by K T Munson
“Mera was my sister,” Aradel told her. The fireball in Freya’s hand vanished all together with a weak puff of smoke left in its wake. “You look exactly like her,” Aradel said with tears in her eyes.
Freya considered her words in astonishment for a moment. Aradel hoped that this gamble paid off, and she would have a niece that she could get to know and love. A part of her sister could live on in this world, and this time, Aradel could protect her.
“I don’t believe you,” Freya finally said, pointing at her as a hateful smirk spread across her face. “You’re trying to trick me to spare your nation. Bad news,” her voice dropped to a mocking whisper, “it’s not going to work.”
“It isn’t a trick,” Aradel insisted, taking a step forward. “I can still see my sister’s face the day she left, the day my parents sold her. That face, her face, my sister’s face still haunts all my dreams to this day!” Aradel bowed her head and took in a desperate breath to control herself before turning her gaze back up to Freya. “Stop this, stop everything, and come home with me. You are my family.” Aradel held out a hand to her. “Take my hand and come back with me. I will take care of you.”
Freya sneered. “Well done. You almost had me.” Her eyes remained severe, and the fire that had been extinguished, suddenly ignited in Freya’s hand again.
“Stop!” Aradel cried, though she already knew she had lost her. “You are my family!”
“I’ll never stop,” she replied casually, as though she were commenting on the weather. “Not until every last person is dead.” Her eyes narrowed on Aradel. “I think I’ll start by killing you.”
Fire: Chapter Forty-Two
Darha awoke to the sound of arguing outside her tent. Two men were sharing heated words and, though she was groggy, it sounded like a struggle was ensuing. Coming a little more awake, she propped herself on her elbows and tried to listen to the exchange.
One voice stuck out the most. “I must speak with Darha now!”
Darha’s eyes flew wide. It was Cas. He sounded upset, and a little desperate. She kicked herself out of her covers and ran to the entrance of her tent without bothering to grab a robe. Throwing the flap aside, she stepped out and saw Jamsun and Rhett both holding Cas back and trying to push him away.
“What is the meaning of this?” Darha asked, addressing her soldiers.
“Darha!” Cas said urgently. Then at the glares of Jamsun and Rhett, he cleared his throat and added, “Queen Darha, I must speak with you.”
Jamsun stepped forward. “Forgive us, your majesty. We knew you were asleep. He insisted on seeing you and nearly barged into your tent.”
“Rhett, release him!” Darha commanded. Rhett shoved Cas away from the tent and the two men untangled. Darha glared at Jamsun. “How is it not clear to you that Commander Cas has an emergency?”
“I—I’m sorry, majesty. I didn’t –”
“Cas is not a threat to me,” Darha said firmly. She met Cas’s eyes as a gentle smile pulled at the corners of his lips. “He will never be a threat to me,” she said more softly.
Cas shook his head. “Never.”
Darha smiled and nodded. “Come in.”
Cas ducked into her tent first as Darha addressed Jamsun once more. “Don’t ever keep Cas from seeing me again, is that clear?”
“Yes majesty,” he confirmed with a bow.
Darha ducked into her tent and immediately approached Cas. “What’s wrong?” she asked, already a little self-conscious now that they were alone.
Cas politely averted his eyes, though the corners of his mouth turned up in an adorable soft smile. “Would you prefer to get decent first?” he asked, avoiding looking at her in the small black silk nightgown she was wearing.
Darha couldn’t help but grin. “If I thought I had time to get decent, I wouldn’t have run outside my tent like this,” she said, gesturing to herself.
Cas turned his eyes to her and unashamedly glanced briefly down her appearance. “I don’t mind. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
Darha smiled. “You don’t scare me.”
Cas gazed at her in the most breathtaking way; with the playfulness gone, and just a very real longing. Her heart raced. She would have given anything for a moment with him to maybe, hopefully kiss his lips. But clearly something of urgency had brought him here.
Darha shifted from romantic mode into Queen of the Fire Nation mode. “What’s wrong, Cas?”
