9. Thyra
Chapter Nine
Thyra
Ihave a final moment of choice.
The blood-soaked ribbon gravitates toward my right hand, floating between snowflakes that jump and collide with each other as they’re pushed outward by the ribbon’s radiating power.
A power I’ve set free.
Energy thrums in the air between my outstretched fingertips and the ribbon’s bloodied edge, the gap narrowing with every beat of my heart.
What choice do I really have when hope has abandoned me?
What kind of rage could keep my shattered pieces from spiraling apart?
Without another thought, I snap my hand forward and close my fist around the dark material, snatching it from the air.
In that heartbeat, everything stops. The snowflakes suspend around me, the wind stalls, Nara freezes, and my thumping heartbeat suspends.
A single note chimes around me.
More beautiful than anything I’ve ever heard.
Within that sound lives a thousand moments of love and compassion and family, and then…
Destruction. Torment and pure, fucking wrath.
A thump of power tears through my arm, crashes through my chest, and drives me to the ground.
Whoomph.
Icy energy explodes out from me.
Out across the snowy field, ripping first at the vines I’m kneeling on, picking up the anvil and hurtling it across the snow, knocking Nara back even as she digs in her claws and tries to hold her ground. To no avail.
Only Stellen’s body remains as still as stone as a violent snowstorm kicks up around me with such speed that I can barely take a breath.
Fresh snow plummets from the sky and ice swirls up from the ground, the two colliding so furiously, so suddenly, that the world fills with a snowstorm within the blink of an eye.
I don’t have time to scream before the next pulse of power floods my hand, racing along my arm, crushing my heart—
Whoomph-whoomph.
The force knocks me toward Stellen. I hit the ground beside him, crushing vines as I end up on my side, my right hand dragged toward his chest. All around me, the storm rages and I’m aware of Nara crouching low, now at least twenty paces away, before the icy air engulfs her and I can’t see her anymore.
I tell myself she’ll be okay. She slept outside every night during snowstorms.
Whoomph.
The next pulse pins me against Stellen’s side but also wrenches my arm up off his chest. At the same time, the ribbon’s ends whip around the back of my hand and cross over themselves.
Within seconds, the bloodied band has wound in opposite directions around my wrist, tightening and tightening—
Whoomph-whoomph.
I cry out as the band cuts into my skin, but within my ears are other screams.
I hear Stellen’s Voice. A song of destruction that coats my tongue with the taste of death and the unending need for revenge. I feel his frost, every sharp bite lashing through my mind and body, echoes of vengeance taken.
I hear cries for mercy. So many screams, and I can’t close my ears to them.
This bloodied band holds his deepest pain.
And his worst brutality.
All the horror he put away so he wouldn’t hurt another innocent fae.
Now I’ve freed that fury.
I should be afraid. I should be in pain. This band has closed around my wrist like it wants to sever my hand from my body—would sever my limb if it weren’t for the Dragonstone Blade embedded in that arm.
But I’m not afraid.
Within my mind, above the roaring storm engulfing the landscape, I remember so clearly the Iron King’s admonition.
You always risk this hand.
His voice had ground from his lips as if he were gritting his teeth beneath his helmet. He told me I would never dare to touch his face with this hand if I knew anything about him.
And Stellen, when I was drained of blood and dying in his arms, told me that my voice may be small and my hands may be weak, but even a whisper from me would carry the power we needed to survive.
I hunch over him, my heart hurting and chaos building around me while he lies here, unmoved by the tempest. Unmoved by my grief.
Every part of his body untouched by the wind tearing at the air, a wind that screams like his heart must have screamed when everything he loved was taken from him.
Whoomph-whoomph.
“Stellen!” I scream as my right fist burns with ice and my body shakes. “Don’t you dare.”
Sobs tear from me as I push myself closer, a roar growing in my chest. “Don’t you dare leave me!”
I reach for his face with my left hand, tangling my fingers in his hair while the storm howls and the snowflakes grow sharper, striking at my back like knives.
“Stellen!” I scream. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
Chaos crushes my heart. I’ve fought too hard. I’ve given up too much already. Stellen has given up too much already.
Whoomph.
My fist collides with Stellen’s chest. “Don’t you dare give up!”
The ribbon’s power thumps outward, pounding through Stellen’s chest, jarring his body.
“You’re breaking my heart, Stellen Nas’Lethian.”
My sobs pull at the air, my voice colliding with the next whoomph of power.
A violent, savage roar fills the air around me, the wind collecting my voice and echoing it back at me, sending my heart spiraling.
Pounding. Thumping.
Whoomph-whoomph.
Icy energy shoots along my arm, striking from my fist to the tip of the Dragonstone Blade at the crease of my elbow. And then it ripples backward, toward my fist.
I don’t hesitate, punching Stellen’s chest as hard as I can. The pulse of energy reaches my fist as I connect with his heart. “Wake up!”
His body jolts.
A moment of hope strikes me.
But his eyes remain closed and his silence…
A wail leaves my lips. The pain in my hand is unbearable. Vaguely, I’m aware of a slippery sensation within my closed fist. Or maybe on the side of it.
My hand is bleeding.
Freezing-cold tears fill my eyes and I’m suddenly aware of how icy I am.
Frost creeps across the back of my hand and up my arm.
My whole body fucking hurts, the band squeezing my flesh with every destructive pulse.
My heart hammers too hard in my chest.
I’m shivering. Dangerously, my thoughts are becoming incoherent.
I battle through all of it, scream through all of it, striking Stellen’s chest once more with all my might.
“Come back to me.”
Once more, power explodes from the bloodied band, jolting through Stellen’s body, but still…
He doesn’t move.
Cries leave my lips, near soundless in the ear-splitting roar of the storm the blood-soaked band has unleashed.
A storm I unleashed, and now I can’t control it. Can’t stop it.
Won’t survive it.