“You’ve always been willing to squash anyone and anything in your way. I just never thought it would be me,” I say softly. “Or the people we vowed to serve.”
Ghoa’s fingers curl into fists and ice overtakes her knuckles. It twines up her wrists and biceps, climbing higher and higher until frost crackles through her hair. Her brown eyes burn bright with anger, but beneath the sparking fury, there is pain. “Stop, Enebish, before you say something you can’t take back.”
But I don’t stop. I force myself to be bold. To make her listen. To make her hear me for the first time in my life. “I know accepting Temujin’s help will make you look weak in the eyes of the Sky King, but—”
“Stop!”
“I will not be silenced!” I bellow at the top of my voice. “The welfare of our country is more important than your skies-forsaken pride and ambition!”
Arctic air explodes through the room like a cannon, cold enough to tear flesh from bone. With a scream, Ghoa launches herself at me. Her body is so solid, so frozen, it’s like colliding with a glacier. We crash to the floor, which immediately turns to ice, and skid toward the glass walls. The hairs on her arms flay me open like tiny blades, and my chest burns, gasping for air that’s suddenly too cold to breathe.
With my injuries, Ghoa easily overtakes me. She slams the back of my head against the ground. Her eyes are bright and wide, but she’s clearly somewhere else, lost in a world of fury.
“Why do you do this?” Her voice cracks and spittle flies from her lips. “I love you, Enebish. I’ve done everything for you. But I won’t let you take this from me.” She extracts a dagger from her belt and brings it slashing toward my chest. And maybe it’s those cryptic words and the flash of steel that brings the spark of clarity—the sure knowledge I’ve been in this position before. Or maybe I’m finally strong enough to see my sister for what she truly is—to accept her betrayal without breaking. Or it could be the monster rising from the depths of my belly to defend me—refusing to die without a fight.
Whatever it is, I welcome the help, welcome the heat. Rage flashes through my veins, turning my blood to melted lead. It batters against an icy dam, hidden in the depths of my mind—a wall I never knew was there. A wall Ghoa erected two years ago, then hid from me with the help of the moonstone. But the small amount of tincture Varren forced me to breathe isn’t enough.
The dam bursts with a soul-shattering crack, and surges of hot truth wash over me like wave after wave of Zemyan soldiers.
At last, I remember Nariin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“IT’S GETTING LATE,” I SAID, BLOWING INTO MY HANDS AS the last streaks of sunlight sank beneath the endless prairie. The clouds were that in-between color—not quite blue and not quite purple, a velvety indigo that only came at twilight. Tendrils of night spindled from the sky like spiders on silk threads, and I fiddled with them, waiting for Ghoa to respond. The longer I waited, the more I squirmed against the hard-packed snow of the barricade. We had erected it that morning to conceal ourselves on this flat stretch of plain, and as the day grew colder, the snow turned to ice, jabbing my back through the gaps in my armor. My muscles were cramped from lack of use and snot dribbled from my nose. We’d been sitting there for hours. Since the sun came up and went down again, watching the dots of color and smoke half a league away.
“We should head back.” I shifted to my hands and knees, hoping Ghoa would do the same, but she shook her head resolutely.
“We can’t leave now.”
“They’ve hardly moved all day. It’s clearly a plodding merchant caravan, not Zemyan scouts.”
Ghoa stretched to peer over the barricade. “But—”
“We’ll send someone to check their progress tomorrow, to be certain.”
“Tomorrow could be too late. According to my calculations—”
Not her skies-forsaken calculations again! She couldn’t will our enemies into existence, just to prove herself to the king. I heaved a disgruntled sigh. My breath should have billowed before my face like a storm cloud, but it froze as soon as it met the air, creating a milky-white pane that plummeted to the ground and shattered.
I flashed Ghoa a warning glare. “I know this mission hasn’t gone to plan, but I’m freezing my ass off without your help.”
Ghoa muttered a halfhearted apology, but the air between us remained frigid. Her temper had been flaring for months now, and every time, she came a little bit closer to giving me frostbite. She claimed it was because winter was upon us—her power was always strongest when fueled by the natural cold—but we both knew it had everything to do with Chinua’s death and the ever-intensifying trials to name his successor.
