19. Maxim
Chapter Nineteen
Maxim
Frost blasts from the heart of the storm, an explosion of ice obscuring my view of Thyra and my aunt.
I’m running, my fire pulsing, arms pumping as I race across the dunes, spearing toward them.
The women standing behind me all cry out at once.
Before the frost exploded, I saw what they no doubt saw: my aunt stabbing Thyra and Stellen retaliating.
What the fuck?
Why would Miriam do this?
My heart is in my throat as I blast through the dissipating ice and race into clear air.
I jolt to a stop.
My aunt lies on her side ten paces to my left. She’s awake. Alive. A frost burn raises a welt across her upper arm, the smallest of the injuries I imagined she could have suffered.
Stellen hunches over Thyra, rocking back and forth, but he’s near-shouting. “She cut the band. I thought she was going to kill Thyra. She cut the band. But I thought…”
The bloodied band that was strapped around Thyra’s hand and wrist now hangs severed.
Blood floats up from the cut ends, like liquid released from a vein, fat droplets defying gravity to stream up off the material and away from Thyra’s fist, amassing into an orb in front of her unconscious form.
“There’s no time to explain!” my aunt cries. “You have to trust me.” She clutches the ice burn with one hand while gesturing wildly at Thyra with the other. “The blood, Maxim! Burn the blood!”
“What?”
“Only your fire is hot enough,” my aunt says. “Close your hand around the blood and burn it. Now!”
A final droplet rises off Thyra’s fist, leaving her hand clean and joining the orb, which is now several inches in diameter.
The orb writhes in the air, already gravitating back toward Thyra’s hand.
I’m shaking my head, backing away. “I can’t use my fire this close to her.”
What if I lose control? What if I burn Thyra like my father’s assassin burned Antony’s brother? What if I maim her? What if I tear her body apart?
“Maxim!” my aunt screams.
“It isn’t safe,” I roar.
“Now it is.” Stellen’s determined declaration snaps my attention to him.
The corners of his mouth are turned down. Icy air wafts from his left hand, the finest particles of frost drifting around Thyra, cooling the space around us.
“I won’t let you hurt her.” He snarls at me, his eyes so pale, they could be made of the whitest snow.
The bloody orb has almost reached her hand again, tendrils of gore separating like fingers and stretching toward her wrist.
I drop to my knees, fear coursing through me so fiercely that my hand shakes.
Fucking hand! Fucking fear.
“Close your hand around the blood,” Miriam cries.
I scoop my palm behind the orb, slipping between Thyra’s arm and the writhing gore.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to scoop it all into my hand. The liquid is going to spill through my fingers and slip my hold—
Fuck it.
I close my fist.
The blood touches my palm.
And jolts. And spreads. Plastering itself to my hand.
Power beyond any I’ve ever felt strikes through me, freezing and burning and calming and agitating and blinding and illuminating. All at once.
What the fuck is this?
As if from far away, my aunt’s scream breaks through the buzzing in my ears. “Burn it, Maxim. Burn it!”
I snap my fist closed.
Flames explode around my hand without another thought, a release of heat from a cage I can’t control engulfing every inch of my arm from the tips of my fingers to my elbow.
Screams fill the air, sounds so horrifying that I’m frozen.
A girl’s voice. And a woman’s. Filled with terror. The deepest betrayal.
Across from me, Stellen flinches, all of his calm gone.
A second later, he hunches over Thyra, his eyes squeezed shut, his free hand pressed to one of his ears.
His other arm clamps around her, but that hand lifts toward his head, as if he would block both of his ears if he could.
His lips are moving. He’s whispering something, but I can’t hear it above the screams.
I’ve never seen pain like this.
What happened to him?
Whose screams are these?
The cries fade and the finest dusting of ash falls from my fingers, a final ember sparking before it dies.
I’m fucking shaking. My breathing is ragged. My fist opens and closes compulsively. My fire is doused, even though I don’t remember stopping it.
Stellen’s whispers reach me. “It is not the end. One day, we will Sing together again. Not the end… Not the end… One day, we will Sing together…”
He falls silent.
In his arms, Thyra takes a deep breath, her chest rising, her back arching.
I jolt toward her, watching for her eyes to open, but her chest deflates and she sinks harder against Stellen.
She isn’t waking up and around us, the storm continues.
Far behind me, I sense the Mothers’ heat chain wavering. They’ve sustained this warmth for far too long already. They must be exhausted.
My shoulders slump as I look to my aunt for answers. She stumbles across the dunes, daring to come near me, although her focus is on Stellen.
“Frost King.” Her voice is quiet. “May I examine the Oracle now?”
Without a word, he unclenches his arm, still supporting Thyra but allowing Miriam to tug the thick, white cloak farther away from Thyra’s form.
My aunt reaches for the pulse at Thyra’s neck, then raises Thyra’s eyelids to check her pupils before holding her cheek near Thyra’s lips.
With a deep exhale, Miriam leans back on her heels. “She’s sleeping.”
“Will she be okay?” Stellen’s voice is hoarse.
A little tension returns to Miriam’s eyes. “We won’t know until she wakes up.”
“Until then?”
“She must be cared for.”
He’s quiet for a long moment and Miriam doesn’t seem in any hurry to rush him to a response.
“I thought you were trying to hurt her.” He glances at the ice burn on my aunt’s upper arm.
Miriam grimaces. “I’m afraid that was my intention.”
Stellen stares at her. “Why would you do that? I could have killed you.”
“Because only with the greatest violence of intent could I have severed that band,” she replies. “You needed to feel it, too. The very air needed to fill with fear to coax the blood out.”
He narrows his pale eyes at her, cutting to the heart of my own thoughts. “You know a lot about blood magic, Sister of the Former King.”
Miriam squares her shoulders. “I’m not a Blood Fae, if that is your suspicion.”
Stellen’s lips compress. I understand his reasons for being disappointed. The blood bind on Thyra’s arm will need to be removed by a Blood Fae. If I thought for a second that my aunt was secretly a Merovian, I would have demanded her help before now.
Her shoulders slump as she continues. “I learned the hard way how blood magic operates.” She gives Stellen a hard look. “Just as you must walk a hard road now, King of Frost.”
She reaches for Thyra’s right hand, the fist that was covered in blood. Now that the gore is gone, I can finally make out a delicate, yellow ribbon wound around Thyra’s hand. The material hangs in multiple places where my aunt cut it.
Miriam lifts Thyra’s hand without touching the ribbon.
Then she gestures to the storm.
“Will you embrace peace, Frost King?” she asks Stellen, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “Or will you allow your pain to continue destroying our world?”