Chapter 61 Thyra
Chapter Sixty-One
Thyra
Cold air slaps my face as we race toward the Frost Towers now visible on the horizon, but it isn’t the swarm of eagles flying above the towers that stops the breath in my chest.
Flames rage around each structure, black smoke billowing into the sky.
“Fire!” My gasp is snatched away in the wind, my jolt taking me closer to Stellen where he sits behind me. “How?”
For an impossible moment, I think Ember Fae must be attacking the towers, not Iron Fae.
Then the scent rising within the black smoke hits me.
Burning iron.
It seems to strike Nara at the same time. She was racing at full speed, but now she slows. The towers are far enough away that I’m certain we aren’t in danger from inhaling the smoke, but that will change the closer we get.
“Thyra.” Stellen demands my attention, his movements swift. He reaches past me for the satchel with the bread in it, quickly pulling out two cloth napkins.
I anticipate his intentions, reaching into the other bag—the one my cloak rests inside—to retrieve the waterskins.
Within moments, we’ve doused the cloths in liquid and wrapped the damp material around our mouths.
Stellen’s hands tug at the back of my head as he secures the knots.
He drops a whisper at my ear. “If this cloth comes away, you may need to consider using your Lethian armor to protect your airways, but only if you have no other choice.”
I nod to let him know I understand.
The material of my Alak-Teahan cloak will also provide me with options if I need them.
Up ahead, the fight appears to be pushing north of the towers. Not that it’s easy to make out. Despite the snow and the icy air, fires keep burning, sending more black smoke billowing outward.
Now another scent reaches me. A sweet aroma mixing with the smell of burning iron.
My brow furrows against the wind. “That smells like…” My eyes widen. “Thistleberries.”
Stellen takes a moment to respond. “Can oil be derived from the bark or seeds?”
“I don’t know. It was never mentioned.”
He makes a soft hmm before he says, “Only a highly flammable oil would burn like this.”
The air we race into is now filled with the sweet scent of the fruit I once so happily devoured.
A sweetness that brings horror as we draw nearer and the full devastation of the battle ahead becomes clear.
Eagles… White wolves… Frost Fae… Iron Fae… They’re tearing each other apart, all while choking on smoke.
Only three hundred paces away, an eagle falls from the sky, dropping to the ground beside a white wolf whose breathing is labored and slow. Both animals struggle to rise.
Horrified tears burn my eyes. A scream of fury rises to my throat.
Nobody will survive the burning smoke. “They’re fighting to die.”
Stellen’s command to Nara comes clearly. “Nara, stop! Don’t run into the smoke.”
He’s right. We might be able to withstand the acrid air with our face coverings. But Nara won’t.
She turns sharply to the left, veering away from the battle, not exactly turning back but angling farther away so she can run parallel to the towers while remaining in clear air.
All it will take is a strong wind and the acrid smoke will blow over us.
Stellen’s voice at my ear is colder than ever. “It’s clear Hadrian doesn’t care if his own warriors die. It’s also clear it’s a limited attack. Three towers directly south of the city. This can only be a demonstration of power. Intended to intimidate my army. And me.”
I grab Stellen’s arm where it presses to my waist. “You can stop this. Call back your soldiers. Use your ice to douse the flames. Offer the Iron Fae amnesty.”
My final suggestion makes him stiffen. “All I can offer the Iron Fae is a swift death.”
We’re nearly parallel with the second burning tower, the air so black with fumes that I can’t make out the fight within it. If, that is, anyone is still alive.
“Why is mercy not an option?” My disbelief punctuates my words.
“The Iron Fae are suffocating on smoke they’ve been ordered to fly into.
Just like the Frost Fae. You said it yourself: this is a demonstration.
How does any of this achieve anything except the glorification of the man you swore you’d make suffer? ”
Wrenching myself around on Nara’s back, balancing and then facing Stellen, I press my hand to his heart. “If you want to hurt Hadrian, then hurt Hadrian. At least give his people a choice.” Angry tears burn my eyes. “Stellen, give them a choice.”
His palm brushes my cheek, his voice a murmur. “‘You stand idly by, even though your ice could douse the flames.’”
I remember. That’s what I said to Stellen when I first stood before him, shaken and heartbroken, my hair dripping, the Dragonstone Blade gripped in my fist.
The hard press of his lips softens. “Your fury was justified then, as it is justified now.” His chest rises and falls with a deep breath. “Your fury drove me then. As it will drive me now.”
With that, he presses a hard kiss to my lips. A kiss that softens. “Stay with Nara. Stay safe. You will not join the fight. That is my condition.”
A condition I have no problem agreeing to. I won’t run senselessly into billowing smoke when I don’t have the power to fight it.
Stellen gives Nara a quick command to remain at a safe distance before he leaps from her back.
Landing lightly, he sprints toward the thick smoke, ice gathering around his hands, catching the light.
My belief in his strength and power is so absolute that only now do I consider the danger to him.
In the last week, I haven’t seen any sign of the damage to his heart, but he hasn’t had to fight any battles like this, not ones that require him to use enormous amounts of power.
My heart is suddenly in my throat and I’m berating myself.
Was there an alternative? Other than to wait for the smoke to clear and collect the bodies?
Nara comes to a stop, staying in the open air, while I fight my suddenly reckless impulse to follow Stellen into the haze.
The fumes swallow him.
