Sweet, cold air rushed back into my lungs. My eyes burned with the invasion.
“Up!” Killion hauled me to my feet. “Use the sword.”
“What are they?”
“Wraiths.”
I spotted Karl pressed to a tree by one of the blizzard wraiths and ran toward him, blade at the ready. It cut away the monster, forcing it to shatter. Karl slumped to the ground, hands clutching his throat.
Val screamed, and I spun, searching the blizzard for her.
“Over there!” Killion pushed me toward a mini-tornado. I caught a flash of Val in the midst of the wraiths as they sucked the air from her orbit.
Once again, the sword sent them scattering.
“Get together!” Killion ordered.
We stood back to back, turning in a circle to allow me to use the sword to fend off the wraiths.
They didn’t attack Killion. They weren’t interested in him, and soon, they backed away from us too, hovering and wailing as they surrounded us.
“The wall’s glow is dimming,” Killion called.
Light bulb moments were real, and one had me in its grip now as the inscription on the pillar scrolled through my mind…The glow is a window, and Winter’s kiss will set you free.
The window was closing.
And just like that, I knew what Winter’s kiss was.
I sheathed my sword.
“What are you doing?” Val cried.
But Killion had gone very still, his gaze burning through the elements to lock with mine. There was something new in his eyes, something meaningful that I needed to decipher, but not now. Not yet.
The wraiths drifted closer but didn’t attack.
“Damn it, Danika,” Val cried. “Your fucking sword is the only thing keeping them at bay, what the fuck are you doing?”
“They’re not attacking, though,” Karl said. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Who gives a fuck?” Val replied.
I was right. I had to be. “We need to succumb. We need to give them what they want.”
“Winter’s kiss…” Karl looked at me, his eyes shining with comprehension.
“Are you insane?” Val said.
This was never about the damn ice monster. That thing wasn’t part of the lock, it had been a decoy to rile us, throw us into a frenzy, and make us fight our only way out.
I dropped to my knees. “Trust me.”
The wind’s moan was a mournful lament that touched my soul. And then ice surrounded me, stealing my breath in a greedy lover’s kiss. I resisted the instinct to fight, to claw to be free, and gave myself to the burn in my lungs. But in the final moment before darkness stole me, a tiny part of my active mind wondered if I’d made a mistake.
Too late.
24
“Danika, wake up.” Killion’s voice pulled me from the darkness. His face hovered above mine. “You did well. We made it past the barrier.”
I sat up and looked around at the clearing we were in. Gray light spilled over pretty white blooms and crisp green grass. There wasn’t an ice patch or snowflake in sight. My heart contracted painfully in my chest.
“Is this…”
“Spring, yes,” he said.
“And the others?”
He nodded to the left. “Still unconscious. They’re alive, though, and I suspect they’ll wake soon.”
“We made it…”
“Yes, Danika, we did, thanks to you.” His smile was wobbly.
“What is it?”
His gaze dropped to my hips. “Where did you get the sword?”
I touched the pommel lightly. “The Spring prince had it. He called it a weapon of the conquered.”
He looked at my hand on the sword and then pulled his gaze back up to my face. “That voice you’ve been hearing. Trust it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He caressed my cheek with the tips of his fingers, and his shadowy face twisted as if he was torn, tormented, and then his expression smoothed out.
“Do whatever you must to survive, promise me. Promise me you’ll allow the voice to guide you. Promise me you’ll be here when the sun sets.”
Oh, shit. I looked up at the rapidly lightening sky. “Killion…”
His throat bobbed, and then with a curse, he gripped my face and pressed his lips to mine in a kiss filled with shadows and moonlight. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer and parting my lips to taste him, but all I tasted was the salt of his tears, and then the sun was melting over my skin, and Killion was gone.
First order of business had been to climb a tree and check out the direction we needed to go, and sure enough, there was another skywall in the distance. East this time.
Long minutes turned into hours as we walked, and it was easy to forget we were being hunted when surrounded by Spring, but we were soon reminded of the fact when we stumbled across the decapitated body of a human.
“Fresh kill,” Karl said. “The shining ones who did this can’t be far.”
Yeah, a reminder this wasn’t a fucking walk in the countryside.
I pulled my daggers from their sheaths at my waist as we walked in silence. There had been no horns blowing here. The rules for Spring were different. I could feel it in my bones. But how?
My question was answered a moment later when the earth beneath my feet began to move. Val grabbed hold of me, and I made a lunge for Karl as the world spun. My knees buckled, and my vision blurred, and then it was over.
“Motherfucker,” Val gasped.
We were by a river. The bubbling, rushing sound filling the silence.
We’d moved…
In the previous sector, I’d seen the ground shift, but here, I’d felt it almost as if the closer we got to the center, the more intense the mechanics of this place grew.
I checked the compass. “We need to cross the river.”
“How deep do you think it is?” Val asked.
“No idea.” I stepped up to the edge of the water. “Can you swim?”
“Not well,” she said.
“Yeah, me neither.” Swimming wasn’t a regular thing in a world made of ice, but Baba had taken me to the local pool as a child before it had closed down like so many of the other places in outer Middale.
