Page 47 of Winter Gods & Serpents

We deviated onto Fernby forest, out of the main road, and established a fire, camping around it. Isjord at night made a fearsome scenery for a horror book. Wolves howled around us endless, we’d faced two wild almost rabid boars, and now the tall shadows of conifers tricking our minds for monsters of tales.

Nia and two other soldiers agreed to take first guard, while the rest of us finished our meals that the Albius had packed for us before leaving his city. I sat by the fire along with the rest, till I noticed the pregnant Adriatian attempting to gathered herself tight with her arms for warmth. Dressed lightly and shaking from the cold, she had turned a pale shade of violet.

Sighing in anger, I stood towards her. The moment she noted my approach, she backed further in a very readable fear. “If you insist on dying you should have just said so at the trial, I would have spared you the torturous part of freezing by killing you there,” I said, a cold bite on every word.

Grabbing her arm, I pulled her towards warmth. She resisted but eventually gave in and sat with the rest of us near the fire extending her hands and breathing in relief as her face warmed up.

“Be gentle cakes, she is pregnant,” Cai warned, throwing a blanket over her shoulders and I narrowed my eyes in judgement towards him.

If she had cared for her child, she would not be here and under my mercy.

“How far along are you?” he asked, handing her something to eat.

She glanced toward me for a few moments and then turned to him, pulling the bread and cheese shyly in her hand. “Almost due,” her voice no more than a whisper. “What are you to do with me?”

“Exactly what I promised,” I responded, lazily stretching my legs, and leaning back at Memphis who had nestled behind me.

The woman looked at me full of question. “Why did you have to do that, why did you have to bring me to live alone in a wasteland of people who hate my kind?” she cried in a half voice, eyes welled with tears.

I didn’t have to do or not to do anything, I just wanted to. I did it to make her feel an inch of what I have felt the past twelve years, was I wrong to do so, I cared very little.

“You committed a crime and therefore you are receiving its punishment. You chose to get involved with an Isjordian.” My eyes resting on her pregnant stomach before continuing. “Who just like the rest, is from this wasteland who hates your kind.”

Tears streamed down her cheek and she lifted her hands to wipe them away. Her eyes rested wondrous and fearful on the fire for a long while. “I heard you are to marry our king,” she said, pulling my attention to her, her gaze still towards the fire. “The lord called you princess Snowlin. It is against your wish, is it not?”

My eyes were half coated in sleep, but I forced myself forward from Memphis to face her. “Would you marry the killer of your dearest with your own volition?”

Hesitating at first as if my question even needed that much assessing, she shook her head. “He has done well by his name, a good man, right, fair and caring, he will treat you well,” she offered quietly, and I almost laughed had I the energy.

Treat me well? Good, fair, and caring? All these descriptions for the man who took light away from me.

“The people thought you were powerful and extremely dangerous, just how the prophecies and omens had predicted it. Not entirely a lie, but not in the way they thought,” she added lastly.

The others and Cai included had gone silent and were taking in the conversation. Not how my father had thought either, to his misfortune and many others' good fortune, their attempt had been entirely useless with a very grand loss.

“Their assumptions my dear, cost me and now you including, greatly. To you they still could charge more, remember what you are carrying. They didn’t think twice when they aimed to kill me even though I had no magic.”

Leaning onto Memphis and pulling my blanket over, I slumbered in a most needed sleep. The rattle of my morph soothing me.

Breathless, I awoke to everyone gone. The embers were fading, and it was silent—deafly silent. I stood aghast examining the snow on the trees and the ground soaked in ruby red blood. The snow sullied crimson for miles, a sin to the cold pure beauty. The blood, poison against it. My lungs gasping for air at the sight, my eyes felt heavy and my face wet, but not from tears.

I ran a trembling finger over my scar and blood met my touch. I spun around and ran looking for Nia and Cai only to be faced with their lifeless bodies hanging from the trees, branches piercing through their chests.

Screams erupted from my throat, tears sprawling from my eyes. I ran toward them. Each step the snow sank me deeper, blood choking my throat.

“Snow,” a voice called again and again. The sound clear in my ears drawing me awake.

My lids assaulted with light fluttering open recognizing Nia. I lifted my upper body to stand, and she wiped my wet face with her hands. Everyone had turned looking at me in shock, including the pregnant Adriatian.

Cai pulled them away throwing a worried glance towards me.

My eyes and throat burned. “I am fine,” I said, my voice raspy. Memphis nestled around me weeping in her sleep. I wanted to claw our bond away at times like this.

“You are not fine, you were screaming,” she stuttered in panic. “I thought you stopped having these nightmares, that dark crafter said they would stop.”

I let out a breathy laugh and stood wiping the blood from my palms. After several unsuccessful doses of horror elixirs and nightmare catchers, Alaric had finally paid one handsomely to go in my head and lock them away, when I wouldn’t stop shaking the whole Isliot peninsula awake from my screams every night after I left Isjord.

I wrapped cloth over my hands. “They never stopped, just grew less vivid, and I guess whatever she did, it stopped working months ago now.”