She tried to shake her head, but Terren’s grip in her hair wouldn’t relent. “It’s not him,” she sobbed. “I don’t believe you.”
“He fought hard,” Terren taunted. There was a smile in his raspy voice. “I think he liked you.”
Tears burned Sable’s eyes. “It isn’t him,” she whimpered. “It’s not.”
It isn’t Hunter,she chanted inside her head.It isn’t Hunter.
“It is!” Terren barked in her ear. “You best believe it, girl. Tried to pull the wool over my eyes,Saloma Merlinian?I always knew you were a fake bitch. You’re dog’s meat.” He shoved her face into the icy stone.
Sable could do nothing except stare at the charred, faceless corpse. Even as Terren wound up and kicked her in the ribs.
He kicked her again.
And again. She swore she heard something crack, but she hardly felt it.
“Had enough, girl?” he snarled. But he kept kicking. Becausehehadn’t had enough.
A ringing began deep in her ears. Blood trickled from her nose again as her vision wavered, the world around her as hazy as a fever dream. The crust of ice beneath her began to crack, spider-webbing at all sides.
Then it began to melt. Steam spiraled up from the ground like writhing spirits.
There was no pain anymore—only anger. The kind that blinds you. It unfurled inside her, like a pair of great wings. She couldn’t think. She was nothing now, except rage.
Terren started to say something—an insult, perhaps. But he didn’t get a word out before flames engulfed Sable’s body, racing from her head to her toe.
He stumbled back mid-kick with a startled gasp, and nearly went down. He shouted for the guards, but no one came.
Sable slowly lifted herself to her hands and knees, the blood in her veins hot as lava. The ice melted quicker beneath her touch, until the flagstones sleeping beneath many centuries’ worth of ice were scalding.
Terren swore. He tried to flee, but he tripped, tumbling into the snow. For the rest of her unholy existence, Sable swore she would never forget the look of pure terror on his face. It filled her with the kind of glee that could only be considered madness.
She was smiling as she rose to her feet, just as Levon had told her to. And then a violent scream erupted from deep in her chest as she directed that gold fire away from herself, instead throwing it onto the general.
His skin blistered and melted away in chunks. The sounds coming out of him in that moment… They were more animal than Elven. Sable kept screaming as her fire devoured the Dark Lord’s general, chewing right down to the bone.
It was vengeance. It was the voice of every man, woman, and child he’d ever harmed speaking out against him at last.
It was what Sable had lived for during the painful years spying in the king’s army and rescuing what few innocent people she could. And it did not disappoint.
By the time he was nothing but ash in the wind, Sable’s magic had retreated into her core, falling into a deep slumber. She dropped like a stone to the ground, landing hard on her shoulder, and she lay still and breathless beneath the corpse of Hunter Northridge, swinging in the breeze.
Twilight had shifted into a deep and empty dusk. The courtyard was littered with the mutilated and half-eaten bodies of those she’d once called family, and not two blades could be heard clashing in the dead silence.
It was over, Sable realized as her eyelids slid shut. They’d lost, the life she’d fought to protect now gone.
And the branches of that tree of ice hanging like a cage above her were all that remained.
~
There was a hand on the back of her neck. Dragging her down jagged steps, into shadows thick enough to touch. Two pairs of footsteps clapped against the walls, the sound like the beating of a drum.
Sable’s blood-crusted eyelids cracked open. She caught a glimpse of rows of crypts, and dark corners filled with cobwebs and skulls.
Her head lolled back as she fought unconsciousness. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry and tasted of blood. Every inch of her ached. Symbols, letters, and engravings of gods and angels stared back at her from the ceiling, their gazes cold and critical.
The last she saw was Hilandria, the deity of fire. The goddess who’d gifted her with magic both destructive and untameable. Sable couldn’t help but wonder what the purpose was—in being gifted with magic apparently capable of obliterating an entire army, yet it failed her when she needed it most. It wasn’t a gift.
It was a curse.
