Chapter 6 Stellen
Chapter Six
Stellen
The agony on Thyra’s face kills me.
It shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t be able to feel this regret.
But in the moment when her lips part and her eyes fly wide and her heartbeat thumps and her back arches, I hate the ice I trickle across her forearm.
The smallest spark to cause the deepest agony.
Then she screams, her voice carrying more power than she must be aware of, because if she understood the weapon she’s wearing, she would have fucking used it already.
She would have protected herself against the Iron King’s fangs, the vampyrs, and me.
She would have struck me down. Or tried to.
Her scream peals out around us, a rippling energy vibrating across her body.
With it, she triggers the Lethian armor.
Every thread separates, splintering outward, projected by her screaming voice.
My breath hitches as the impact of the Oracle’s scream hits everything around her simultaneously.
Nara stumbles, her teeth gnashing the air, her howl echoing as she skids to a stop, dropping to the ground, her legs giving way.
My hearing shatters, my eardrums burst, warm blood gushes down my neck as my arms are forced open.
Sparkling and silver, a thousand needle-sharp Lethian threads explode out from the Oracle’s body with a boom that rocks me to my core and leaves her naked in my arms, her chest settling to mine, her left arm sliding around my waist, her right arm aloft because I’m gripping her forearm as tightly as I can, only now shutting down my power because the damage—
The carnage the armor is causing—
The vampyrs cry out an instant before the razor-sharp threads spear through them, cutting them to pieces, countless blades shredding and tearing.
Filling the air with the hum of Lethian vengeance and then…
A deadly silence falls as the threads turn on me and Nara.
We’re stopped still, only halfway across this black plain, a sea of gleaming blades pointed at us from all directions.
I force myself to drag in a breath, drawing in air filled with the evil scent of vampyric blood, which, by some miracle, has not splattered us.
I expel my breath carefully. Slowly. While Nara remains kneeling in the black dirt, her head lowered and shoulders hunched, the rise and fall of her chest tells me how shaken she is.
With another carefully controlled breath, I draw to mind a memory I banished a long time ago.
It was the day we found Nara. The day after the Oracle’s birth, when a shower of stars had filled the sky with diamond-bright light, and I still believed that the female Oracle would end this endless war and herald a time of peace.
I was only five years old. My mother, heavily pregnant with my sister, had taken me out into the snow, a long way out, her footsteps stumbling, her white hair draped across her face to hide the bruises.
We walked and walked, and even as a child, I understood that she didn’t want to go back.
But then we heard the softest whimper, a sound so lost that Mother had stopped walking for the first time in hours and stepped off the path she’d seemed determined to take me along.
Beside a barren tree, we found a mother wolf, her chest still, her cold body protecting her whimpering cub.
A wild wolf. Not bred in captivity like all other white wolves I’d encountered in my young years.
The cub bared her teeth, snarling, clearly distrustful, nothing like the innocent, tumbling wolf cubs accustomed to being handled by fae, but Mother scooped her up without fear, humming…
Humming…
A melody of peace I long ago discarded because peace is fucking useless to me.
Now, I call it to mind. That simple tune. Difficult to remember. Even harder to hum. A melody that will ask the Lethian threads to spare Nara and me.
I’m rusty. I haven’t used my music since I turned my heart to ice.
I’m certain I’m missing some notes, clearly failing to hit the lilting melody my mother could when the silver needles remain taut, thrumming in the air, a continued threat.
My throat constricts again, my hum faltering, until I realize I’m still gripping the Oracle’s wrist.
She’s completely naked but held close, most of her nakedness obscured from my view while the tips of my white hair brush her upper shoulder.
Carefully, I lower her arm to her side, risking a glance at the spot where I pressed my power, expecting to see the mark of an ice burn.
Her arm is unharmed.
A part of me isn’t surprised. The Dragonstone Blade must be protecting itself. It certainly allowed the Oracle to experience pain, but the blade appears to have protected itself against any physical damage my ice could have caused.
I should be paying attention to the threads, but as I reposition the Oracle, I’m transfixed by the single tear glistening at the corner of her eye.
Frozen there.
As if my power struck through her arm and reached all the way to her mind.
My heart jumps at what this might mean. Damage. Pain. Or perhaps…
Liberation.
Her breathing deepens, and at that simple change in her inhalations, the Lethian threads relax, beginning a slow sway in the air, wafting in time to her breathing.
The tension unfurls from my shoulders, and I sense Nara relaxing a little, but I don’t take our safety for granted.
