Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stellen
Cold fingertips brush across my lips, trailing ice to my jaw.
My eyes fly open.
Golden light flickers across my field of view, gently swirling in the air.
My heart’s strong pounding tells me I’ve regained my strength, but now I have a new problem.
Thyra leans over me, wide awake, her head tilted, her freezing-cold fingers edging toward my lips while her other hand, also bare, presses to my chest.
She isn’t herself.
Flawless are her eyes, her irises pearly gray like sacred stones, her hair pristine white, every strand like spun moonbeams coiled down her chest, and her skin as iridescent as snowflakes.
This is her blade face.
The mask she wore when the thread first connected us at the village, and it’s the face she wore when I saw her on the rooftop.
An icy countenance. As hard and impenetrable as a frozen lake.
She told me she has no control over or awareness of her actions during a blade vision. What’s more, the False Queen’s curse could be flowing malevolently through her body, dictating her actions. Endangering her.
Forcing myself to move slowly, I attempt to lift myself away from her lap, but her hand presses harder to my chest, her strength far greater than normal. Enough to push me back down.
“Thyra,” I say, keeping my voice low, avoiding my Lethian power in case it triggers a response from the magic that holds her in its thrall. “Will you let me up?”
“Hush,” she says, leaning over me. “This is where you should be.” She lowers her lips toward mine even as I attempt to angle away from her—difficult in the position I’m lying and the way she’s curled her right arm around my head.
I can’t see much of that arm, but I catch a glimpse of her bare skin from the corner of my eye, the shape of the Dragonstone Blade’s image is clearly visible.
At some point, she must have pushed her sleeve up all the way to her biceps. Residual light glimmers off her arm, another flare of golden energy glimmering softly before it fades.
When I was pulled into her blade vision before, it began with the flash of golden energy. If the energy is only fading now, then it means she hasn’t been consumed by the blade vision for long.
She remains close to me as she whispers, “Can’t you see that I’m perfect for you?”
No. This version of her isn’t.
I’ve interacted with Thyra for only a short time, and I already know that she’s like heated stones, radiating messy warmth. Heavy sometimes. Light sometimes.
Thyra is not this.
Testing my strength, I prepare to slide away from her, but she increases the pressure she’s exerting on my chest.
To extricate myself from her hold, I will need to wrench away from her, and I’m not prepared to do that yet.
Again, I can’t risk what the curse might do to her.
“You have trouble asking for help,” she says, easing the pressure on my chest, her fingertips dancing across my skin through the rips in my shirt. “You have trouble asking for what you want.”
My breath catches as her lips brush my jaw, intoxicatingly close to my mouth, the scent of her hair like icy roses, and the whispered air between her lips and mine becoming powerful in my senses.
She utters a question that carries the near-force of my ancestors’ voices. “Why don’t you simply take what you want? Why are you fighting it?”
With that, she presses closer to me, hooking her upper leg over my hips.
“You can do anything you want to me right now. I won’t stop you.”
Her voice is fucking intoxicating.
But my logic remains clear: this isn’t her.
At the corner of my eye, the dark runes on her right arm writhe along the image of the ivory ribbon, swirling and rearranging themselves.
I don’t know what they’re doing to her, but it can’t be good.
Somehow, I have to stop this before the runes finish doing whatever it is they’re doing.
Lightning fast, I pull myself up and away from her, angling so I don’t knock her backward, making it up to my knees, half-twisted toward her.
As fast as I move, she comes with me, leaning forward, her right hand flying to the back of my neck. Her fingernails dig into the side of my throat, wrenching me back to her.
She holds on to me with a strength that rivals my own as she snarls, “You’re a weighted stone, Stellen.”
My jaw clenches so hard that my teeth clack together.
Gone is the intoxicating lilt of her voice, and now she speaks harshly, cruelly, nothing like the way she spoke before. “You’re dragging me down. Keeping me from fighting my way free.”
Wait… My forehead creases… What?
She shoves her face into mine, her chest to mine, trapping her left hand between us. “You are the stone crushing me so I can never be what I was meant to—”
“Stop.”
This has to stop.
The blade vision on the rooftop ended when Thyra was about to step over the ledge, and I pulled savagely on the thread.
But I don’t have the thread now. It’s nowhere to be seen.
Panic is not mine to feel, but my options are limited, and a path to success is unknown.
The intensity of my uncertainty grows stronger as the black runes glow more darkly and Thyra’s icy gaze rips across me like a physical strike.
“Yellow ribbon,” she snarls. “I am nothing but a yellow ribbon—”
From my mouth comes a single, powerful command, sung with the force of my ancestors’ magic. “Stop.”
My Voice knocks into her.
It would have carried the perfect level of power to counter her new strength and move her back a mere few inches, giving me the space I need to find a better way forward.
Except that in the heartbeat that I utter my command, she transforms back to herself.
A heartbeat in which her eyes turn blue, her iciness vanishes, and her head smacks toward the stone.