Darha saw him shift into soldier-of-the-Frost-Nation mode as well. “It’s Queen Aradel.”
Darha’s brows dropped. “Is she well?”
“She is well, but she sent me to summon you to her chambers. I’m fairly certain, though, that it was just a distraction to get me to leave my guard of her.”
Darha eyes flew wide. She ran to her closet, grabbed the first long red gown within reach, and threw it over her head. She hadn’t worn her gowns in months, but it was the fastest thing she could throw on—though it wasn’t really that fast. She had a length of buttons up her side to fasten.
“Jamsun!” she cried, and he poked his head in. “Get me a horse quickly!” Jamsun vanished from sight.
Darha knew exactly what Aradel was doing. Darha knew, because if she had been in Aradel’s situation, Darha would have done the exact same thing. She was going to meet that Freya woman alone. Darha should have known! She should have stayed with Aradel, or guarded her herself or something, or anything! Now she was in danger.
As Darha struggled with the buttons of her gown, Cas appeared on a knee beside her, and started fastening them himself. She gazed down at him and tried to catch her breath as his deft fingers quickly worked up the line of buttons. Her heart ached so badly to touch him that she could hardly stand it; so, she wouldn’t stand it.
When he finished and his eyes came up to meet hers, Darha pushed the heat away from her lips and palms. Gently taking his face in her hands, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his. Cas’s shoulders went limp when they touched, and he clutched the waist of her gown, taking a fistful of the material in each hand so he didn’t burn her, but could still hold her in some fashion. Cas must have been practicing to press the cold away from his own lips because hers didn’t turn to stone. It was just her soft flesh on his, and Darha could hardly breathe from the feel of it.
After pulling away, she smiled down at him. “You’ve been expecting me to kiss you like this, I see.”
“No,” he said softly and smiled. “Just hoping.”
Darha grinned and gazed back into Cas’s eyes for a moment longer before going to her closet again. She had to flex her fingers to get the stone stiffness out of them from his freezing skin. She put on a quick, but impractical pair of gold slip-on shoes, and carefully took her gold circlet from its pillow and rested it on her brow.
“Come,” she said and hurried to the exit of her tent. Throwing open the flap, they both stepped out. “I need you to inform Sir Kirill of what’s happened with Queen Aradel,” Darha said to Cas, and headed for the horse Jamsun was bringing to her.
“What will you do?”
“That dreadful Freya woman told Aradel to meet her on the river, so I’m going to ride the shore until I find her. She can’t be far. Tell Sir Kirill to watch for my signal of fire when I locate her, and to bring everyone he can muster.”
Cas bowed at the waist and headed for his elk in a hurry. Reaching her horse, Darha threw her leg over it and was ready to race off when Cas called her name. She looked over her shoulder and saw him staring longingly after her from the back of his own majestic beast.
“Please be careful.”
Darha smiled and nodded, then gripped the reins in her fists, and faced forward. “Ya!” she called and kicked her horse into a fast gallop.
The trees were a gray blur in the morning light as she headed for the river. Reaching the water’s edge, she turned her horse west, and opened the stallion up to run even faster. Darha’s hair flew out behind her and the wind burned her cheeks from the sp
eed at which she rode. Her gaze constantly traversed the river, searching for any sign of either woman.
A mile up the shore, Darha picked up on a trail of cloven hooves in the dirt alongside which she was galloping. Elk hooves. Aradel had to have come this way. Darha spurred her horse faster, ducking down behind its neck to diminish the sting of the wind.
It wasn’t long before she saw the river was white along the horizon. Ice. One section of the River Gora up ahead had been turned to ice, and it was definitely too hot outside for that not to be powerful frost magic. Another half a mile, Darha could make out two struggling silhouettes. Blasts of orange and blue lit up the distance they were both shrouded in.
“Come on,” Darha said through clenched teeth to her horse, though she knew it was absolutely pushing its limits to go as fast as it was already.
