None of the others laughed with him.
Instead, there it was again. On Sanford’s face. On her companion’s. On Kleid’s.
Fear.
Domenic’s smile fell; his pettiness extinguished.
He muttered a quick goodbye and stalked away. Kleid scurried after him with the rest of Domenic’s supplies piled in his arms.
Once he’d finished donning the dozen layers of warmth and armor, Domenic joined Peak where he addressed a squad of five magicians. Beneath all their gear, Domenic couldn’t differentiate any of them, and he only picked out Peak by the sight of Targath in his hand. It was even more impressive unsheathed, its calcified oak handle ridged with igneous veins.
“Our primary goal is to locate the scouting team,” Peak said. “If they need assistance, Matthews, Young, you split off to help them. The rest of us, we’ll be hunting whatever ghasts are left.We can’t afford to stall. Blink, and a category four can turn category five real fast. And the longer we’re in there, the more time we give frostmaul to set in. So we stick to formation. We keep our wands out and warm. And we keep moving. Got it?”
“Got it,” the other magicians echoed.
“Then let’s go.”
As the group hurried across the field, Peak jerked his head at Domenic to walk beside him. Domenic was all too happy to do so. Peak seemed a better leader than Domenic had given him credit for. And Domenic intended to stick closer to him than a hemorrhoid.
“We’re getting a bit more than we bargained for, huh?” Peak said, not sounding the least bit distressed about it. “But the plan’s the same. You stay by my side. You keep a heat spell going. And that’s all you gotta do, Dom. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Domenic answered weakly.
Peak beamed and clapped his shoulder. “Attaboy.”
The team halted at the edge of the winterscurge and assembled into a two-three-two formation, with Domenic at the center and Peak on his right. Each magician slid their wands into the narrow slits of their gloves, their collective radiance swathing the group in a warm, golden net.
Domenic mirrored them, and several heads whipped toward him as he unsheathed Valmordion. He stifled a wince as its thorns scraped his wounds. Then, carefully, nervously, he released the smallest fraction of his magic into a spell. To his amazement, the net brightened tenfold, its every crevice sealing into a shield. With a training wand, such power would’ve taxed him. With Valmordion, it’d cost him nothing at all.
Though Domenic couldn’t see their expressions, the other magicians continued to stare at him, and Peak shot him a thumbs-up. A measly sprig of pride sprouted in Domenic’s chest.
“All right!” Peak shouted. “We enter in three… two… one!”
It felt like plunging into ice water. The winds struck Domenicas if a punch to the gut, and he staggered so as not to be blown over. Though the cold didn’t pierce through the shield, the frozen sheet across the ground cracked like glass beneath their boots, and the storm’s roar thundered in his eardrums, rattling him down to his bones.
He’d hoped that the ghast he and Caldwell had faced in Mercester Square would’ve prepared him for this moment. But the scurge that single monster had summoned bore no comparison to this.
They moved at a slow jog. As bright as it was, their shield only illuminated several feet ahead of them, and Domenic took in every boulder, every tree, bracing for a beast to emerge from the dark.
They didn’t sight the lost team until they collided with them.
It was immediate chaos: magicians shouting and barreling into each other, enchantments flickering, wands haphazardly blasting into the sky. And while the rest of the rescue party dashed back into formation, Domenic froze. It was no wonder the scouts had yet to return; they had encountered not one winterghast, but an entire pack. The closest resembled a crude approximation of a wolverine, its limbs bent at unnatural angles, its fang-bristled mouth encompassing nearly the entirety of its skull. Behind it, ghasts like a spider, a serpent, and a fox swarmed the few scouts still standing. In the saturation of Valmordion’s filter, the eyes of every monster glowed an otherworldly, piercing blue.
Immediately, Peak shouted, “Get back!” A golden spell blasted out of Targath toward the wolverine. It burned clean through its abdomen, and its balance buckled as its wound seeped with water.
“You’re here,” one of the scouts gasped with relief. He knelt beside a wounded magician. The gash that raked across his gear had exposed him to the storm’s magic. Already, bloodied frostmaul crystallized across the side of his jaw, down his neck, and across his shoulder. His breaths heaved out in spurts.
Domenic reeled back. Each time he blinked, he saw red. He saw Syarthis.
“We need to evac Varley, sir,” the scout continued. “But the ghasts…”
All around, the ghasts advanced. One of the spider’s many mangled legs jabbed toward a pair of scouts, who toppled back as their shield shattered above them. To the left, the hole in the wolverine’s abdomen resealed, and it charged toward the rescue team. Domenic ducked as their frantic missiles of fire or beams of sunlight flared at it through the blackness.
“Change of plans!” Peak shouted. “Kim, Matthews, Young—escort the scouts back to camp! The rest of you, move on to hunt down whichever ghasts are left.”
“The rest of us?” Domenic choked. “What about you?”
Peak turned to him, and to Domenic’s shock, Peak tore off his balaclava. But Peak’s skin wasn’t flushed from the cold—he was sweating. He shrugged off his coat, left only in the armor.