“Maybe we could walk around it?” Val suggested.
She sounded nervous, and Val never sounded nervous. I looked over my shoulder at her and caught the flash of fear in her eyes before she masked it.
“I can carry you,” Karl said.
“I’m fine,” Val snapped. “I can do this. I just didn’t want to get wet.”
“We can build a fire to dry off,” Karl said.
“And alert everyone to our location,” Val said.
“It won’t matter so much during the day,” Karl said. “It’s nighttime we need to be careful.”
A fire at night could be seen from a treetop, and I had no doubt that the Tuatha champions were using the bird’s-eye view to track us too.
“Karl’s right. We can build a fire and take a little time to dry off if need be. But the skywall isn’t too far out. Maybe another three- or four-hour hike.”
Val clenched her jaw and nodded. “Fine, let’s—”
The sound of hoofbeats drifted toward us.
Shit. Discussion time was over.
I waded into the water. “Come on.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as the cold seeped into my clothes and touched my skin. Fuck, it was cold, but I’d had colder. Being Winter’s bitch had its advantages.
Karl and Val followed.
“It’s shallow,” Val called out with relief.
Too soon, it seemed, because the bottom of the river vanished suddenly, and water rushed up to my chin. Fuck. I thrashed for a moment as my brain adjusted to the fact I needed to swim, and then my movements synchronized, and I was moving toward the other side of the river.
But the leather vest and the braces were getting heavier. My clothes were dragging me down. Urgh. Com
e on.
Something whizzed past me, and my ear burst into flame. Fuck. An arrow had clipped me. The fuckers were shooting at us.
Val’s cry was muffled, and then Karl bellowed.
I turned my head to see Val go under. Karl went to dive in after her and jerked as an arrow embedded itself in his shoulder. There was no time to scope out the other side of the shore and see who was attacking us. I needed to get to Val.
I swam back to Karl. “Keep moving.”
And then I dove after Val. A pale hand reached for me from the inky darkness beyond. How deep was this fucking river? I grabbed her hand and tugged, kicking with my legs to pull us to the surface, but she wouldn’t budge. Her eyes grew wide, and she looked down her body, wriggling as if…As if she was stuck. And then I saw the other face—gray and awful with eyes way too big and dark, and teeth…So many fucking teeth like needles in its mouth.
It was holding fast to her ankles, pulling her down. A scream lodged in my throat as I drew my dagger, every movement too deliberate and sluggish in the water, and kicked downward toward the thing that had her. My slash across its face forced it to let go, and then a sound filled my head, a screaming, scraping sound that scrambled my thoughts and brought bile rushing up my throat.
No. I had to get out, had to get away. I kicked again, connecting with its head, grabbed a limp Val, and swam for the surface.
Something snagged my ankle, something else whizzed past me in the water, and then the scream cut off, and my ankle was free. I broke the surface of the water with Val clutched to me, gasping for air.
“Danika!”
I treaded water, trying to get my bearings. My gaze skimmed over the figures on one side of the river. The wrong side.
“Danika, over here!”
Karl. I spotted him crouching in the tree line on the other side of the water and kicked out toward him, expecting an arrow in the back of my head at any moment. But none came.
I made it across, and Karl dragged me to shore. He swung Val into his arms, and we ran.
We ran for ages, past a babbling brook and through another wood until we found a spot shielded by rocks and brush that provided enough cover for us to recoup.
The fire was crackling merrily, small enough to go unnoticed but large enough to dry us off a little. We’d stripped off down to our underwear, and I’d placed the clothes by the fire, close enough to have steam rising off them as they dried.
My ear throbbed as I worked on Karl’s shoulder. We were half-naked, but it didn’t even matter because we were too caught up in surviving. He hissed as I pressed my heated dagger to his wound. I should have taken Thomas’s pack with the first aid kit. Shit, what if this wound got infected?
“I’ll be fine,” Karl said.
Val sat huddled by the fire. She hadn’t said a word since regaining consciousness.
I finished binding Karl’s wound and studied his face. He hadn’t screamed, not once. Not even when I cut out the arrowhead with a dagger heated in the flames. I’d sealed the wound as best I could. Cauterized it, but we needed medicine to make sure he didn’t get an infection.
“I’m fine,” he said again.
I sat beside him on the mossy ground. “Why didn’t they come after us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they can’t swim?”
“Did you get a look at them? What court?”
“Summer.”
I’d had a run-in with the Summer prince and his Danaan bitch already. Had they recognized me? It didn’t matter. They’d come for us. They’d find a way around the river.
“We can’t stay here too long.”
“I know,” Karl said. He sat up straighter with a wince. “Fuck this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“I know, but I’m sorry you got picked for this.”
He was silent for a long beat. “Fuck. I wish we’d filled up our flasks at the river.”
Shit. Now that he’d mentioned it, I was thirsty too. “I’ll head to the brook and fill up our flasks.”
“No. I’ll go.”
“Like hell. You need to rest.”
