2. Thyra
Chapter Two
Thyra
PRESENT DAY
Breathe.
A moment can be a lifetime, but my scream echoes in my ears and chaos pushes at my heart.
Fifty paces away across the snowy field, Stellen has collapsed to his knees, a dagger in his heart, a gash in his side, his breathing ragged and his heartbeats slowing.
Lilis, the woman we came to rescue, looms over him, her left arm held aloft, extended away from me, after she stabbed Stellen’s side.
Her jubilant cry hums in the air, joining the euphoric howls of the Northerners. They are shapeshifters, some of them in their fae forms while others have shifted into the shape of wolves.
Lilis has spilled Stellen’s blood and invoked the Winter Strife, a challenge for his throne.
He won’t live long enough to fight back.
We’re located outside a compound that once belonged to Stellen’s bitter rival, Iker Silversten, a Frost Fae who now hangs, along with his adult children, from the top of the wall. We didn’t kill them. The Northerners did.
I’m already running, a deep fury fueling my legs, giving me speed as I leap across the bodies of the Northerners killed in our battle moments ago.
The moment I move, the shapeshifters at my back give chase, but Nara, Stellen’s loyal white wolf, leaps into action behind me, her mournful howls at Stellen’s injuries becoming threatening snarls as she storms into the Northerners’ path.
I can’t risk looking back. I trust Nara to protect me.
As I run, I reach for the flapping pieces of my black training suit, torn during the fight, peeling the tattered pieces away to reveal the Lethian armor I’m wearing concealed beneath the suit.
This armor once belonged to the last Lethian queen and is made up of more Lethian silver than was thought to still exist in our world. Each thread was sung into being using the Lethian power over song.
The threads are bonded with me. Controlling them is now as easy as breathing.
Stellen was right to convince me to take off this armor before I spent a week in combat training with Lilis.
He was right to have her train me, instead of training me himself.
Because now I know how she fights.
Ahead of me, her left hand swings again, this time as she drives her dagger toward Stellen’s throat.
With a single swipe, she will cut through his neck and end him, and I’m still too far away.
Too far!
I push myself to move faster, straining to breach the distance before she can strike the final blow.
Stellen’s shoulders have slumped where he kneels, his head tipped back to see her.
Even as he sways on the verge of collapse, he doesn’t take his eyes off her. His long, white hair falls as far as the dagger in his chest and his lips set into a resigned line.
I wait for him to use his Voice to stop her. Will him to use his Voice, even if it hurts me in the process. I would take that pain if it means he lives.
He doesn’t make a sound.
He doesn’t make a move.
His stillness and his silence collapse my world.
Why won’t he fight back?
If it weren’t for his heartbeats, I would lose control of my fear and fury. Those shuddering beats keep me focused.
Beats I can hear with a power I shouldn’t have: Stellen’s power.
The cursed Dragonstone Blade is embedded on the inside of my right arm, its hilt in the palm of my hand and its tip pointing to the crease inside my elbow. The ivory ribbon in which the blade was once wrapped has also become like a tattoo on the surface of my skin.
But it’s the black runes now meandering along the surface of the ribbon that have formed a blood bind from which I can’t escape.
Until this morning, I didn’t know what the blood bind was doing to me.
Then I found out it’s siphoning the powers of the three kings and giving those powers to me. Slowly. Subtly.
I can see farther and jump higher because Antony, the Iron King, has those powers as part of his vampyric nature.
I’m warm in this freezing environment because of Maxim, the King of Ember, and his power over fire.
I can hear more sharply because of Stellen’s Lethian heritage and, although I’ve yet to develop any sort of power over frost, it seems I’m more coldly strategic because of his heartless nature.
It’s only because of the power I’ve unwillingly taken from him that I can hear his heartbeats now.
But it seems I’ve also diminished his power to heal. His heart was already weakened from an assassination attempt that happened before I came to Frost. When Lilis struck, his frost power should have congealed his blood before it could hit the ground, but it didn’t.
It’s my fault.
My legs strain. I’m closing the gap, thirty paces now, drawing on every shred of stolen strength to give me speed.
But as hard as I run, my heart breaks with the knowledge that I won’t make it in time.
I can’t get there in time.
Lilis’s blade slashes toward Stellen’s throat and—
Stops.
Her arm shakes where she presses the dagger into his skin without completing the killing blow.
Shock knocks me off course.
I quickly right myself, focus on Stellen, and mentally shout at myself not to squander these precious seconds, even if I don’t understand why Lilis has paused.
Her focus is on Stellen’s mouth, her entire body tensed, as if she thought…
Damn.
As I plow toward them, sudden clarity cuts through the chaos within my heart and mind.
Lilis knows Stellen’s dual powers better than most. His frost power and his Voice. She has been his general for years, walked the fine lines of the rules of this kingdom and somehow survived them.
Yet when she first struck him, she aimed for his side and his heart. She didn’t immediately strike his throat. She didn’t sever his greatest weapon like she could have.
As for the blow to his heart, the wood-handled blade juts from his chest, but now that I’m closer, I can see the dagger’s true angle. Just slightly off target. Enough to leave him alive.
Lilis is too skilled to miss.
Why, why, why? What am I missing?
I tell myself her motivations don’t matter. I’m twenty paces away now. So close. Nearly there.
My eyes widen when Stellen leans into the blade instead of away from it.
“Do it,” he rasps. “Your revenge is justified.”
Lilis’s hard expression crumbles and her eyes fill with tears. “After all these years, now you speak of justice?”
In that same moment, I’m aware of Brunkil, the leader of the Northerners, straining toward them. The vicious alpha crouches closer to Stellen than I am, his hulking body swathed in a fur coat, spittle coating the three braids at his chin, the tension in his body telling me he’s about to leap.
“Cut off Stellen’s head!” Brunkil roars, his voice guttural, his teeth sharpening to those of a wolf. “Bring me his head or I’ll fucking tear it off myself.”
A sob leaves Lilis’s lips before she drags in a sharp breath. “You should have ended me while you could, Stellen.”
For the first time since he fell to his knees, Stellen’s focus flickers to me. His unearthly eyes meet mine through the strands of his bloodied hair.
I don’t know what is passing between him and Lilis, what unspoken pain exists between them, but I know what he wants me to do.
He wants me to run. Not to him. Away.
Before the battle, he told me that if anything went wrong, I was to escape. He urged me to go directly west to the Alak-Teah, a protected forest where I can find safety.
Now, his unspoken command beats at me with all the fury of his cold heart: Run, Thyra. Stay alive.
He told me he would do anything to make the world safe for me.
He told me he couldn’t give me love, but he could give me the yellow ribbon that he braided into my hair.
He told me…
But his silences mattered more.
If I leave him now, I’m certain he will find his final silence. If he was going to fight back, he would have done it already. With his Voice, he could decimate every single being in this field. He could save himself.
Damn him for letting my heart break.
A fresh trickle of blood forces his lips to part, his soft murmur reaching my ears across the painfully short distance still between us. “Fear will not control me. Loss will not control me…”
Where she stands in front of him, Lilis gives a seething whisper. “Your cruelty is endless, Stellen Nas’Lethian.”
With that, she strikes.