She nodded, unable to find words.Her mind reeled from what she'd just witnessed, from the name that had fallen from the mage's lips.He’d recognized Roran.Had he known him, somehow?Questions burned on her tongue, but they had no place here, not with battle still raging around them.
"We need to push them back," Kaine said, retrieving his hammer from where it had fallen."The breach at the main gate is still open."
Senna appeared beside them, her breath coming in short gasps, but her stance still ready for battle."Most of the fighting has moved to the eastern courtyard.They're trying to flank us."
Thalia forced herself to focus, pushing aside both the glacenite's whispers and her questions about Roran's true identity."Then that's where we go," she said, tightening her grip on her sword.
They moved as one, retracing their steps through corridors now littered with the aftermath of battle.Defenders and Wardens alike lay where they had fallen, some still clutching their weapons in death's grip.Those still standing rallied at the sight of them, drawing strength from the knowledge that the golem had been defeated.
As they emerged into the eastern courtyard, the full force of the storm hit them, rain and sleet driving horizontally on gale-force winds.Wardens pressed the defenders from three sides, their black blades flashing in the lightning's glow.Wolfe stood at the center of the defensive line, her ice-glacenite spear a blur as she cut down anyone who came within reach.
Thalia, Roran, Kaine, and Senna entered the fray without hesitation, their weapons finding gaps in the Wardens' armor with practiced precision.Roran called down lightning from the storm above, each bolt striking with devastating accuracy, forcing the attackers to divide their attention.
But as the battle wore on, the glacenite's curse intensified.Thalia's vision swam with images that weren't there—distorted projections of Verdant Port in flames, the herb shop collapsing, the market square strewn with bodies.Her mother's face, contorted in agony.Mari's thin form, broken and still.She fought through the visions, each more terrible than the last, forcing herself to distinguish between hallucination and reality.It was growing more and more difficult, her grim fears for her home and family forming a shroud over her true surroundings.
A Warden lunged at her, blade aimed at her heart.Thalia parried on instinct alone, her body responding to the threat even as her mind battled phantoms.She countered with a thrust that found the gap beneath his arm, dropping him to his knees.
Inch by agonizing inch, the defenders reclaimed their ground.The Wardens, facing unexpected resistance from the glacenite weapons and Roran's command of the very storm they'd summoned, began to fall back.First one, then another, then dozens retreating toward the shattered gate and the fjord beyond.
"They're running!"someone shouted—Daniel, his voice hoarse but triumphant.
A ragged cheer went up from the defenders, quickly subdued as they pursued the retreating enemy, determined not to allow them to regroup.
Thalia tried to follow, but her legs finally betrayed her.She stumbled, her knees hitting the stone with bruising force, her grip still tight on the leather hilt of her sword.The visions pressed in from all sides now, reality and hallucination blending until she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
Strong arms caught her before she could collapse completely—Kaine on one side, Roran on the other.
"Drop that blade," Kaine murmured, his voice seeming to come from very far away."It's the glacenite.You pushed yourself too hard."
"The Wardens," she managed to whisper, her voice cracking with exhaustion.
"They're retreating," Roran assured her."We've won.We've held Frostforge."
She wanted to believe him, wanted to take comfort in their victory.But even as Roran gently pried her fingers from the leather-wrapped hilt of the glacenite blade, even as the sword clattered to the stone floor, Thalia couldn’t dismiss the visions of Verdant Port.The smoke still curled behind her eyelids, the screams still echoed in her skull.The weight of the battle—and the strange, pulsing influence of the glacenite—had left her mind raw, her thoughts frayed at the edges.
Kaine’s grip tightened around her shoulders, steadying her."Look at me," he said, his voice low but firm.
Thalia forced her gaze up, her vision swimming.Kaine’s face was streaked with soot and blood, his dark eyes sharp with concern.She blinked, her gaze straying away for a moment, and once again saw Verdant Port’s ruin.Her nostrils filled with the phantom scent of burning orchards, the sickly sweet char of fruit hanging in the smoky air.She heard the cry of an unseen child, begging for their mother.Heard Mari, sobbing.
She closed her eyes, her teeth gritted until her temples ached, but couldn’t dismiss the visions.Logically, she knew why.She had pushed herself too hard with the glacenite, and the visions would not fade as quickly as they had after a simple sparring session.Such intense use of the weapon had left afterimages of horror imprinted in her mind, like patches of color in her vision after staring at the sun.
Despite this explanation, despite Thalia’s certainty that the images of fire and ash and bodies were nothing more than hallucinations, the dread still clung to her like a rime of frost.Because even if the devastation wasn’t here—even if she wasn’tthere,in the city—Verdant Port’s destruction, its fall to the Isle Wardens, wasn’t a mere figment of the glacenite’s strange magic.
It was real.It had happened.And as long as she knew that, as long as her family's fate remained unknown, she would never be free of these ghosts.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Moonlight spilled across Frostforge's broken walls, turning the twisted remains of the portcullis into skeletal fingers reaching toward the sky.Thalia blinked, her vision finally clearing of the glacenite's persistent visions, though the weight of them still pressed against her chest like a cold stone.She watched instructors move between the wounded with faces carved from ice, their usual stern demeanors softened by exhaustion and relief.They had survived.But as her gaze fell upon the bodies laid out with careful dignity in the mess hall, Thalia knew the victory had exacted its price.
Kaine's hand rested at the small of her back, steadying her as they picked their way through the debris-strewn foyer.Shards of ice-metal glinted beneath their feet, catching the torchlight like trapped stars.Where the black golem had smashed its way through the academy's main entrance, nothing remained but a jagged maw of stone and twisted metal, the night air pouring through the breach like water through a broken dam.
"Can you walk?"Kaine asked, his voice low near her ear.
"Yes," Thalia said, though her legs still trembled with exhaustion.The aftereffects of the glaciation were fading, but slowly, like the tide retreating from shore."I need to see."
Need to see the living, she meant.Need to count faces and know who remained.Need to push back against the visions of destruction that still lurked at the edges of her mind, waiting to sweep in whenever she closed her eyes.
They joined the gathering of survivors in the grand foyer, where torches blazed in wall sconces that had somehow remained intact during the assault.Instructor Virek moved among the wounded, his thin hands glowing with cryomancy as he numbed pain and slowed bleeding.Rasmus sat on a fallen column, his face pale as Luna bandaged a gash across his forearm.Felah stood guard at one of the side passages, her glacenite blade still in hand despite the battle's end, her eyes haunted by more than physical exhaustion.
