It meant a chance to get to know more and more of them. To introduce herself, establish herself.
Assuming she could stave off whatever her father was trying to do. To Nik’s question, she shrugged. “It’s Fodur. He’s…I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but he keeps breaking through my hold on the tides.”
Nik’s brows drew together. “How?”
Frustration with herself swelled. “I don’t know! He couldn’t shake my grip of the Ice Prison, couldn’t break through my locks—”
“No.” A soft smile on his lips, he reached over and tangled their fingers together. “I don’t mean how is he strong enough. I mean what is he actually doing? When you described the Challenge to me, you said you focused on the small, that the magic of the other Blessed was like a net you could sneak through. So what is he doing to get past you? Can you tell?”
She hadn’t thought to examine the how. Closing her eyes for a moment, she focused on her connection to the sea, the ice shelf that Stefanos’s triremes hovered beyond. The currents, the tides, the waves.
Fodur’s touch, amidst and among the twisting ropes of magic she’d had to make to allow the other Blessed to join with her. It went through her net, just as she’d slithered through his.
Her breath huffed out. “You’re right. He’s doing exactly what I did.”
Nik laughed and gave her fingers a squeeze. “I’m not right, I just asked a question. But now that you know?”
Her head was beginning to hurt. “I can’t hold it all on such a small level. Some, yes. It’s what I’ve always focused on. But the storms and the wall and the seas, and battling my father—it’s too much.”
“So what can you let go of?” His thumb stroked over her knuckles. “Daemon has the prison now. Can you let other Blessed take the snows?”
Her breath puffed out, though it made no vapor in the air, warm as it was around Nik. “He’s tugging at those too—and the others have never been close to matching him. I’m afraid if I let go, he’ll cover the whole continent in a blizzard. He feels so angry.”
Enraged, more like. Furious. Probably all the more so because he’d know it wasn’t just her touch in those waters, it was other Blessed. People he’d once held under his thumb.
Ahead of them, the elder paused. “We will soon enter the Great Forest, Your Majesty,” he called back. Worry saturated his tone.
She exchanged a look with Nik and Raf, who looked as confused as she. “Is this a problem, my friend?” Even as she asked, Fodur’s accusation flitted through her mind.Her magic is as untethered as the Great Forest.
The old man motioned to the dark patch on the horizon, obscured by a low-lying fog that often plagued the Ice Plains. “It is changeable in there. Frozen fog one minute, freezing rain the next. My people have always called it the King’s Playground.It seemed it was where he tried his hand at every possible foul weather to torment us and keep us from passing through. Even these last two weeks, it has been nearly impassable.”
Not the direct work of her father, then—unless it was something he’d set in motion that cycled without his constant input.
Kyrja sent her senses out, into the woods. She’d visited the southern half of the Great Forest once as a girl but had found it so very strange. Confining, with the tall trees looming over her, blocking the sky and interfering with the snow. Threatening.
It hadn’t even occurred to her to stretch into them in the last two weeks. Now, she found the conditions wild. Untamed. That was the best way she could think to describe them. She sensed hot springs bubbling up, raising the temperature in one area, where the heat was trapped between rocky cliffs. Steam rising, blowing, only to freeze again in the next valley, where no springs warmed them. There she could feel the sleet pelting down, fog freezing to everything.
“Is it safe to proceed?” Raf asked, shifting the weight of his pack a bit. He glanced behind them, at the villagers who were ambling to a halt, their gazes locked onto the shadow ahead.
Their leader sighed. “It is always a risk. There are fjords in the path. We’ve made bridges over the years, of the rope and slat variety, but the conditions are hard on them. I have no doubt that with our two Blessed, we will be fine. I thought only to warn you, Your Majesty. And you, Lord Nikanor.”
She nodded. “I appreciate you drawing my attention to it. I knew the forests were wild, but I didn’t know the extent.”
Nik let go of her hand and crouched down, pressing his palm to the earth. “There’s a lot of activity down there. I know I’m not great at sensing the touches of the others yet, but I can’t find any evidence of even Daemon in it, and his signature is usually strong enough for me to follow.”
“Well, that makes sense. There are no people living in the Great Forest.” Kyrja shifted her own pack, filled with food generously donated by the village. “All the Aflame’s efforts, much like the Blessed’s, have been focused on what affects the population centers—the coastal regions and the plains.”
He looked up at her. “Perhaps now would be a good time to stop for the midday meal. Take a few minutes to get our bearings.”
“A wise idea.” She called it out to their guide, who nodded and backtracked to rejoin them. Nik cleared the snow from an area large enough to seat everyone and started a fire for them. Kyrja exchanged a few smiles and words but ended up standing on the outskirts of the gathering, face toward the unknown.
Was that the root of this feeling of foreboding in her chest—the fact that she just didn’t know much about the world they’d be passing through?
No. It was that every time she probed into it with her magical sense, she could feel her father withdraw a bit from the sea. Why? That made no sense, did it? Even if he felt her in the forest, shouldn’t he be using the distraction of it to pounce where he most wanted control back?
Though why the sea was his concern, she didn’t know.
“Your Majesty. Here.”
