Chapter 31 Thyra
Chapter Thirty-One
Thyra
The Alak-Teah has fallen completely silent.
The same way birds would stop calling from palm trees moments before lightning struck a coastal beach. The same way a hush would fall over the Iron Kingdom before nightfall when the threat of vampyrs was once more upon them.
Stellen is on his feet in an instant, his eyes narrowed and head tilted. “The storm has stopped. Nara has done what I expected. She has brought Lilis to us. That should be a good thing, but—”
He stops speaking and fear pushes at my mind, not least because it’s clear I’m about to encounter Lilis again.
She and two other Frost Fae cornered me at the village when the kings found me. She sneered at me, declared I was now their plaything, and told me she would enjoy my screams. She didn’t know who I was at the time. She thought only to torture information out of me.
Stellen quickly continues and the reason for his tension becomes clear when he says, “Nara and Lilis aren’t alone. There are three others with them.”
The dread swirling in my stomach intensifies. “Stellen?”
“I don’t recognize those three heartbeats.” His focus flashes back to me. “I judge we have only a few minutes before the scene outside this forest turns bloody.” He pauses. “Or perhaps, bloodier.”
I’m on my feet in a heartbeat. “Bloody? How?”
Is Lilis the aggressor, or is it the three unfamiliar fae?
Stellen doesn’t answer my question, looking me up and down, a calculated assessment.
“Even a single minute can be a lifetime. We will use this time wisely.” His voice is soothing, but his words are quick.
“For your own safety, keep your silver armor concealed at all times.
My people strongly distrust any Lethian relic.
“You should also consider that using your armor as a weapon may tear through the cloak and expose you to extreme cold, and I may not be able to repair the cloak in time to warm you. Not least because I must avoid using my Lethian power at all costs. Again, because my people hate it.
“When I leave this forest, I am the King of Frost. Music is my enemy, not my friend. You must remember this.”
Even though he speaks quickly, I don’t take any of his warnings lightly. He wouldn’t use this time speaking of anything that isn’t vitally important.
Rapidly, I pull my cloak sleeve down over my arm and hand, ensuring every inch of my Lethian armor is concealed and my body warmth is sealed in.
“The bites on your neck are visible,” Stellen continues, appraising my throat with a grim press of his lips. “I suggest you hide them behind your hair as much as you can. Otherwise, you may appear vulnerable. You must always hide your wounds in Frost.”
Just as he hid his own injury, admitting it only after he collapsed.
Closing the gap between us, he draws the coil of my hair forward across my neck. “Do not speak of how I kept you alive. My Lethian power is hated. If my people believe it has touched you, they may consider you tainted. Corrupted…”
Now, his voice thrums with power, a tantalizing hum carrying a command, the brush of his fingers beneath my chin a reminder of the heat that sustained me.
His lips descend toward mine, his arms sweeping up behind me, but he stops before his mouth would make contact. “A corruption that I must not indulge in again, do you understand?”
My body doesn’t. Even if his logic is clear.
His explanation was short but powerful and not unexpected: every kingdom has wiped out its Lethian population. It follows that he is an abhorrence to the Frost Fae and they must consider it far worse that he is their king.
But my body…
My body understands none of that. My body wants to stay here in this forest, peel off this warm cloak, immerse in the warm water, and float to the sound of Stellen’s Voice.
His fingers feather the material at my throat, running around the base of the hood, stroking my neck as he tugs the hood up over the back of my head.
“As for how you got this warm cloak,” he says, “I pulled it off a dead Alak-Teahan and gave it to you.”
I press my lips together for a moment. “How did this fictional Alak-Teahan die?”
“I killed it, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But only after a fierce battle. Travel into this forest must remain forbidden for all other Frost Fae.”
I have no quarrel with that. Far better that the Alak-Teah are left in peace.
But now, as Stellen falls silent for a moment, I have a concern for my bodily needs and an uncertainty about whether I have time to address them. “Uh…I really need to…”
He nods quickly. “As do I.”
It seems he was already ahead of me because he points to a spot to my left. “Walk four paces that way into the mist. The ground is clear, so you won’t trip even if you can’t see well. I sense there’s a boulder to the left that should provide shelter for what you need.”
The best I’m going to get.
I hurry into the fog, praying the Alak-Teah won’t see my rushed approach as a threat. Or be offended that I’m about to use their beautiful forest to relieve myself.
Within moments, I find the boulder, figure out how to adjust the cloak, take care of myself, and make it back to the clearing.
I find Stellen washing his hands in the pond, as if he had all the time in the world.
I bend to do the same, my sense of urgency clashing with the peace around me.
As if he reads my thoughts, Stellen says, “Take peace where you can find it, Thyra.” He leans back from the water, pressing his palms to his knees. “Like snow on a battlefield. Every snowflake is perfectly formed. No matter the blood splattered across it.”
He cups his hands around the water and drinks before rising to his feet and waiting for me to do the same. “Come.”
His hand finds my elbow as we step around the rock pools and into the mist.
A minute later, we step from the fog into the forest, its webbed boundary ahead of us along the path.
Now that I’m able to study this part of the forest, I make out the same thick webbing spread across the top of the forest between the boughs above us.
A barrier against anything and everything outside.
If I were to fly over the top, this place must appear as an enormous impenetrable cocoon. Its contents are a mystery.
The tilt of Stellen’s head makes it clear he’s listening intently as we approach the end of the path and reach the webbed boundary.
The opaque wall prevents me from seeing what lies outside the forest, and I strain to hear…anything at all that might tell me what’s going on.
Stellen has paused in front of the webbing. He leaves his swords in their scabbards, the rips in his clothing gaping a little as he raises his hands to the webbing.