When Darha could finally see the blue of Aradel’s gown and the black of Freya’s, she yanked on the reins of her horse, stopping it so fast it reared up on its hind legs and gave a loud cry of complaint before settling. Looking up at the overcast sky, Darha shot a blast of her fire magic high above the treetops into the clouds, signaling to Kirill where his Queen was. Darha dismounted and, pushing the heat away from her feet and ankles, headed over the ice to the two struggling women. Neither was aware of her presence yet—or didn’t care—and continued to struggle with each other.
As Darha neared, Aradel was suddenly thrown onto her back by a blast of ice. She hadn’t even finished sliding backwards before Freya lit up another blast in her hands and shot it toward her. With a yell, Darha threw an arm out and sent her own blast of fire magic, blocking and melting Freya’s attack into water that rained down harmlessly between the two women.
Aradel spun to look over her shoulder as Freya’s astonished eyes came up. Not taking her narrowed gaze off Freya’s face, Darha pushed her heat away from her hand, and reached for Aradel. Aradel took it, and Darha pulled the Frost Nation Queen to her feet.
Freya’s astonished expression melted into a snarl. “This must be my lucky day. Now I get to take out both queens!”
With that, Freya’s hands went out to her sides. From the depth of the river she brought up pinnacles of ice that rose over fifty feet high on one side. On the other, lava bubbled up from the surface of the water, reaching the same heights.
Darha was oddly undaunted, and both she and Aradel lit up their hands with their magic. Darha was no warrior, but she loved her nation and her people more than herself, and this woman threatened them all. The Fire Nation had already been destroyed; she would not allow such devastation to come to the Frost Nation as well.
Freya shot the lava at Aradel and the ice at Darha.
Darha deflected by moving her fire magic in a fast, horizontal figure-eight, quickly melting it as it flew toward her. Her flimsy shoes were soaked instantly and her feet became stone stiff. She couldn’t blaze her core to warm them, though, lest the frozen river melt under her.
Aradel created a spinning tornado of snow that sucked up the lava that threatened her. The hot orange substance slowly dulled and cooled in the vortex, until Aradel was spinning chunks of stone, which she then cast into the river.
Clenching her teeth, Freya shot rapid orbs of fire at Aradel, from which Aradel protected herself by lifting a thick wall of ice. Darha went on the offensive while Freya was distracted with Aradel. She reached to the river depths, melting the bedrock, and pulled it rapidly to the surface. A stream of molten stone exploded from the water, and Darha split it into a thousand tiny pieces, causing a fire storm to rain down over the despicable woman’s head. Freya was just barely able to conceal herself in a shield of ice five feet thick as the fire barraged her. With a loud hissing sound, and a cloud of steam, Darha’s attack reduced the ice shield to almost nothing, but left the woman unharmed.
While Freya’s shield was thin, Darha expected Aradel to attack, but the other woman hesitated, looking horrified. Aradel only expanded her wall of ice out in front of Darha to protect her as well. Observing Aradel, Darha realized there was a conflict of emotions on her face. She realized Aradel hadn’t attacked Freya once yet. She had been on the defensive only.
Darha’s attention was drawn to the ice wall when it began to warp and waver. Suddenly it exploded toward both women. Darha threw her arms up, igniting a powerful shield of fire around her as shards of ice flew at her face. Every splinter from the obliterated wall melted against her magic, but Darha was thrown back fifteen feet. Aradel called out something that Darha couldn’t hear, but it sounded like some sort of plea to Freya.
Picking herself up, Darha contemplated the scene and shook her head. This was ridiculous! They were too evenly matched and this battle was getting them nowhere. Neither one had an edge over the other. All of it was made worse by Aradel’s apparent unwillingness to attack the woman.
Aradel pulled a massive amount of water from the river. It splashed over the side of the ice and rushed toward Freya. Freya’s gestures indicated she tried to stop it, but it was too much. The moon pearls glowed brightly as it surrounded her completely, encasing her in a bubble that hardened into thick ice.
That’s when Darha felt something strange from somewhere unexpected. She narrowed her eyes on the frost magic that danced over Aradel’s hands, and realized she could feel heat there. Heat? In ice? There wasn’t much, only a minute trace of it, but it was there. Curious, Darha held her hands up toward the magic.
