Page 11 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Snowlin

Moregan stood right in the middle of the training court, rather annoyed having to train me. Though disappointed I wasn’t getting to play around with Demir, I was finally getting the chance to learn what my father’s business was with the usurped old Krigborn queen. How had he come across such a precious possession?

“You are my match?” I asked, crossing my arms, and raking an unimpressed look over her.

“I’ve lived hundreds of years more than you, little girl.”

“Perhaps try and live a few hundred more and then you can actually match me.” I craned my neck back at Demir. “Is this a joke?”

“Most sceptre locations are veiled, either suppressing magic or concealing it all together.” He leaned on the court fence and pointed his chin to a high balcony where Melanthe stood watching us. “She will free parts of your magic. Consider this a suppressed environment.”

I scoffed. Suppressed?

They all shot up, some screaming, shouting, cursing and staggering backwards when sharp ice shards shot up from the ground for a mile around us, even making Demir bleed a little.

At the click of my fingers, the ice cracked and exploded into even smaller ice shards, floating slowly in the air before gathering into a swirling mist around Demir.

The man began turning green—literally. “Melanthe, stop it—”

He did not have the time to finish the order because each and every one of the thousand floating ice shards pierced his flesh faster than what lighting would have struck land.

The chains on my wrists burned and I hissed from the pain piercing my body. The shock made me sway on my feet and I dropped to the ground, clutching my stomach. It made me laugh. Too hard perhaps because there was not a pipsqueak of a sound in the air besides mine. “Melanthe,” I sing-songed loudly, still curled up on the ground. “How I am going to skin you.”

Demir was still gurgling out blood while a bunch of healers picked out the shards of ice from his body.

One limb at a time, I got myself up again and faced the witch. “Am I training or what?”

Moregan’s brows had stooped low enough to cover her eye lids, but she still took a stance, lifting both her hands before her in a pose I had only seen one man make before. Knees bent, arms extended forward, one palm facing me and the other facing her.

Eren.

How?

“Did they have your train my brother?” I asked, mimicking her movement. I was a fast learner. Copying and adapting was what I was most gifted at.

She glanced at Melanthe. “Stop talking.”

“Funny,” I said, swiftly blocking her attack by swerving to the side. “Father made you his prisoner and his heirs' tutor.”

“I wasn’t his tutor.”

“So, you do know my brother.”

She pushed the palming facing me forward and the snow below our feet rose from the ground, hardening as it shot in my direction. Only to meet mine. The crash made splinters of ice flow around and about. “Knew. Briefly,” she said, switching the side of her other palm to face me before snow rose from behind me, hardening again and aiming for my back.

Except that it crashed against a wall of my own ice that rose quicker than her magic did. “Why was my brother being taught by you?”

“Ask your father.”

“Maybe I will just ask my brother.”

She attacked me again. Shards of ice flying half an inch or so from grazing my cheek. “Speaking to the dead now?”

“Why? Anyone you want me to speak to for you? They let you make any friends in Ulv Islet?”

“Stop talking!” she hissed, running for me, snow twirling around to engulf me under it.

Everything melted right off before it even touched me when lightning skittered over my skin, enshrouding us inside a steamy thick white fog.