We walk the rest of the ridge trail in silence, but everything has changed. Every brush of our sleeves and every flick of a glance carries new, electric energy. The air sparkles around us. Ice crystals catch in sunbeams like tiny diamonds that swirl across space and time. Val stares out over the valley, lit with rose-gold clouds and lavender mist. It’s like something out of a storybook.
But I’m not looking at the valley.
Chapter 19
Lark
Idon’t realize we’ve wandered straight into a trap until a snowball slaps me full in the neck.
“AMBUSH!” someone shrieks.
The twins erupt from behind a drift like howling goblins. Aili’s teal hair peeks over a log, accompanied by another lobbed snowball. Mika, the quiet traitor, calmly aims one at my chest from the trees. It hits with surgical precision.
Val’s laugh cuts through the chaos, clear and bright as the sky above. I spin, already scooping snow while diving for cover behind a stump. If this is what hurting later looks like, I don’t care.
At first, Val hovers on the fringes of the madness. I can feel her eyes on me.
Then the twins charge again, their war cries echoing. She ducks as a pair of snowballs sail past, and she makes her first mistake, darting to hide behind me.
“I’m on your side,” she whispers, conspiratorial and breathless.
“Are you now?” I glance down, snow crusting the tips of my lashes. “You sure about that?”
“Yes?”
I lean in, so close I could kiss her again. Just like before, dizzying and drugging and oh so tempting. She catches the glint in my eye a second too late.
The snow I surreptitiously gathered cascades down her hair and into her collar. Her shriek is deafening.
“Lark!” She freezes.
No…everythingfreezes.
The temperature drops all around us, falling with the stillness that means you’ve just awakened a sleeping storm. Ice crystals gather behind her like a cape with a sharp frosted edge.
Um,oops?
I should stop giggling like an evil fiend.
The frost ripples behind her like a general’s banner. “Oh, you shouldnothave done that.”
Why does terror seize my heart at that sparkle in her eyes?
She rises like a wave and pivots away from me. “Katja! Joha! Gather ammunition. Mika, take cover on the lee side. We flank him on my signal.”
Wind gusts through the clearing out of nowhere, laced with glittering ice. Walls of snow rise like summoned spirits, forming battlements, towers…even a precarious snow trebuchet.
Snowballs form in mid-air and begin stacking themselves into piles with smug precision.
I blink. “Wait, what—?”
It appears I may have underestimated our darling princess.
And thisisher Royal Highness I’m witnessing, just not in ballgowns and glamours. This is our battle-ready future queen before me. Even Hugo senses the shift. The hedgehog bolts frommy inner pocket, scrambles down my leg, and scurries off for safety.
No faith. No loyalty. “You spiky traitor!”
Katja’s already hurling snow, her dainty wings flared behind her. The twins whoop and disappear behind their new icy fortress. Aili has upgraded her position to below a turret, from whence she chucks multiple snowballs in my direction with gritted determination.Deepsonly knows where Helkki is, but I’m sure she’s staging a grand attack.
