Page 20 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“You intending to keep what happened there a secret?”

“No.” I slouched down on the cold bathroom floor surrendered. How could I tell him that I had just accepted to be pawned off to Adriata for Myrdur? How do I lay out the new plan I’d concocted the moments my father revealed the reason of my return? “Do you remember what I promised you that night, when you took me to the bakers to get cake for my sixteenth birthday?” One day, let us make the land ours once more. Let us make a promise that we will make Myrdur, Olympia once again.

Anger begun flickering to surface. “Snow—”

“I promised that Myrdur would be safe, that I’d get it from my father and that the souls of Olympians would finally be put to rest. The promise will be fulfilled sooner than I thought, he will give me Myrdur.”

He slouched down facing me, his brows pinched together. “What? Why?”

“Because I agreed to marry the Adriatian king for it. He promised a blood oath, the lands will be mine and I…the Adriatian King’s.”

His features drew wide and he stood. “Get up, we leave this hell hole now.”

“I intend to keep my promise.”

His hand tightened around my arm. “I don’t give a damn about that promise.”

“I do.”

He lowered down to me again. “We came to figure out why his soldiers where in Myrdur and sell him out, we did not come to juggle this along. It changes too much, Snow, we will retreat.” Plea and something resembling fear flashed his emerald eyes as he repeated. “We will retreat.”

“Myrdur is under his name, it will never be free for how long he lives.”

He stunned for a moment in realisation but it was all reaction he gave even though I’d just stabbed a nail in his heart. “Then we kill him.”

I shook my head. “Then his land will inherit them and our chance at grasping Myrdur from Isjord’s rule will be gone forever; our lands will return to Winter. My father doesn’t realize, but he has granted me a bargain where the wind favours me.”

“You will have to marry him cakes, that oath won’t seal unless you marry him. Whatever plan you weave, whatever you think you can use to get out of, it won’t work. It will take your life as price.”

“It won’t happen, because I will marry him and enter Adriata at front gates.” I revealed, and he paled. “They will seat me on the throne, close to him, close to them, close to my revenge, with their own two hands. My father has granted me the greatest bargain of all.”

“Or he has put you right on the mouth of the shark.”

“The Obscur Asteri is no shark, he is just a man with breakable bones and four canines that probably have a hard time chewing on lamb.”

“Snowlin!” he called loudly, his features growing heated. Cai never got angry at me or with me, this was perhaps one of the first ever times.

I gave him a smile, though my face had slumbered to fatigue. “You haven’t called me that since that day.”

I don’t like your name. Those were his first ever words to me, then proceeded to make up other ways to call me. Every day he’d dropped by, I was called a different name, never Snowlin. He’d always been odd to me, how he found ways to make you feel as if you’d known him for countless lifetimes. Maybe that was why I had liked him—maybe that was why he had been the first boy to somehow rattle me. My lids begun giving up, swirling me to utter darkness as I felt him gently lift me up the floor and onto the soft bed.

“It never suited you Snow, you were always warm to me, like the sun. Too close, burning and from far, yearnful. From where I stand, soft, like autumn rays, perfectly delightful.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I murmured half asleep and I heard him laugh.

“You are telling Nia about this, her ire is yours to deal with.”

Chapter 7

Peace and Quiet

Kilian

I was only fifteen when the council of Adriata unanimously voted in majority to attack Isjord; when we had received news that our soldiers had successfully infiltrated Tenebrose city walls and attacked the castle leaving thousands in mourning. The innocents murdered that night were an accessory to their planning to distract Isjordian soldiers away from their castle grounds to assassinate their queen and the royal children.

Adriata relied on the spiritual magic of goddess Henah, that had graced our lands with her gifts. We were people who studied the heavens and the spiritual, also the most connected to it. To us the union of the Olympian princess and the Isjordian King was viewed not only as defiance of laws, but a terrible foreshadowing omen. The moon had been red for months straight, there had been no shadows following us and it had hailed and rained red leading to their wedding. Gods had already sealed disproval.

When the union was being discussed between their kingdoms, Adriata had reacted hostile towards Isjord considering it an act of war and defiance to the natural laws older than time. Queen Serene was a Zephyr, she had come from an Auran bloodline and not just a normal bloodline, but the strongest one, the royal one, those that commanded lightning. Elding Aura commonly called Strikers.