by S. W. Clarke
“That was why. Little good it did, with how obstinate you were.” She glanced at Liara. “Though it seems you trust a Youngblood more highly. At least she’s done you some favor.”
I glanced at Liara and Eva, her two proteges in House Whisper.
Liara stared on at Frostwish, scrutinizing her. Meanwhile, Eva met my eyes. She looked uncertain.
Liara? I said into her head.
I She paused. I don’t know. I can’t read her, but what other choice do we have?
Then it hit me. We had a guarantee.
I pointed at Frostwish. “Swear your intentions on the fae rite of goodness.”
Aidan shot me a look, clearly baffled. He was supposed to be the one who knew about things like this.
Frostwish’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, little historian. Well done.”
I said into my friends’ heads: It’s a rite all fae must abide by. If they swear on the rite, they will be cast aside from the path of goodness if they break their oath. It’s the worst fate for a fae.
Smart thinking, Liara said. For a human.
“No matter.” Frostwish thumped one closed fist over her chest. “I swear my intentions to aid you on the rite of goodness.”
I could practically feel our window closing, and it was getting harder to maintain my likenesses. “Good enough for me. Let’s get this goddamn chain and go.”
Frostwish swept a hand out. “I’ll follow your lead.”
I took a quick breath, pointing the rod toward the lake. As one, my likenesses did the same with their empty hands.
From where she hovered, Frostwish flicked both hands out, a wave of purple magic flowing toward us. The moment it swept over me and the likenesses, I felt the whole world open up.
Finally, I could breathe. It was as though blankets had been lifted, and the magic flowed as easily as it did when I trained with Liara beside the pond at the academy.
This time, it would work.
“Scream it,” Frostwish instructed. “As loud as you can. Give it everything and nothing less, and then you may be worthy of the chain.”
I brought as much air as I could into my lungs, filling them until my throat caught. And then I poured out everything I had, leaning forward to yell the words out over the lake, my likenesses doing the same.
As one, all three of us as one.
The hex rushed from the bluff out over the water, carrying through the tundra and disappearing in amongst the trees.
Above us, a cloud passed over the moon, obscuring the brightness of the night. And below us, the lake remained placid and still.
It hadn’t worked. It hadn’t—
“Wait.” Eva rushed to the edge. “Did you see that?”
Aidan and Liara came to either side of her, staring out.
I came last of all, my likenesses disappearing. And when I arrived, the water’s surface trembled, rumbled, the center of the lake bubbling.
The bubbling seemed to go on for ages, until finally, as the cloud moved past and the moon’s light rushed back over the world, something emerged.
A metal link glinted in the night, the edge of it rising straight up out of the water. Link by link, inch by inch. Up and up it went until ten feet of it hovered above the lake in a vertical line.
The cursed chain.
“Beckon it,” Frostwish said. “The chain will come.”
I extended the rod out, and the orichalcum chain sensed the nearness of its element. It rose toward me in a swift arc—
And was caught by Frostwish.
The chain went limp the moment her hand wrapped around its middle, hanging long from her grip. As it did, the stifling sensation returned around me, pressing in.
The power of the leylines was back in full force.
I stared at her. “Bring it to me.”
She shook her head slowly, side to side. “No.”
“But the rite—” Aidan began.
The truth descended on me even as Liara voiced it.
“She’s already left the path of goodness,” Liara said in a whisper. “She left it long ago. She lied.”
Frostwish lifted one end of the chain, her fingers running along it. “Do you know which is the most powerful piece of the weapon, fire witch?”
I gripped the rod hard. “Whichever I’m holding.”
“Wrong.” She snapped the chain out, and the rod slipped from my grasp with a whistle, rushing toward Frostwish. “It’s the largest one.”
The rod raced through the air, the chain’s end slipping through it and seating itself at the far end—in Frostwish’s hand. I heard a mechanism clank into place, and I knew now the chain could not be separated from the rest of the weapon unless it were sundered again by a great mage. And the great mage who’d originally separated the pieces had died five hundred years ago.
Frostwish had taken the chain from me, just like Rathmore had once taken the liar’s key. This was different than when Umbra had taken the key, which had returned to me when I’d moved more than six feet away from it. Both Frostwish and Rathmore had overridden the weapon’s bind to me.
And I suspected I knew why.
“You serve her,” I said. “You serve the Shade.”
Frostwish tested the weapon, racing forward and snapping the chain out toward Liara, who ducked away just in time. “Serve? I wouldn’t use that word. But she and I are in agreement: this world thrived best under one queen’s rule. Her name was Raven Murkwood.”
In the distance, I heard the sounds of scuffling over the tundra. When I glanced back, I saw them.
The Shade’s creatures. Hundreds of them, rushing from every side.
I raised a hand, expecting it to ignite. But nothing happened.
“You’re exhausted, fire witch.” She flicked the chain back toward her, hovering closer. “No one—not even a witch—fire rides and burns a fae in the same hour.”
I stepped toward Noir. “Aidan, get on Siren.”
Behind me, I heard Frostwish whispering. Her words sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t have time to focus on them.
No response from Aidan.
