin, my lower lip. “If you wish to survive, Oracle, you must scream.”
I blink. Try to work moisture to my mouth. To question him.
Scream?
He spoke so softly and calmly that I’m certain I misheard.
Then his gaze hardens, the light in his eyes becoming sharp and glinting with icy power. “Your voice is small,” he says. “Your hands are weak. You are a mere sliver of light, easily extinguished. But even a whisper from you right now will carry the power we need to survive.”
I don’t know what he means. If he’s speaking of my Oracle power and the visions that help me foresee and prevent harm to others, I don’t control those visions. Worse, they haven’t functioned properly for days.
I didn’t foresee that the hammer that had forged the Dragonstone Blade would spread darkness across the land or that I’d have to carry it into the bloodlands to contain its power.
I didn’t foresee that the hammer would crumble to dust and the black runes etched into its surface would transfer to my arm.
I didn’t foresee that the Iron Fae who burned me with iron dust five years ago was Antony’s younger brother Hadrian.
And I didn’t foresee that Antony would succumb to the vampyr bite that was inflicted on him when he was a boy, a fate that was not of his choosing and has now led to his slumped body propped up by a slab of melting ice.
His life and all the hope he dared to grasp…gone.
If Stellen speaks of my Oracle power, then it’s a power I don’t trust any longer.
His hand tightens around my wrist, a painful grip as he persists, commanding me, “Scream.”
I want to.
I want to rage at fate and every pain it’s brought me. My father’s death. Losing Antony. My own physical weakness, these heavy limbs, and this clouded mind.
Above us, the swarm closes in, the scent of decay filling my chest, a hundred fleshy, gleeful faces flashing toward us. Fangs and clawed hands bared and ready to tear us apart.
I try to push sound from my throat, but my body is finally shutting down. Whatever final surge of energy gave me the strength to revive is fading.
My rage is draining away with my life.
Tears I’m physically unable to shed burn behind my eyes as I turn my focus to the Frost King and his otherworldly countenance.
His long, white hair is icy pale, his pale-gray eyes like smooth stones but so near-white that they appear ghostly, and his high cheekbones, sharp and austere, but his lips…
They betray him.
Not icy. Not heartless.
His lips are forbidding and angry. Resentful. And maybe…regretful.
As each heartbeat brings us closer to death, he responds by raising his voice above a whisper for the first time.
Now harsh and cruel.
“Scream, Oracle,” he grinds between his teeth. “Or I’ll hurt you so badly, you won’t have a choice.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to respond. Not that I could.
His grip closes hard around my wrist, and he wrenches my arm up where I can see it, pressing his forefinger right over the image of the blade’s cross-guard.
Icy-blue power sparks beneath his forefinger, and I fear the pain he promised me for the split second it takes the thin line of power to shoot up my arm along the blade’s image.
His power streams toward the blade’s sharp point at the crease of my elbow, and with it comes—
Excruciating agony.
A scream rips from my throat, the sound rising and rising as my back arches and my mind attempts to tear from my body, needing to escape.
As if from outside myself, I experience a vast pulling sensation, a sudden constriction, a tightening all around my body, and then an immense release.
Light explodes around me. Sharp. Sparkling. Silver.
Maybe daggers. Maybe snowflakes. Maybe little chunks of my heart.
Within the explosion, the Frost King’s icy features imprint on my mind, eyes glistening with frozen teardrops, lips twisted with pain, while a rippling hum of sound washes around him and me. My scream. His voice. Too many shattered hopes. Nothing I can hold on to.
Pieces of myself spiral outward into the darkness, taking my mind with them.