Each day that passed without an official appointment, Ghoa became a little more desperate. Two weeks ago she shot daggers of ice at Rignar and Kejid when their blizzard failed to keep a contingent of Zemyans from outmatching a battalion of our magic-barren infantry. And last week she ordered Suke to scout across the border, even though it was heavily patrolled. As of this morning, there was still no sign of Suke. The rest of the Kalima had begun to whisper and keep their distance. They flocked to me for advice, since I was the only person who had a prayer of reasoning with Ghoa.
And I tried to calm her. I did. Though perhaps not as hard as I could have.
Secretly, I relished the attention and responsibility, and I didn’t feel overly guilty about it since I wasn’t taking the promotion from Ghoa. I was just a safety net, a contingency plan. If she continued to sabotage herself, I would be there to pick up the pieces. I had to think about what was best for the Kalima.
“Come on, I’ll conceal us so we can make our way back to camp.” I reached for a handful of darkness and squeezed the threads in my fist, which should have deepened the shadows around us, but my fingers were slow and heavy, and the sky flickered dark and light, dark and light. Not again. I set my jaw and focused all of my energy into my palms, but the tighter I clenched, the more my hands shook. Because I’d used too much of my strength the night before, sending midnight messages to the king.
Is that best for the Kalima? my conscience scolded.
“Stop that!” Ghoa hissed. “You can’t compromise our position just to get your way.”
“That’s not what I’m doing! I’m just tired. And cold.”
“Show some fortitude. Do you think the Kalima of old were never tired or cold?”
I closed my eyes and counted to five. If I wanted to get off this ice field before I froze to death, I needed to stroke her ego and fall in line. Again.
Always second. Always yielding.
“Everyone knows you’re the best tracker in the Kalima,” I ground out, “but there’s no way you could know how fast the Zemyans are marching in this fresh powder. They could still be days away. The caravan has given us no reason to suspect they’re Zemyan scouts. I know you could keep watch all night, but I can’t, and the king has ordered us to stay together.”
I laid a hand on Ghoa’s shoulder, and even through her armor and my thick leather gloves, I could feel the unnatural chill of her skin. The falling temperature meant nothing to her—she wasn’t even wearing a cloak and her nose wasn’t the slightest bit red—but my fingers were so stiff, I could barely grip my saber.
“C’mon.” I tugged on Ghoa’s arm, but she flung me off.
“You want to leave because you want me to be wrong. I’ve been in the army twice as long as you. I trained you, I made you, but you plan to swoop in and steal everything I’ve worked for.”
Guilt stabbed my sides like a stitch. I babbled for a second before dragging a gloved hand across my face. There was no way she could know what I’d been doing.
“I know you’re undermining me.”
“I would never undermine you, Sister,” I said reverently to cover the lie. “Your victory is my victory.”
“Then wait with me a little while longer.” Ghoa’s eyes met mine, fierce and accusatory. “I know my calculations are right, and if the Zemyans att
ack our encampment during the night, I’ll never forgive myself.”
More like the king would never forgive her—or promote her—but I kept those allegations behind my frozen lips. “Fine. Ten minutes, then we go. I won’t survive much longer.”
“Thank you,” she began, but a blaze of light blossomed from the wagons across the field. I dropped to my stomach and Ghoa whipped around. While I crept forward on my elbows and knees, she slowly inched higher until she peered over the barricade. I joined her a second later, squinting across the grasslands. The light almost hurt to look at—blinding yellow against the deepening night.
“I knew it,” she said breathlessly. “It’s a flare.”
“It could just as easily be a cooking fire.”
“It’s too large for that.”
“Not for a caravan that size.”
Ghoa shook her head and her frosty braid whipped past my cheek. “Merchants wouldn’t be traveling so late in the season. It’s the Zemyans, and they’ve signaled their troops to advance.”
“Don’t you think they’d fear we would see such a large flare and know their location?”
