Page 200 of Winter Gods & Serpents

His smile begun faltering, attention pinched with agitation taking in her revelation. His head slowly turned to her, something between confusion and fear read there till I opened my senses to read gales and gales of nonending terror and distraught.

“Tell me Renick, how did you find Jens and Sigrid, in your home above Morrow grove in Casmere, the little sweet cottage by the Northern bay?”

I felt myself hold a breath, anticipation, and disbelief at the same time. Casmere—we had been once in the bay city. Brief words of her conversation with Caiden flew around my ears. What had she done?

Her gaze turned to meet his, a grin spread wide and vile in her face. He paled, breathing grew a shade deeper and features drawn in. “No…no!” he shouted, shaking his head.

Her head dropped back, laughter of success taking over and filling every nook and corner of the open hall. She shook and shivered, not from amusement but at the broiling heat I saw boiling beneath her skin, lit irate. “Oh yes, yes. And take credit I beg of you, I did it just like you taught me, oh great master,” she said fashioning a bow.

“Cannot be.”

She drew in, her hand never leaving his chest. “Look at me, Renick. Look at me and see the last face they saw before their souls parted their bleeding bodies.”

Her revenge was here, and it was cold and unremorseful.

He gasped for air and made to move away but she dug her palm in a fist over his heart. “Tell me, how did you find them? Bleeding, in pieces over the walls? Which parts of theirs did you find first? Did you ask yourself, which soul have I forced to murder my family because of my actions? It must have taken you a while, because there are so many.”

For a few moments, all I knew of her felt a dream—a daydream I’d built. If I had not seen her eyes at that moment it would have truly felt as that, but I saw the flashes of armour she wore cracking.

“I did it how you used to say,” she pushed. “One whip for a fragment of soul, name their fears each time it meets their skin, it is how it breaks someone. It’s how you tried to break me.”

My body moved, my chest flaring, and heat brought tremble in my body. I’d suck the life out of this man who had marked her. Mal and Caiden both wrapped their arms around me, holding me back.

“You interrupt her now and she will lose her composure, let her win her own battle,” her friend warned, pushing me back.

She peeked behind at me shortly before facing Renick again. “I did it the same, but the only fear I mentioned was my name, the only fear they had was me and now the only fear you will know is me.”

A loud growl escaped his throat as he reached his hands over her throat, squeezing tight. “I will kill you.”

My feet ached to move, my magic flared to be used, my fists tightened to strike, yet I didn’t move.

She cackled loudly. “Then who will remember where dear Fiona is, your pretty little daughter? My soldiers picked her up a few weeks back now, still distraught at her family’s death. The sweet thing has her mother’s face.”

“She is still alive?” His eyes shot wide, and he pulled back from her, shaking his head as she stretched and rubbed her throat. His hand fell over his chest and he crouched down falling to his knees.

“Not yet dead, more like it.” She drew nearer and nearer, her steps predatory and calculated.

Caiden stood and cautiously traced her pace, reaching his hands up, breeze lifting with scent of airy magic. “No, no, cakes. Come now, leave him, we are to leave him alive. Don’t make me do it, I know you hate it.” He meant to stop her. He knew there was no stopping her.

She halted at her friends warning and crutched down close to the commander. “What will I use her for, Renick, you taught me to use my pawns meticulously or kill them if they become dead weight.”

His face twisted in a snarl. “You cannot kill her.”

She snorted. “Is that so now, on what basis? Pity? But no, you beat that out of me remember? Care, compassion, any feel in general, that too,” she said and snapped her fingers, “all out of my system, just like you wanted it. Proud?”

I shook my head. I could not believe what that man had done to her—all that had been done to her.

He paled, tears streamed down his face as he stared at her wide eyed. “What do you want?”

“I want it all, but from you I want allegiance.”

Allegiance? Even now she would not drop her revenge.

“No, no, I will not betray my King.”

“I never asked, I don’t need to ask. I have Fiona, but I’ll take what you cherish the most, your King’s trust. A little bird whistled to me, about a little drug, about your little students. Does father know that you dose them on mirkroot, and do they know mirkroot kills you, slowly but kills you.”

“Not slow,” Nia called strongly, sat by Sam. “Quick and painfully, it only takes a few doses after your third for your body to ingest it at the speed of a heartbeat, and then the fourth will go straight to your head, and you will die a very explosive death. Burma halls stank of it on the first whiff, your Verglasers will fall within a year.”