Page 125 of Winter Gods & Serpents

The little girl perked up in her seat, gleaming in happiness. “I love your scar miss, it's beautiful, you are beautiful with it.”

She strangely gave her a sweet smile. “Well, it certainly took you less time than it did for me to learn to love it.”

“Lara,” the little girl said.

“Lara,” she repeated and smiled brighter.

Such a genuine human form she wore, it had me completely enveloped and terribly staring.

“You could have healed it, medi-healers can remove them,” Lara stopped, interrupting herself. Hesitation. Fear. “My father, he used to heal my burns completely before he did them again. They have never left not one scar, look.” She rolled her sleeves up and my stomach dropped to the cold ground.

A shudder of vile fever coursed my body. Taste of your flames. I looked at Snow, who ate her meal lazily, her attention floating over the ground.

“Some scars go deeper than skin and sometimes worse wound worse there, but if you try hard enough those will heal as time goes.” She glanced over Nia who had seemed to have swallowed Lara’s words hard in her throat. “Never mind the scars.”

“Yours, are they healed within?” Lara batted her lashes curious.

Snowlin’s eyes never left Nia, worry washed all over them. “My wound is still in the mend, but the scar won't heal, it never will.”

“Why won’t it heal? Did bad people do it, did you kill them for it?” Lara asked in a breath half jumping from her seat, making the soldiers chuckle.

“It won’t, it was done with a special weapon, one that even its graze kills.”

I went still knowing what had done it. Her reaction that day when we returned from Kirkwall upon seeing my sword, how terrified she had looked. My eyes drew shut at the memory of me running my fingers through it, through the scar that had been made by Adriata.

“Adriatian steel, my father tried every healer in the kingdom, they said I had been lucky to survive it let alone heal it, and as for the rest, yes, I killed the bad people that did it,” she continued, putting the food away.

My eyes lowered to the ground, not bearing to look at her, the guilt washed over my skin, a heavy pain of bricks weighed on my chest. She must have been about the little girl's age when she had to endure all that had happened to her. A wound from the steel of an Adriatian, men thrice her size would have lost their lives to even a scratch from such a blade. The black steel was magically grown and forged, mined from mountain Aldrich, where the first King of Adriata had been buried, an Obscur Aura, wielder of darkness. Upon his death, his grand Aura had dressed the rock, metal and even the air around it. The metal was darkness born and shadow forged, deadly. Meant to be used in battles of evil, yet they had tried to kill a little girl with it, scarring her permanently, inside and out.

“Will you teach me please. I want to be like you, a warrior,” Lara asked.

Snow motioned for her to approach, and quickly Lara stood afront her. Removing a scabbard from her thigh, she placed it around Lara’s waist. “A gift, with a promise to never remove it from its scabbard, till I have taught you how to use it. I don’t want you losing a perfectly good hand.”

Her young eyes glistened as she ran her small fingers over the scabbard and bejewelled hilt. “Have you named it?”

“No, only my sword, I’ll leave it for you to name your blade.”

Lara peaked at the silver beauty resting behind Snow. “What is the name of the sword?”

Snow unsheathed the extravagant blade, hovering her palm over it almost melancholically before clutching the hilt tight, some pain behind that embrace. “Lin. My brother named it after me, it was his before.”

Eren Jonah Krigborn, fallen heir of Isjord. The blade of the winter prince, named after his sister. I’d think it odd, yet I’d heard once before one to name their blade with their sisters name.

“Could I name her Lin, the dagger?”

The princess smiled and nodded. “Now go by the stream and clean your face, we are going to a very pompous castle. They tend to look wildly at people with even a smitten of dust on them. I wouldn’t want them to find you a curiosity. Nia, help her wash up,” she said towards her friend who stood and directed the girl by the stream.

My eyes had stuck to her actions, the gentleness and gracefulness of those words had taken me by terrible surprise.

“The forge is going to stop supplying you with steel if you are going to gift them to every helpless child you save,” Caiden interrupted. “At least keep a spare stash that are not of fine steel. Name it ‘the perfect gift for children’ stash.”

“I’ll keep it next to my ‘perfect gifts for an egomaniac’ stash,” she said, throwing a middle finger to him. She sheathed her brothers sword back. “You will carve another scar in my face if you keep staring at me like that, Adriatian.”

I had been looking at her for a long while, mostly unconsciously.

“Heavenly beautiful, not just beautiful like the girl said,” I confessed, no restraint in my words and she stilled. “A murderous, angry, blood thirsty, vengeful heavenly being, but one nonetheless.” Words that I meant but I wasn’t sure whether they were intended to be spoken loudly.

She stared at me confused. The air filled with that of a battle thick and a giggling Mal stood to leave followed by a similarly amused Caiden—amusement at my expense.