“What are you doing?” Aradel cried over her shoulder. Already Freya was heating her way out of her temporary cage.
Darha didn’t answer; she couldn’t answer, because she wasn’t sure herself. Feeling the small levels of heat in Aradel’s ice magic, Darha pulled on them, trying to bring them toward herself. Nothing happened at first, so Darha pulled harder.
“Darha!” Aradel called as Freya stepped casually out of her icy enclosure.
Freya was preparing to attack again, so with every particle of power and energy Darha had inside of her, she pulled on the heat in Aradel’s ice magic, forcing it toward her.
As soon as it budged, as soon as she felt the heat draw toward her, something incredible happened. The blue light of Aradel’s ice magic changed, as did the heat that Darha was drawing to herself. Darha’s eyes went wide as blue flames engulfed Aradel’s hands, making her jump and hold them away from her body. The same blue fire was also what was coming toward Darha. When it touched her hands, she realized this fire wasn’t actual fire, because it burned cold instead of hot, yet Darha’s skin was not burned. Out of nowhere, a soft sigh of wind seemed to sweep over them as the blue flames danced on Darha’s and Aradel’s fingers.
Panting in shock, they met each other’s eyes, and stared in horror and wonder at each other. “Cold fire?” Aradel breathed. Darha couldn’t even speak.
Both Queens looked back at Freya, who was consumed with such utter horror that Darha nearly smiled. Her expression soon melted into hatred again. “I WILL KILL YOU ALL!” she screamed, and summoned another blast of frost and fire magic in her palms.
Darha and Aradel both moved forward and, side by side, shot a stream of the blue flame Cold Fire magic at the young woman. Freya didn’t even have time to scream before she was frozen solid. It was a different kind of frozen, one that didn’t encase her in ice like the Frost Nation could normally do. This magic penetrated her skin and froze her blood, and she instantly turned into blue gray stone.
Darha and Aradel stared at Freya in astonishment, and then down at the cold blue flames in their hands. Darha was awestruck by them. She was a proficient magic user, and she’d never conjured such a thing. And to have the Frost Nation Queen summon the same substance was something she doubted anyone had ever even heard of.
A loud crack drew Darha’s attention back up to Freya. The ice under her frozen form had broken apart, weakened by the battle, and she splashed down into the water like a rock. Aradel ran. Stunned, Darha ran after her. Grabbing her elbow, Darha stopped her at the edge of the broken ice, and both beheld
the depths of the river. The young woman’s form was only a sinking shadow.
It was eerily quiet. The only sound Darha could hear was the wind softly whistling past her ears. “We did it,” she said gently. She regarded Aradel and saw the pain etched in her expression. Aradel then fell to her knees by the hole and gazed down into it in disbelief. “What’s wrong, Aradel?”
Aradel looked up at Darha as a single, involuntary tear slipped down her pale cheek. “I just killed my niece.”
Darha’s eyes went wide. “Oh no.” Aradel didn’t respond as she gazed back into the hole. “That’s why you looked so conflicted when she first appeared yesterday.”
Aradel nodded. “I thought I could save her.” Aradel swallowed when her voice almost broke. “She was all I had left of my sister.”
Having no words of comfort, Darha knelt beside her and drew her into a warm embrace. Aradel gladly received the comfort and rested her head on Darha’s shoulder.
A few moments passed before they realized what was happening. They sharply drew away from each other. “What in the…” Darha breathed, looking at her hand resting on Aradel’s shoulder blade.
Aradel in turn gazed at her own hand on Darha’s arm. They met each other’s eyes, round as dinner plates. “That doesn’t burn you?” Aradel asked.
Darha shook her head. “I’m not burning you?”
“No,” Aradel responded in a breath.
Both women experimented by touching each other’s arms, neck and hands repeatedly, and were shocked each time the other’s touch didn’t hurt, or fracture skin, or turn to stone. A smile slowly crept over Darha’s face. She wondered if this new phenomenon was just between her and Aradel or if it could possibly be nationwide. If it was nationwide…
