A shaven head marked up with vicious scars. Small, dark eyes set beneath brows so pale they almost weren’t visible at all. A straight line of a mouth perpetually turned down at the corners. He had the type of head that would do well mounted on a pike, Sable thought.
“Carried mile upon mile, from tree to tree,” she went on, holding his gaze, “and then on stray leaves tossed about when forest gave way to plain and mountain.”
The general waited, feigning patience and interest, a threat crouching in those dark eyes. A warning to make a point—or be made an example of by speaking out of line.
Sable turned back to the brook, at last lifting her hands from the water. “It’s disgusting, isn’t it, General?” she muttered, examining the ring on the middle finger of her right hand. To the untrained eye it wasn’t anything special, certainly nothing worth stealing. The band was made of wood now waterlogged from being submerged in the brook. There was no gemstone to catch the light, nor was there a single marking, aside from a notch here and there from daily use, that might demand a second look. “Trees delivering messages—thenerve.”She knew she was playing with fire by talking to him about the trees—about a level of magic too deep for even the king and his men to understand. Too deep to control.
“Indeed,” the general gritted out, impatience wrapping tightly around the single word. The chain of the Morningstar rattled as he turned on his heel. “I regret to say the fallen call for tending. There will always be another stream to wash your hands in, Merlinian. Show some respect for your fallen brothers-in-arms and get back to the fields.”
Respect.
Brothers-in-arms.
Fighting in this army was an absolute joke. As if the men who had fallen today meant anything more to her than a corpse to a vulture!
If only they knew who she really was—that her name was not Saloma Merlinian, as she had tricked them into believing, but Sable Erwyn Sylvana, the warrior-girl disguised by the magical ring on her middle finger. If only they knew that if she learned how to master the gifts that slumbered inside her, she could tear them limb from limb—not just with her bare hands, but with her mind. If she only knew how, she could stomp this entire army beneath her boot.
Sable grunted in pain as she rose from her crouch, her back muscles aching from staying in one position for so long—and from swinging a sword at the very men she was supposed to be aiding in battle as soon as no one was looking.
Rain misted the side of her face, swept in on a gust of wind that smelled of pine needles. Her hair, now falling just past her chin, swirled beneath her hood of blood-red velvet.
When she’d first allowed herself to be captured and conscripted into the Dark Lord’s army, Terren and his men had held her down and sheared off her hair with a blunt knife. To this day, she still kicked herself for not choosing a different guise; if she’d used the ring to create the illusion of shorter hair, they wouldn’t have bothered to touch her. Instead, she’d only changed the color—from strawberry-blonde locks to black. Though at least they hadn’t bothered to shave it right to the scalp.
After that, she’d made further adjustments with the ring—mainly a few scars large enough to discourage leering. The guise she’d selected was plain, though being female in a dominantly male army was bound to attract some unwanted attention. Few were dumb enough to act upon such urges, but those who wrongly assumed the sex capable of bearing offspring was weaker, learned their lesson the hard way. If she was feeling merciful, that lesson involved a sword through the eye. But on the days when she was feeling particularly witchy, her sword would strike lower.Muchlower.
Most days, she was not merciful.
As Sable followed the path the general had trudged through, making a point not to step in the large shoeprints he’d left in the half-melted snow, two words continued to haunt her thoughts.
If only.
22
Nocturne was summoned to the king’s quarters shortly before sundown. The Dragon escorted her there, though he didn’t say so much as a word to her. She’d expected as much, but as they neared the doors that led to the king’s chambers, she desperately wished for a distraction. Her heart had never thrummed so fast. The doors grew larger with each shaky step she took, and the sound of Killian’s boot buckles jingling as he walked beside her set her trembling like a leaf in the wind.
Since arriving at the House of Ice, the king had summoned her to his chambers on two occasions. Once for a beating with a wooden paddle for trying to run away, and once to have his name branded above her heart with a glowing-hot blade. The paddle had bruised her spine and tailbone, and she’d limped for a solid two weeks afterward. The brand over her heart had yet to heal completely, and every morning she selected clothes specifically to conceal the ugly thing. Though occasionally, someone caught a glimpse of the puckered skin, much to her humiliation.
When she entered the throne room, all was dark, but she knew they weren’t alone. Killian waited beside her, his hands folded behind his back, as Nocturne studied the soldiers hidden in the shadows along the red-curtained walls. Two torches burned across the room, one on either side of the throne the king’s men had assembled for him. Made entirely of ice, the chair towered nearly twenty feet high and glowed a light blue that made a sharp contrast with the choking blackness of the room.
The king’s voice filled the silence like poison. “I’d like to know what you were doing at the Temple of Ice two nights ago.” He certainly wasn’t wasting time.
There was a soft jingle, like chains clinking together. Nocturne’s gaze flicked to a shadow cowering just behind the throne.
It was the wolf. The same wolf she’d seen the day the Firedrakes arrived. The wolf she’d fed salt meat near the root cellar. Nocturne’s nostrils flared as she tried to catch that familiar scent, the one that smelled ofhome.
She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “I wasn’t—”
“It is a great crime to lie to a king.” His words echoed against the ceiling, and though he spoke in a casual volume, Nocturne flinched. “I’ll give you another chance to answer in truth, and if you lie again, you’ll be lucky if I don’t cut off your hand.”
Nocturne laced her fingers together to keep them from trembling—and tried very hard not to look at the wolf.
“I hear your left is far weaker than your right,” the king continued. “Perhaps if we took your right, you’d learn the importance of being able to use both.”
“Please,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure what she was asking.
“Answer the question.”
She couldn’t let him know about Avalon and Hadrian. Trapped here at the House of Ice, there was little she could do to help what few people defied the king, but she would be damned if she gave away what the princess and the captain were planning.
