Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
Thyra
Idon’t know the identity of the man speaking with Lilis in my Oracle vision, but I can’t forget the way he looked at her.
The way his hand had risen to the wayward strands of silver hair escaping from her braid.
The quiet desperation in his gaze as he and Lilis stood inches apart in the shadows next to a carpentry, his back pressed to the alley wall, her blade at his throat.
I can’t ignore any of what he told Lilis.
If Iker’s dying, then Stellen has real power over Iker.
Stellen can use me as a bargaining piece, exactly as he wanted. Just as he told me he would right from the beginning.
“You want your enemies dead,” I say. “Now is your chance.”
Stellen’s snarled response sends a shock down my spine, his voice a wash of harmony that floods my senses and spills warmth through my chest. “The best strategy is never the one that puts you in danger, Thyra.”
I drag in a ragged breath, suddenly needing to see his face.
Twisting on Nara’s back, I slip free of Stellen’s hold and deftly stand, balancing without hurting Nara before I lower myself down, facing Stellen.
Before I can seat myself, he pulls me forward onto his lap so I’m straddling him, one of his arms pressed firmly around my backside, near-pinning my pelvis to his, while his other arm slides up my back.
Darkness shadows Stellen’s pale eyes.
I catch my breath, trying to focus past the sudden heat in my core. “Iker is clearly too weak to fight, let alone to come for me himself, and what’s more, he’s trying to hide it. If you take me to him—”
Stellen’s arms close so tightly around me that I’m crushed against him, the air compressed out of my chest and words halted in my throat.
“Let him die,” Stellen says. “Let his heirs fight for supremacy. One will win and everything will go on as it has been.”
“If Iker’s desperate, then he’s volatile. Right now…today…you have the power to stop any irrational actions he may take.”
The chilling downturn of Stellen’s mouth banishes the warmth in my chest. “He would hurt you, Thyra. I will not allow that.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“No.” He presses forward, his mouth meeting the corner of my lips.
“No,” he says again, more softly this time.
“Why does it matter to you if I’m hurt?” Again, I search his eyes and now, his silence is heavy. “You wouldn’t want me killed, obviously. But you warned me harm would come to me.”
“I did.”
“Then…?”
“Why are you arguing for your own destruction?”
“Because…” If I dig deeper, what I saw in my vision has unsettled me and not only because of Iker’s potential volatility.
Stellen heard what I heard, but he didn’t see what I saw. “Because of the way that man looked at Lilis. Whoever he is, he loves her. He doesn’t want her to get hurt. That makes him either a potential ally…or very dangerous.”
Stellen gives me a nod. “I’ve met that man. I don’t know his name. But I agree he’s dangerous. As are you, Thyra.”
His hands tangle in my hair, his touch light, tingling against my scalp.
I’m reminded of where I’m sitting and how easily he pulled me to him. How naturally I settled into this position and how long I’ve remained here.
Both of his hands rise to my face, his thumbs brushing across the furrow in my brow. “Do you remember what I said to you in the Alak-Teah?”
My eyebrows arch upward. “All the things.”
The press of his lips softens. “Take peace where you can find it. Especially here.”
The white expanse appears endless, sparkling with fresh, untrodden snow. It looks like we’re the first to pass along this way today.
Off to my left, the branches of a sparse patch of trees stretch toward the sky, boughs dripping with frozen icicles instead of leaves.
The frozen landscape is both terrifying and breathtaking.
“Do you hear the breeze sighing?” Stellen’s fingertips pause at my jaw, one of them brushing my earlobe. “The crunch of snow beneath Nara’s paws. The distant drip of melting ice off bare branches.”
I close my eyes and listen.
The quiet sounds.
My right hand was already pressed to his heart and now my left hand rises to his neck, brushing the skin beneath his chin. The two places he told me to feel for sound when he taught me how to communicate with my armor.
Every breath he takes seems to audibly hum beneath my fingertips.
Every beat of his heart feels louder than the last.
Slowly, I remove my hands, slip away from him, rise to my feet, and turn to face forward again, feeling the burn of his gaze even more acutely now that my awareness of our surroundings is sharper.
Lowering myself to Nara’s back, I angle close to Stellen, my back to his chest, reaching for his arms again, drawing his right hand to my heart and his left hand to my jaw. His fingertips brush the skin beneath my chin.
“Will you tell me more about what you can hear?” I ask, sensing the hum of my voice beneath his fingertips and the way his tension seems to fade.
For the next two hours, we travel across the icy landscape and Stellen describes to me all the things I can’t see.
The maze of underground streams deep within the earth.
The burrowing of field mice in fallen branches half submerged in snow.
The small, green shoots that can be found in patches beneath the icy surface.