These priceless silver threads surrounding us… It’s clear to me they’ve bonded with the Oracle so deeply that their connection will only break if she dies. A powerful link, but one that could put her in more danger in my kingdom.
My people hate my Lethian heritage. For the Oracle to control so much thread that even I didn’t realize had survived the Lethians’ demise, well, the Frost Fae will despise her for it.
I don’t dare whistle a command to Nara because the sound will be too shrill, so I lean forward, careful not to crush the Oracle, and murmur as quietly as I can, “Nara, if you are able, it’s time to walk.”
She wobbles upright, finding her feet, and then slowly, she begins to pad across the black soil, once more toward the border.
Around us, the threads continue to swirl, parting up ahead to allow us through while gathering at our sides.
Dancing closer to the Oracle, the threads shiver and shake, creating a soft rain of blood and gore, shaking it off as they ripple after us.
I don’t react when the first thread returns to the Oracle’s body, wrapping gently across her back. Then the next. Then more.
One by one, they steal around her, reattaching themselves to each other, slipping through the gaps I’m careful to create between her body and mine while I make sure she remains secure and in no danger of falling.
Finally, the silver threads cover her body again, forming a tight-fitting suit of armor, leaving only her neck and head exposed, along with her right arm, where the blood bind has sullied the white ribbon.
I’m not surprised that the Lethian armor avoids contact with those runes. I’ve avoided touching them myself, although I won’t be able to keep that up forever.
The continuing silence behind us is unnerving. The number of vampyrs I killed on my way to the Oracle and the number that the Lethian threads slaughtered can only be a drop in the sea of the vampyr’s full population.
Perhaps they saw what happened to their brethren and are finally willing to forego the promise of blood so they don’t meet the same fate.
Or perhaps there is another reason…
Far, far behind us, I detect the ringing clash of iron blades along with the rush of billowing flames.
Too far away to tell for sure, but the darkness that spread across the Frost Kingdom may well have extended into the Iron and Ember Kingdoms too.
Whatever the reason, the air remains clear and quiet around us, a reprieve I sorely needed.
But now I face new problems.
Ahead of us, only a hundred paces away, the sky above the Frost Kingdom sparkles with new snow. The bloodlands’ northernmost side sits right at the southern border of my kingdom. Night was falling when I left, and now that it’s taken hold, a flurry of snow brings freezing temperatures.
The Frost kingdom is never so cold as it is at night.
I have no furs to cover the Oracle, nothing to keep her warm, and barely any body warmth to share with her.
My kingdom is most vulnerable to attack at night when even we Frost Fae retreat into our homes—a fact the previous Iron King tried to use against us, only to the detriment of his troops, most of whom died of hypothermia.
I am the only Frost Fae who can walk these storms at night, withstanding even the sharpest freeze. I do not feel it.
A gust of wind brings a hint of the icy temperatures that will hit us the moment we pass across the bloodlands’ border.
The Oracle immediately shivers in my arms, the heaviness of her body confirming she’s still unconscious, but her sudden shudder warns me she won’t survive long in a snowstorm.
Equally dangerous is allowing her to go much longer without hydration and healing.
But what choice should I make?
Do I stay within the bloodlands until morning and hope she’ll survive the night, rather than risk carrying her into a snowstorm?
Or do I rush her to the nearest tower, many of which have a healer, and hope she’ll survive the long and treacherous minutes it will take to get there?
Even the nearest tower is set back five hundred paces from the bloodlands’ border, a deliberate distance to allow visibility and time to mount a defense in the unlikely event of a vampyric attack.
Unlikely because the brightly lit sky above the Frost Kingdom has always deterred the dark creatures and even during snowstorms, the starlight is made brighter by countless reflections off glistening snowflakes.
If we do make it to a tower in time, what will happen?
Until this moment, I’ve ignored the fact that I don’t trust any of the healers. It’s for that reason I didn’t seek help when an assassin’s knife hit so close to my heart two nights ago, leaving me with damage I’m certain diminished my icy power during my fight with the Iron King.
Or…there could be another way.
A far more dangerous option that would force me to open my mind to yet another memory I’ve long buried.
I snarl into the wind, furious at my choices.
With the next gust of freezing wind that breaks across the border, the Oracle’s shudder draws her closer to me while the frozen teardrop continues to cling to her pale cheek.
Despite her convulsion, her heartbeat is dangerously weak.
Whatever I decide, I need to act fast.