I dressed quickly, then handed him his weapons belt. “Just in case.”
“I’ll take my pants too.” He gave me half a smile. “Just in case.”
I passed them to him. “Val, you okay?”
She looked up at me with huge dark eyes and nodded.
Shit, the almost drowning had really done a number on her. “I’ll be right back. Stay sharp.” I grabbed all three flasks and headed toward the brook we’d come across a quarter of a mile back.
We were barely two hours away from the wall now. So close. Once I got back, we’d head off. We could do this.
Wrapping the straps of the filled flasks around my wrist, I turned away from the brook and froze.
A figure stood a few meters away. Five foot five, gray-skinned, and emaciated. Its arms were too long for its body, fingers slender and triple-jointed. Straggles of hair clung to its bulbous scalp like gray weeds. It stared at me with its black eyes and its teeth-lined gumless mouth. Its body dripped with water as if the water was coming out of its pores, as if the creature was leaking water.
It was the thing from the river.
It had found me.
I grabbed a dagger from my waist and held it up. “Back off.”
The thing groaned and staggered toward me.
“Back the fuck off. Now!” I inched to the left, getting ready to make a break for it.
The monster held out its arms as if inviting an embrace. It opened its mouth, and its eyes seemed to bug slightly, and then that awful screeching filled my head again. My thoughts tangled, and terror dug talons into my heart.
“Stop!” I tried to cover my ears. I tried to run, but my legs refused to work.
It was getting closer, and then it lunged.
The scrape of its fingers against my shoulder broke my paralysis. I jabbed and buried my dagger in its chest.
The thing stilled.
“Dani…Why?”
The voice came from its mouth. Vala’s voice. What the fuck? My brain screamed in horror as its skin rippled, and then Vala was staring at me, betrayal etched onto her face.
“You left me.” She looked down at the dagger in her chest. “Why?”
And then she fell to the ground.
No…
I fell to my knees and pulled her into my lap, but her eyes were already closed. Blood bubbled along the seam of her mouth, and she exhaled long and heavy as the life left her body.
I stared at the dagger in her chest. My dagger.
I’d killed her. A sob caught in my throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I…” How was this possible? How…
The river…Something had happened. A trick. An illusion… But if Vala was the monster, who the fuck had I left in the clearing with Karl?
25
The forest whizzed by as I ran. Karl was in danger. That thing by the fire wasn’t Vala. It was a monster. No wonder it hadn’t spoken a single word. How had it made the switch?
Almost there.
A bellow.
Karl!
I picked up speed, and then the rocks were in front of me. It took less than a second to scale them and leap into the tiny clearing. Figures tussled on the ground. Vala on top of Karl.
“Get off. Vala, what the fuck?” Karl yelled.
But it wasn’t Vala. Her teeth clamped onto Karl’s shoulder. He screamed, high-pitched and painful. And then my body made contact with the thing. I knocked it off Karl, taking it to the ground.
It was Vala’s face, but those eyes, that snarl—it wasn’t her. Vala was gone. I scrambled for my dagger while struggling to keep the thing pinned while it bucked, trying to get free. My fingers grazed the hilt of my blade, and then fire chased a path across my cheek.
The pain loosened my grip on the monster, and then I was the one pinned to the ground.
Shit. No.
“Vala, stop!
” Karl called.
He didn’t get it. He didn’t realize.
The thing opened its mouth and lunged for my face. My scream curdled the air.
Whoosh.
The thing stalled, eyes wide, arrowhead protruding from its open mouth.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I shoved it off me as it morphed into the gray monster and scrambled away from it, kicking up dirt with my heels.
The thing lay on its front, unmoving.
Dead.
Dead by arrow.
Oh, fuck.
My head whipped up to see a figure dressed in deep blue step out of the shadows and into the clearing. His golden hair gleamed in the sunlight, and his amethyst eyes were filled with urgency.
“You need to go now,” the Winter prince said. “Get up and run.”
I didn’t question because there was fear in the prince's eyes. Unadulterated terror that you couldn’t fake.
I hauled a bleeding Karl to his feet, grabbed his shirt and weapons belt, and got the hell out of there.
Why did the Winter prince save us? The question kept spinning in my mind. Dammit, I hated not knowing someone’s agenda. At least with the other champions, it was easy—they wanted to kill us. Summer hadn’t followed us across the river, though, but that might be because they’d seen what I was dragging out wasn’t my friend.
Vala was dead.
I’d killed her.
No guilt. Not your fault.
This place was filled with deceit and death, and I needed to avoid being on the receiving end and start dealing out both.
How many hours until the trial ended? How many hours did I have left to get into the center of the labyrinth?
We were almost there. Almost at the wall. Karl had barely said two words since we’d run. He was in shock. Weak, bleeding out. My body ached from carrying his weight.
“Stop,” he said.
“We’re almost there.”
“No.” He stopped walking. “Please. Danika. Stop.”
“Fine, we can take a short rest.” I lowered him to the ground so he was propped up against a tree.
Taste My Wrath (The Iron Fae Book 1) Page 15