The fields of tubers from which flour is made that sustains the population.
The wind billowing from the dust-covered mountains far ahead of us in the east…
By the time we ascend the slope to the Sacred Stone Temple, listening to Stellen’s voice has drained all of the tension from my body.
But now the temple is near and with it comes an anticipation I’ve kept at bay.
Stellen said there were not only scrolls, but maps here. Pieces of information that could help me.
“Are there any magical protections I should be aware of?” I ask. “Any barriers to entry?”
“None. This temple is open to all. Although none but the foolhardy come here.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I come here.”
The moment Nara pulls to a stop, I move to slip from her back, only for Stellen to tighten his hold. “Thyra, what you find here could cause you pain. Go carefully.”
He opens his arms, and I slide more slowly to the ground, my warm boots crunching in the final snow before I step onto the path leading to the entryway.
The temple is a simple but beautiful structure, clean lines rising upward. As I make my way up the path, I cast around for any sign of the sacred stone that this place might be named after, but there are no rocks anywhere, neither small nor large.
Hanging back, Stellen murmurs quietly to Nara. Too quietly for me to hear. She snarls a response and then settles onto the snow.
Stellen approaches me more slowly than I was expecting, his footsteps heavy, and he doesn’t surge past me.
He inclines his head at the entryway and I hesitate only another moment before I step inside.
A simple hall greets me, an open space lit with alternating purple and pink light shining through stained glass windows along both sides.
“That way,” Stellen says, gesturing toward the back of the hall, where I spy a darkened stairwell. “Go down the stairs, but don’t touch anything. The shelves are coated with ice that will burn the skin off your hands. I will retrieve anything you want.”
Reaching the shadowed stairway, I descend carefully into a small alcove before I step into a large room.
Here, the walls are covered in shelves while two freestanding bookcases are bolted to the floor to the left of the room’s center.
My breath catches at the sight of the rest of the room.
Broken wood and papers are scattered across the space. What might have been two more bookshelves lie in jagged pieces all the way to the other side of the room.
“What happened here?”
Stellen taps his heart. “This is where the assassin struck. My power took care of his remains, but I wasn’t able to clean up the broken shelves and books and…”
His eyes are shadowed again.
“Stellen?”
“I wanted to bring you here sooner. But also, I didn’t want to bring you here at all.”
I’m about to ask him why, but his focus has shifted to a point on the far side of the room.
I follow his line of sight to the open door situated to the far, right-hand side, its location preventing me from seeing directly through it.
Stellen takes a deep breath, his chest expanding, his expression becoming blank. “You deserve closure, Thyra, even if it’s painful.”
I step warily to the right.
At first, all I see through the far door is the end of a table, then the edge of some sort of large case, clearly made of ice because it’s both transparent and visibly radiating frosty air, and then—
A cry leaves my lips.
I jolt forward, nearly tripping over a broken shelf in my path before I push forward, somehow making it to the far door and into the room behind it.
Where my father lies in an icy coffin.
I rush forward, stopping only when the frozen air wafting around the case bites at my body.
My father looks peaceful. He looks…exactly as he was when I left him, his eyes closed, his body perfectly preserved, as if he could be sleeping, not dead.
Oh, no…
I’ve held back this grief with all my might.
A flood of sorrow rushes over me, too sudden for me to handle, too much for me to process.
I never expected to see him again. I despaired that I couldn’t bury him, that I had to leave him behind, slumped beside a carpentry building nearly blown apart by ice and fire.
Now he’s here, and suddenly, I’m reliving the horror of the moment when I found him collapsed with a dagger in his chest, my terror and confusion when he told me to unwrap the blade, and the soul-crushing sorrow when I realized he was already dead, and I can’t…
“I can’t feel this right now.” I stumble backward, forcing myself to move, only to bump into Stellen’s chest. “I can’t break down. I have to keep going. I have to—”
My knees buckle and Stellen is there, catching me as I fall, scooping me against his side, cradling me as he sinks to the floor with me.
A wail passes my lips. “I can’t do this! I have to keep going!”
“You don’t,” he says, his lips pressing to my forehead, my cheeks. “You’re allowed to feel this. You have time. I’ve given you time, Thyra. You have to feel this or it will become darkness.”
I tip my head back, tears rushing down my cheeks.
He’s right.
Darkness is pressing against my heart and mind. It’s been seething within me for days.
“Why?” I ask, my sorrow intensifying, layer upon layer of grief breaking through the protective shields I’ve built so carefully. A torrent I can’t stop and is too much for me to bear. “Why did you do it?”
Stellen has frozen, his arms clamped around me, my body cradled against him, but I see it in his eyes.
He knows I’m not talking about my father.