And then—
Snow blasts across the air, a rippling explosion of icy powder bursting left and right.
The dark smoke parts and divides, great walls of it separated by a more powerful force.
Stellen runs through the middle, his arms outstretched, sending snowstorms to both sides as well as ahead of him.
Sparkling snowflakes dance and whirl, spiraling through the air while intense tornados of ice form, each one spinning across what I can now see are streams of blood-red oil still sliding across the snow, each stream spewing black smoke into the air.
With the clearing of darkness, I can also see eagles and wolves crouched low to the ground, and they’re…
They’re sheltering each other.
One of the eagles has its wing over a wolf, whose face is pressed to the eagle’s side, while the eagle’s beak is nestled in the wolf’s fur.
As soon as the air clears around them, the animals jolt upright. The eagle takes to the air, shooting through the clear patch and away. The wolf spears toward me and Nara, its eyes wild.
Behind them, Frost Fae and Iron Fae are hunched low, some of them still with weapons to each other’s throats while their other arms are thrown across their noses and mouths.
My heart sinks when some of them start fighting again. But lifts when others scramble for the open ground, following the stream of wolves escaping through the clear tunnel of air. Air sparkling with snowflakes.
A moment later, another eagle soars through the darkness above the nearest tower, and I expect it to land in the open ground, where it can breathe.
My brow furrows when the bird soars straight toward me, head-on.
It doesn’t slow down.
In that heartbeat, I make out something on its head, some sort of covering.
The rider’s face is also covered.
A moment later, the rider draws an iron dagger, the blade catching the light as brilliantly as the snowflakes filling the air behind him.
Nara’s menacing growl matches my own instinctive snarl.
This masked Iron Fae is coming to kill me.
Reflexes firing and muscles bunching, I cry, “Nara, get me up there. Don’t kill the eagle!”
She launches into a run, speeding straight forward as the eagle spears toward us.
I count heartbeats, barely any time at all before Nara leaps, carrying us high into the air and up into the eagle’s flight path.
I launch myself from her back.
In the instant before I collide with the eagle’s rider, I make out more of the protective shield strapped over his head. It’s fine grating that must enable him to breathe safely.
I can’t clearly identify the man behind the mask, but in that heartbeat, my focus catches on two parallel burns on his arm. Some sort of mark.
The eagle veers to the side. The man shouts.
He clearly didn’t anticipate me going on the attack and he doesn’t move out of my path fast enough.
I knock him off the bird, my left fist colliding with his shoulder, my right hand closing around his blade arm and, in that moment, I convince myself we’re standing on solid ground and not flying through the air.
I yank his blade arm toward me, the opposite direction of my punch, the two opposing forces dislocating his shoulder. His hand opens.
Snatching the dropping blade safely by its hilt before it can plummet away from me, I don’t second-guess my choices.
Fast as lightning, I ram the dagger into his heart, straight through his leather armor.
If he gives another shout beneath his mask, I don’t hear it.
At the same time, I’m aware that Nara has swiped her powerful paws across the eagle’s shoulders—without extending her claws—and has knocked the bird toward the ground, where she will no doubt pounce on it and keep it down.
I let go of the man’s body.
But now I’m falling too.
I convince myself I can tumble through the landing without breaking both of my legs.
At the corner of my eye, Nara touches the ground and turns, abandoning the eagle to launch herself into the air again, leaping for my location.
In that heartbeat, I convince myself all I need to do is hurl myself a little to my left, where I can land on her back—
Something hits me from behind, knocking the air from my chest.
Cold arms wrap around me and, for a moment, I think Stellen has plucked me from the air in a rush of ice.
But these arms are encased in black metal, and instead of sailing toward the ground, we fly forward, so fast that I can’t breathe.
Can only turn my head to the side, my cheek brushing cold steel, as a nearby forest of leafless trees rears up beneath me.
Between the trees we fly, rapidly descending until my feet touch ground, a landing so smooth that I don’t stumble when we set down.
The arms unwrap from behind me and I try to catch my breath, teetering in the middle of the snow, surrounded by gray, lifeless trees and a silence that’s somehow…
Breaking my heart.
Slowly, I turn.
A menacing male form looms only three paces behind me, fully clad from head to toe in black steel armor.
My heart…
Oh, my heart.
The man reaches for his helmet, sliding it from his head, baring all his savagery to me.
Jagged, black hair falls across glittering, green eyes. Seething breaths drag between perfect lips. And his fangs…quickly retract.
A thousand heartbreaking memories rush over me.
“I only came to make sure you were safe,” Antony says. Then, with a brutal smile, he murmurs, “You fucking took my breath away back there, Thyra.”
My hand flies to my mouth. I can’t stop my sob.
All this sadness. I had accepted it, but now it wells up again, tormenting me.
Antony is already backing away, even though my hand has risen, reaching for him.
I want to ask him how? How is he alive? How did he survive his fight with Stellen in the bloodlands?
But the answer isn’t important to me right now.
What matters is that he’s here. He’s alive.
His shoulders hunch as he takes me in, his jaw tensing. “Do not with your kindness.”
Another sob breaks from my lips.
Stellen may have given me many warnings, but he also gave me freedom to feel what I need to feel.
And to say what I need to say.
And no, I will not act from kindness now.
I will act from need.
A need that burns in my heart as I say, “Antony. Vampyr. King of Iron…” My voice hardens. “You will not leave me.”