“I must use my Voice one last time to part this webbing, but the moment we’re exposed, I’m certain danger will be upon us.
Step directly ahead. The snow cover will be shallow now.
” He gives me a cold smile. “An uncanny outcome of our nighttime snowstorms is that the wind clears the ground. Sometimes, it exposes things that should stay buried.”
He turns back to the webbing. “Now. Be ready.”
I’m not sure how fast I can move in the cloak. It’s bulky by design, intended to keep me warm, not agile.
Even so, I say, “I’m ready.”
Stellen hums a note. Clear and crisp.
The webbing parts in an instant, unraveling from a point above us and pulling apart as sharply as if he’d slit the shield from top to bottom with his sword.
He moves swiftly, drawing both of his weapons from their scabbards as soon as his boots crunch the snow.
As I step forward, he moves rapidly out in front of me.
I wasn’t expecting him to turn himself into a shield.
In the seconds before his body blocks my view, I take in the scene in front of me.
My heart shoots into my throat.
Twenty paces away and to my right, Stellen’s white wolf, Nara, paces back and forth, snarling savagely.
Nearby to Nara, Lilis is down on her knees in the snowy field, her damaged armor glinting in the early morning sunlight.
Her porcelain face is bruised. Blood flows from a cut above her eye, drip-dripping past her chin. Her purple eyes are wide, tears mingling with blood on her cheeks.
Behind her looms an enormous man wearing a dark fur, his big fist gripping Lilis’s silvery-white hair, right at the scalp.
He’s unlike any fae I’ve ever seen before.
His face is scarred, his hair is matted, and his skin is leathery. He wears a beard braided in three places. A thick fur rests around his broad shoulders and falls to the ground, covering his tall frame, his height rivaling Stellen’s.
A gray wolf, not giant like Nara, the size of a big dog, rests on its haunches on the man’s left, sniffing the air.
A white crow perches on the man’s right shoulder, cawing softly into the near silence.
These must be the three unfamiliar heartbeats Stellen spoke of.
A man. A wolf. And a crow.
But behind them…
Oh.
Stellen’s tall frame can’t shield me from the blood-splattered field.
Silver-armored bodies are strewn across the white expanse, Frost Fae missing heads and limbs, the carnage making it impossible to know how many have died. It could be five or maybe ten.
“Northerner.” Stellen’s tone is flat, no intonation at all, a sharp contrast to the powerful melodies he’s capable of making. Such a difference that it’s like a slap of ice across my face.
A much-needed slap that shakes me from the stomach-churning horror of the sight in front of me.
I hear, rather than see, ice form across Stellen’s blades as he holds them in front of himself, and I recognize the shifting muscles across his back as he frees up one hand, no doubt having bound both blades to one fist.
“King of Frost,” the man growls, a sound like a snarling beast rumbling from his mouth. “This woman tells me she’s your general.”
He shoves Lilis to the ground, ripping strands of her hair, his boot stamping toward her as she plunges to the snow.
She moves quickly, tumbling to the side before he can stomp on her back, bringing herself fully into my view. Springing back to her feet, she sprints toward Stellen.
The Northerner’s foot hits the empty snow, but he guffaws loudly. “Well, she moves fast. But not faster than Fable.”
The wolf’s ears prick up, and a second later, it launches forward, streaking across the snow after Lilis.
Just as the man said, the wolf is fast.
Faster, it seems, than a Frost Fae.
Lilis screams as the animal hits her back, knocking her down a full five paces away from us.
I have no love for Lilis, but a cry strangles in my throat as she rolls and thrashes, managing to get her arms up to protect her face while the wolf gnashes at her throat.
For some inexplicable reason, she doesn’t blast her frost power through the animal to defend herself like she could.
I jolt toward her, only to meet Stellen’s firm hand.
He hasn’t stepped in to help, and Lilis hasn’t screamed for assistance.
Oh, those damn rules about asking for help!
While the gray wolf snaps and snarls at Lilis’s throat, barely refraining from biting her, Stellen nudges me farther behind him.
The Northerner raises his voice across the distance. “You can’t protect her forever, King of Frost.”
It isn’t clear to me if he means Lilis. Or me.
Beyond keeping me where I am, Stellen appears unmoved.
I’m sharply reminded of his admonition to me when he told me that to survive in Frost, I must understand cruelty.
I can’t see his face, but it seems he barely gives Lilis a glance before he replies, still monotone, “What do you want, Northerner?”
“Your head, King of Frost.” The Northerner points at the bloodied snow to his left. “Ripped off. Like that head. Or that one.” A laugh rumbles up between his lips as he gestures to a third body. “Possibly that one.”
He leans forward as if he expects Stellen to rise to the bait, but still, Stellen barely moves.
An uncanny silence falls, broken only by the gray wolf’s snarling.
Lilis lies mostly still now, her arms up over her face, but her gaze, brilliantly purple, is pinned to Stellen. As if his stillness is somehow…
A comfort to her. A certainty.
The Northerner’s upraised arm drops to his side, but he is clearly not dismayed by the lack of response, because one corner of his mouth twitches upward.
A brutal smile. A vicious light in his eyes.
He tugs at one of the braids in his beard, flicking blood off it.
As the droplets hit the snow, Stellen gives the quietest sigh. “Many have tried to end me.”
“But I will be the last,” the Northerner replies. “My people will no longer live in the shadows and swamps of the Northern Wilds. It’s time for us to come out into the light and live as we deserve.
“I, Brunkil, King of Wolves, will end your reign, Stellen Nas’Lethian. And with your death, I will end the tyranny of all Frost Fae over my people.”
Stellen’s posture doesn’t change.
His breathing doesn’t change.
“Then let’s begin,” he whispers.