The distant flames danced in Ghoa’s eyes and the air grew even colder. “Ready yourself, En.” She scrambled to her feet, adjusting the saber on her hip.
“Ghoa. Don’t be hasty.”
“I am first lieutenant. You will do as I say, or I’ll be forced to believe you’re sympathetic with our enemy.” She shot me a challenging look, then vaulted over the barricade.
After spitting out a curse, I followed.
We jogged toward the caravan in silence. Unlike Ghoa, the ground didn’t harden beneath my feet, so my boots sunk with every step, making crunching prints in the snow. I fell back a length, then two.
“Wait,” I rasped.
But another blinding flash erupted from the wagons followed by what could have been cheers or screams. It was impossible to tell which. Ghoa, of course, assumed the worst.
“Hurry,” she said, breaking into a full sprint.
I ducked my head and urged my legs faster, imagining the field was a frozen pond and I was skidding across it—smooth and fast and effortless. To my surprise, it worked. The snow beneath me grew firmer. My boots didn’t make any sort of print. I was almost as fast as Ghoa.
The realization made my head snap up. Ghoa was still several lengths ahead, and a wake of pale-blue ice stretched behind her like the train of a wedding gown. The air spinning off her hit my lungs like a blowtorch. Her chestnut hair was completely white with frost.
“Ghoa, stop!” I cried, but the words froze on my tongue. Blinding pain doubled me in half. It felt like daggers of ice had been rammed down my throat, freezing me from the inside out. Before I could reach her, she flung out her arms and pointed her palms at the caravan.
For a second, nothing happened and I nearly crumpled with relief. But then the ground groaned and the air crackled and every flake of powdery snow sprang into the air. They gathered into a wall of twinkling mist that crashed forward like a wave—even faster than the dust storms that ravaged the deserts of Verdenet. It swept past gnarled larch trees, entombing their branches in ice. A grazing deer lifted its head and, as the cold raged past, froze with its ears pricked and its tail flicking.
Horror dropped me to my knees. Since I was behind her, I wasn’t caught in the path of the deadly cold, but I might as well have been. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Ghoa had summoned Standing Death.
It hurtled toward the caravan that could be Zemyan scouts … or merchants traveling to the market at Nariin.
Quick, Enebish. Do something.
Threads of darkness buzzed around my face, but that would only blind the poor souls as the lethal cold washed over them. So I lifted my palm and reached for the fiery stars nestled in the fabric of the universe. Gripping a handful of scorching tails, I slashed them downward, praying the heat would offset Ghoa’s cold. Or at least hinder it. Perhaps it would spare a portion of the camp.
But my arm never completed the arc.
Ghoa spun on me, her saber drawn. “You will not take this from me!” she roared as steel sliced through my arm, carving through muscle and tendon and bone. My eyes widened. I crashed to the snow. Pain erupted from every nerve, sparking up my shoulder and flashing through my fingertips. The starfire slipped away, leaving only blood in my palm—hot and thick and pooling fast. Ghoa’s saber rose and fell again, this time biting into my thigh. I howled through chattering teeth and sank deeper into the snow, deeper into the blackness sweeping across my vision.
I ground my teeth. Fought to keep my eyes open. Through a misty veil of shadows, I watched Ghoa sprint the final few lengths to the now decimated wagons. She threw her head back, her frost-tipped hair swinging behind her as she laughed and whooped, reveling in her extraordinary accomplishment. She had called Standing Death. She was numbered among the Ice Heralds of legend. If that weren’t enough to ensure the Sky King’s endorsement, rooting out these Zemyan spies would be.
But Ghoa’s cheers faded abruptly when she stumbled over something small and limp—a tiny dark bundle that she hurled away the moment she picked it up. A child’s doll, I realized as it skidded across the snow. Ghoa tripped over a gnarled walking stick. Then a cooking pot. A necklace of coral and jade snagged on the heel of her boot. Woodenly, she crept forward to inspect the nearest body, then the next. There were dozens of frozen corpses sprawled at her feet, and even from where I lay, I could tell they weren’t the pale-eyed, armor-clad Zemyans she had expected.