When I glanced at him, he was frozen on the spot, his face a rictus of grim horror.
The paralysis hex.
I spun. “Eva—”
Her scream ricocheted through the tundra as I spoke, and she dropped to her knees, her wings stretching wide with agony. But there were no wounds on her, nothing obviously wrong…
“It’s the agony hex.” Liara swept by me, rushing at Frostwish. “She knows them all.”
The agony hex?
Liara’s lightning illuminated the night, a jagged streak that brought Frostwish into relief the moment before the metal links of the chain swung around—faster than any lightning—and slammed into Liara.
“Foolish fae.” The chain swung back around, whistling through the air. “If you interfere again, you will die. And I had not wished for that.”
My vision had been seared by Liara’s lightning, but I still saw her drop. The moment the chain had made contact with her body, she’d fallen like a rock onto the bluff.
Frostwish had hexed her in midair.
Now she writhed. Now she screamed just like Eva.
The agony hex. With the chain, Frostwish could hex three people at once. Maybe more.
I didn’t exactly know the power of the chain, but I was beginning to understand. It was cursed, and so it cursed whoever touched it.
In the darkness, I heard the chain come back around. It was making another revolution, and I knew I was next.
A small form landed on my shoulder. Loki. “Mount Noir.”
But Eva and Aidan and Liara…
“Get on the horse.” His voice was more intense than I had ever heard it. “Get out of the knot. She’ll follow.”
Then I understood: out of the knot. We had to be outside the leylines’ trefoil knot of interference to fight Frostwish and the creatures.
Without the weapon, it was my only chance.
I grabbed Noir’s
mane, swung myself up onto his back. My thighs squeezed his ribcage, and he started into motion down the bluff, the chain slamming over the ice right behind us.
She had missed.
She believed there was only room for one fire witch in the world. The Shade. Frostwish had taught me hexes so I could raise the cursed chain from the lake, and so she could return it to her mistress.
“She didn’t hex me,” I breathed.
“Because you’re a witch, Clementine,” Loki said. “You’re a witch who knows the art.”
Of course. The more you practiced certain hexes, the greater your resistance to them.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t kill me by other means.
“How far does the knot extend?” I said to Loki.
“Let’s hope not far.”
Ahead of us, the creatures rushed up the bluff. I knew I couldn’t fire ride without the weapon, not while we were still inside the knot. Which meant I would have to use old-fashioned means.
I leaned close to Noir’s neck, urging him into an all-out gallop as we reached level ground. “Hold on.”
“If I held on any tighter, you’d have permanent scars. Now light them up, Clementine.”
I was about to object, to tell him I was exhausted, but with him beside me I had the odd sense I wasn’t as exhausted as I’d thought.
I lifted one hand as we came closer to the first throng of creatures. Five points of fire appearing on my fingertips on the first try. Thank you, Goodbarrel.
I squinted into the darkness, waiting for the right moment. When I flicked my hand, five sparks flew through the air, met the creatures ahead of us, and ignited. It wouldn’t kill them, but it knocked them wide of our path.
We swept by the first five creatures, their bodies aflame, and rode deeper into the tundra.
Chapter Forty-Two
We left a trail of flaming creatures in our wake, Noir weaving and dodging, snorting with the dime-stop movements and exertion.
This was just like Farrow’s barrel training, except the barrels would kill us.
“Eleven o’clock,” Loki called out.
“I see it.” This time my left hand rose as though I carried an invisible spear, and the flames illuminated in my grip as my arm jerked and threw it at the four-legged monster.
It pierced straight through his head, left a flaming hole where his head had been.
It threw him, but didn’t stop him. Only two elements together would stop them.
“Is she chasing?” I asked Loki; I didn’t dare look over my shoulder.
Ora Frostwish’s throat-shredding yell sounded some fifty feet behind me, words spoken in a language I didn’t understand. But I got the gist of it.
“Yeah,” Loki said. “She’s still on you.”
We galloped toward a thicket of trees, burst into them so suddenly I hardly ducked before the pine needles slashed my face. Noir navigated between the trunks as I sat low to his neck.
Loki had crawled inside the neck of my cloak, sat nestled close to me as Noir found his way through the mess of trees. If we survived this, I would never complain about him sleeping on my face again.
If we survived.
In the darkness of the thicket, I saw flashes of the horrific scenes I’d left behind. Liara, Eva, Aidan. The agony hex. Frostwish’s feral face. Now, more than ever before, the darkness scared me. I didn’t know how I could possibly defeat Frostwish and the Shade’s army.
But as we emerged from the thicket and the white tundra came back into view, I knew I only had one choice: to fight. To fight and die, or fight and live.
That was my mother’s legacy, too; she hadn’t been a wilting flower of a woman. My eyes lifted to the moon in a silent moment of gratitude to the witch who’d raised me before Loki’s voice rang through the night.
“Clem, on your left!”
I knew what that meant. Our enemy was close.
When my eyes flicked left, the creature—seething darkness, pressing away light—was already leaping. It was on course to knock me straight off Noir’s back.
Fool me twice...
