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Magnus held his silence.
That had better be the end of it.
But it wasn’t. “Please…” He made his voice louder, so people could hear him beg, so the men would know he was the weak one, not me. He threw himself on his own sword, humiliated himself…for her.
My respect for him just dropped by half.
I turned to the executioner and gave a sight nod.
The executioner gave a loud sign in pure frustration, but he obeyed.
I gave Magnus a final look of disappointment before I walked away.
Nine
The Coldest Fire
Melanie
I sat on my bed, the fire gone because it’d burned out in the hours after I’d left with Raven. My chest convulsed with sobs, so grief-stricken I couldn’t take a sip of water or a bite of food. My body was frozen solid and a hot shower would be perfect for thawing, but all I cared about was Raven.
She was probably dead by now.
When I went to the clearing tomorrow, I would see her blood on the ground.
I would see her lifeless body… just hanging there.
“No…” I clutched my stomach as the sobs physically pained me.
Heavy boots sounded outside the door, the lock turned, and then Fender stepped inside.
I immediately went still, my sobs stuck in my throat.
He shut the door behind him and stood over me.
Livid. Psychotic. Maniacal.
Just a look was far scarier than anything he could actually say.
He came closer.
I instinctively backed up.
“You’re afraid of me.”
I started to breathe hard again.
“Good.” He went to the armchair, but instead of plopping down into it, he carried it to my bedside and took a seat. Right across from me. His dark eyes were colder than the blizzard raging outside. We went back in time to our first interaction, and I was even more scared now than I was then. “You’re leaving with me tomorrow. You don’t get a choice. You forfeited that luxury when you betrayed me.”
It was too intense to look at him, so I dropped my gaze.
“Look. At. Me.”
I immediately obeyed, my eyes still watering in grief. “I… I didn’t betray you—”
“Did I say you could speak?”
Now I realized just how well he used to treat me. He’d never been this callous, even when I rejected his advances or told him no when he expected to hear yes.
“You ran off into a blizzard with no chance of survival.” His voice rose slowly, climbing like a spark growing into a flame. “You could have broken through ice and felt your heart stop from shock before you even had a chance to drown. You could have been attacked by wolves, your flesh ripped off your face piece by piece. You could have fallen into a crevasse of snow and suffocated. You could have done any of these things—and I wouldn’t have been able to save you. That’s betrayal.”
I breathed hard as I stared, not expecting that to be the reason for his wrath.
His eyes narrowed. “You would rather die out there than be with me?”
I shook my head. “I…I didn’t want my sister to be alone. I didn’t want her to die alone—”
“So, you wanted to die with her?” he snapped, his voice growing louder.
“Do…do you have a brother?”
His eyes narrowed in a way they never had before. “Yes.”
“Then wouldn’t you rather die with him…than leave him to die alone?”
He processed that question for a long time. A really long time. With his unblinking gaze, he stared at me endlessly, like he could read the words written across my eyes, found something new to look at as the seconds passed.
He rose from the chair. “We leave in the morning.” He left the chair where it was and moved to the door.
I started to sob again, knowing Raven was out there, dead.
He opened the door then turned back to me. “Your sister will live.”
I gave an involuntary gasp, and new tears flushed my eyes. “Thank you…thank you so much—”
“Thank Magnus. If it were up to me, she would have hung.” He shut the door, locked it, and left. He didn’t make a fire for me like he usually would. He let me sit in the cold and the dark…like I deserved it.
Once I knew my sister was okay, the tremors and tears stopped. I took a hot shower to thaw my fingers, to get the dirt out of my hair that had been transferred from the snow. My clothes were dropped on the floor, and I slept in my bed naked. I didn’t even need a fire because the inside of the cabin was still considerably warmer than the blizzard outside. The wind made the windows rattle, waking me sometimes because it was like a witch shrieking right next to my ear.
By morning, it was over.
Silence.
I sat up in bed, the sunlight coming through the windows because it was a clear day now that the snow clouds were gone. Last night felt like a bad dream, a cold nightmare. My lips were still dry because the moisture had been sucked out of my skin by a sponge made of ice. I barely moved my legs and felt my muscles resist because they were sore.