“No,” she said quietly—a strangled, dying sound. “No, no, no!”
She shoved her fingers into her frost-crusted hair and staggered back, tripping over her blundering feet. The Sky King would never forgive her for this. She would be ruined and punished, stripped of everything.
I expected her to scream, to fall to her knees and cry, but she started pacing and muttering instead. The wrongness of it crept across my skin like frostbite. Using all of my strength, I pushed up on one elbow. “What have you done?”
Ghoa stopped abruptly and whipped around. “You’re awake?” She jogged toward me, slowing when she neared the deep crimson stains seeping through the snow around me.
“I told you to stop. I tried to make you stop, but you …” I glanced down at my arm and leg, and my voice caught with pain. Ghoa looked straight through the gore, as if it weren’t real. Her voice was firm, yet calm. Coaxing almost.
“I had to counteract the threat, En. We couldn’t take any chances. It was a necessary risk, but we needn’t ever speak of it again. We’ll tell the Sky King a band of Zemyans attacked the nomads. And you were injured fighting them off. He will never know the truth. No one will ever know.”
“I will know!” I thundered. The effort left me gasping. “Innocent people are dead, Ghoa! You killed them. And attacked me.”
“So you plan to turn me in?” Tears seeped from her eyes and left icy trails on her cheeks. “I’ll be stripped of everything. Warriors have been put to death for lesser offenses. And I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“That’s precisely what makes you so dangerous,” I said before I could stop myself.
Ghoa’s beautiful face went slack—pale and white and emotionless, like the doll she had pitched to the snow. Then her features slowly pinched into something sharp. She dropped to her knees and bunched my coat in her fists. Pain crashed through my limbs as she shook me. “I saved you from that burning hut. I gave you everything. We are family, Enebish.”
“I know, but I can’t just forget what you did.”
“You can,” Ghoa whispered in my ear. “I’ll help you.” Her fist crashed against my temple, and a blast of bitter cold tore through my skull—a cold so complete, my skin burned and my ears rang and each tooth froze in its socket. The chill spread outward like a sickness, hardening the blood in my veins and stilling all coherent thought. As the vortex of ice and agony entombed me, I saw the yellow flare of a torch
and ash-covered hands. My final frozen breath reeked of burning flesh. Then everything dissolved into white.
When I jerked back into consciousness, I was on a hard metal cot covered in a scratchy blanket that smelled of alcohol. The pounding in my head was unbearable, my arm throbbed with every beat of my heart, and it felt like a blunted saber was sawing through my right leg.
What happened?
I tried to sit up, but my arm and leg howled at the movement, and the strap across my chest kept me pinned to the table.
Why am I strapped to the table?
Panic ripped from my lips in a scream. I thrashed against my bonds, but that only made bursts of light explode behind my eyelids.
“Lie still or you’ll tear your stitches.” Ghoa’s cool hands pressed me down, and her familiar scent of grass and steel washed over me. “Take a deep breath. You’re safe. I’m here.”
“What happened?” I gasped. “Were we attacked?”
There was a long moment of silence, and when I glanced up at Ghoa’s face, I noticed her tear-streaked cheeks and her puffy, bloodshot eyes. “There was an incident,” she said slowly. “I tried to stop you—”
“Stop me from doing what?” The last thing I remembered was leaning against the barricade, freezing my tail off.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Ghoa continued babbling, “but I didn’t know what else to do. You were on a rampage.”
“A rampage? What are you talking about?” I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth, but when I sifted through my memory, it was blank and white—like the grasslands after the first snowfall of winter. Panicked, I lifted my good hand over my face, searching for a lingering trace of starfire, but there was only cold, clammy flesh. “I don’t remember anything,” I said. My voice sounded shrill and high, and I trembled as if feverish.
Ghoa eased my arm back to my side and smoothed my hair away from my face. “You lost a lot of blood, and I had to hit you over the head—it was all I could do to bring you down. I’m sure your memories will resurface in time, but for now, consider it a blessing. You don’t want to remember.”
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