My reaction was automatic. I gripped Noir’s neck, slid my weight right with my thighs tight to his ribcage, one foot hooked over his spine as I hung off his side. Loki would hold on because he was a cat. And as the creature launched itself overtop us, a streak through the sky, I heard my cat’s yowl as I clung to the galloping horse.
The creature landed on the other side in a tumble, all its momentum in the wrong direction. Noir left him behind in a flurry of churned snowpack.
The moment before I pulled myself up, I glanced back.
Frostwish had emerged from the trees, her arms swept behind her, the rod in one hand and the chain floating through the air in her wake, waiting for her command.
She was so fast. Maybe faster than Liara.
Behind her, a whole legion of the creatures leapt from the trees, a personal army of darkness. She truly belonged to the Shade.
With a grunt, I hauled myself upright, ignoring Loki’s claws digging in through my shirt.
“Unho-ly hell,” he breathed the moment we were back up. “Clem, she’s coming.”
“I saw.” We had come onto a wide, flat plain—Noir’s specialty. “And we’re going to lose her.”
I ran a hand down Noir’s neck in the second before I did something I had never done before: I jabbed my heels into his sides.
Sorry, my man.
He’d felt it. His head jerked, and with a snort, all four legs left the ground in a leap. When we hit the ground, he was moving so fast the wind numbed my cheeks. As fast as during the first guardian trial—
No, faster.
His hooves hardly touched the ground anymore. We moved like air across the plain, his head and neck and spine and tail all a level line, carrying our three souls as fast and far as we could go.
That is, until Frostwish’s scream careened into my ears.
“Fire witch!”
My heart burst into a bird’s frenzy; I’d heard the malice in those words. When I glanced over my shoulder, Frostwish was a shrinking dot on the plain. She’d stopped, hovering ten feet in the air.
And beneath her, I recognized three forms carried over the shoulders of the Shade’s creatures.
Eva, Aidan, and Liara.
“I will kill them,” she yelled. “If you don’t stop, they’ll die tonight. And not fast.”
Ahead of me, the plain went on and on, promising safety.
Behind me, the only non-feline friends I’d ever had.
I closed my eyes, fighting back the profoundly human desire to take that path to safety. I wanted it so badly I could taste it like sugar on my tongue, willing me to find the edge of the trefoil knot and escape beyond it.
But my body had already made the choice. I wasn’t a creature of instinct anymore—not like I had been for so many years.
I was a guardian. I had sworn to protect them.
I straightened, providing resistance, slowing Noir’s gallop.
“Clementine…” Loki said.
Noir dropped to a canter, and then a trot as I swung him around. The moment we reached the farthest point in our arc around, I felt it.
Clear, crisp air. The edge of the knot.
We had made it.
Noir breathed like a bellows as I stopped him on the border of the leyline.
Now that I knew where we had to go, a plan began to outline itself in frenzied flashes in my head. It was a desperate one, but I was good at desperate. It made me hungry.
“Did you feel the edge of the knot, Loki?” I asked as we turned back around.
He sighed. “I suppose not crossing it means you’re feeling bold.”
“If you want safety, you can have it. It’s ten feet behind us.”
“You forget one thing,” he said as we faced down Frostwish, “I’m a guardian, too.”
I trotted Noir forward, his head upright.
“Frostwish,” I called out. “Meet me here. Just you and m
e.”
Her laugh broke like ice across the plain. “At the edge of the trefoil knot? I don’t think so, fire witch.”
My fingers tightened in Noir’s mane. So she knew where the knot ended. Of course she did—she’d probably known the chain lay out here for a lot longer than I had. I’d put money on her knowing the lay of the entire land.
Well, there went my plan. Now I would have to improvise.
I took quick stock of what I had at my disposal. My horse, my familiar, my dampened fire magic, and my hexes.
But I also had something else. My connection to Eva, Aidan, and Liara’s minds.
I’m coming, I said into Aidan’s head. I’m coming for you. Be ready with your everflame.
I started Noir forward, toward Frostwish and her small legion of the Shade’s creatures. We fell into a trot, his head low in his state of semi-exhaustion. I wouldn’t push him harder than he could go—just enough.
I’m coming, I said into Liara’s head next. Be ready with your magic.
And finally, I said the same to Eva.
None of them responded; none of them could, captive as they were. But I knew they’d heard me.
“Loki,” I whispered as we approached, “I need you to do something for me.”
“Say it already.”
“I need you to create a distraction.”
“That means I have to get off and walk, doesn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ll need you to keep as many of them occupied as you can.”
“Give me your fire, then.”
I raised one hand, snapped my thumb and middle finger together. A small flame flickered to life, and I set it under Loki’s chin. “Keep your tail on, all right?”
“I’ll be exactly as reckless as my witch.”
Well, that didn’t comfort me any.
Before I sent Noir into a canter, I leaned off his side, allowing Loki down to the ground. He hit the tundra at a run, flames racing along his body, already doubling his size in fire.
When I straightened, I patted Noir’s shoulder. “One more time. Then you’ll get a long, long rest.”
I squeezed his ribcage, and he shifted to a canter. And then, as we neared Frostwish—who remained hovering, the weapon in her grasp, watching me—a gallop.
