I level a heated glare at Farron. “What were you thinking? If I hadn’t shown up, you’d be dead right now!”
The only reason I’m here is because Padraig still possesses a mote of sanity, which Farron seems to have lost. Farron’s father used the enchanted door between Castletree and the realms’ keeps to find me in Frostfang. He was panicked, sputtering about how Farron would not come to his senses. I’ve summonedreinforcements, but even our fastest platoon, the Kryodian Riders, will take hours to cross the border. I don’t know what’s happened to his soldiers, but I’m Farron and the twins’ only hope of getting out of this.
“I had to do something!” Farron yells. A goblin scrambles between two prongs of icicles but ends up with the point of Farron’s lance between its eyes. He pulls the lance out with a squelch. “They stole the rose.”
“I know,” I growl, cutting the throat of a grinjaw as it struggles over the icicles, no mind for ripping its own belly on the sharp points of ice. “I received a letter. And do you know what I didn’t do? Wage afuckingassault without telling any of my allies!”
Farron hisses through his teeth but doesn’t respond. His brothers exchange nervous glances but remain occupied, holding back any goblins that clamber over the barrier. The boys have grown so much since their messy assassination attempt on me, all that time ago.
We can’t stay in this icicle ring forever. Already, cracks are forming as the Below’s army smashes into my pillars. An Autumn soldier, golden armor still gleaming though spattered with blood, makes a gargling sound as he attempts to leap between two icicles. I’m about to pull him into our protection when I see his eyes are burning with Green Flame, and his throat is slit to the point where his head wobbles upon the neck. My stomach lurches.He should not be moving.What happened to Autumn’s soldiers?
I don’t have the heart to lay a blade to him, so I throw up my hand, and a gust of wind shoots him back. There’s no time to delay. If I can’t figure out how to get us out of here, we’ll be overrun in?—
A quiet descends over the Briar, accompanied by a darkness that feels like nightfall. The chittering of the goblins, the moanof the Autumn soldiers, the clatter of metal against ice… It all vanishes.
And I know, deep in the core of me, that there is only one person in all the Vale capable of commanding such a silence.
Cold dread shivers through my body. Selfishly, it was the only thought running through my mind as I sprinted through the door of Keep Wolfhelm into Castletree and then into Keep Oakheart.How could you do this to me, Farron?Not how could you do this to your father. To your brothers. To your people.
How could you putme ina position to come here, knowing who I am most likely to find?
When I arrived at the battle, I came with an ice and wind so strong, it covered my vision with Winter’s might. But I knew who I’d struck. Known it in my bones, even if I wasn’t able to admit it to myself.
There’s no running from him. I’ve never been able to, no matter how hard I try.
He’s here.
As if the mere thought of him is a curse, a briar spears through the ground beneath me, wraps around my ankle, and whips me under the earth.
Cold dirt sails over my skin as I’m thrown flat on my back upon the blood-soaked surface, outside my icicle barrier. The sickening scent of goblin sweat and fae innards overwhelms me. I give my head a shake and press up on my elbows, trying to orient myself.
Horrifying faces surround me: the slobbering maws of goblins, their eyes even more bugged out as they take me in. Their steeds froth at the mouth, dagger-sharp teeth covered in jagged pieces of flesh. But worse of all are the blank stares of the Autumn soldiers, their bodies in various states of mutilation. Many have puncture holes or thorns stuck through them. Others have the crude goblin weapons embedded in their skulls orarmor. The chittering and moans begin again, the sight of me working them into a frenzy?—
“Do not touch him.”
That voice.
It shudders through me. A voice that has calmed me. Emboldened me. Whispered words of love that I could never quite believe.
The crowd shuffles back. I stagger to stand and form new ice knives in each hand, even though I know they won’t do any good. I wouldn’t be able to use them on him anyway. Not after everything Rosalina’s risked to save him.
The army parts, forming a path before me. Like darkness made to dance, he strides forward. There’s snow in his black hair from my gust of wind, and his cloak is disheveled and covered in leaves, but he’s still the most beautiful man to ever walk the Vale.
He stops several yards away from me. Afraid to get too close? Afraid to look me in my eyes?
“Keldarion,” he says, and that’s it. My name, his entire thought.
“Caspian,” I say, his name, my entire thought.
A new silence beats like a heart between us. Could this be?—
He laughs, long and low and cruel. “Caspian! Caspian! Oh, both you and Rosalina are so obsessed with that name. Call me what I truly am. The Prince of Thorns.”
Can one die of a broken heart? Has it happened before? Because I swear I may be the first fae in the Vale to succumb to such a thing.
But something keeps me drawing breath.
The pure, feral rage of hearingmy wife’sname inhismouth.
