Page 12 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Sharp edged ice grew in my palm, and I ran to meet her in the middle. I wrapped a hand around her throat and squeezed tightly, pointing the honed tip to her gut. “Fearful then. Fearful now,” I murmured in her ear, keeping an eye on our surroundings still concealed by the mist, feeling each heartbeat still pulse in the distance and giving me enough alone time with Moregan. “Fear is a complex currency, don’t you think? He has your loyalty. What are you winning from it?”

She pushed me off, unsheathing a curved anlace from her baldric. “I told you to shut up,” she snarled, swinging her blade, twirling around after each time I blocked her and each time she blocked me. She was quick on her feet and tactical, more than gifted, saving her energy for careful and precise strikes. But like most, she fought with anger—and anger was blinding.

“Did he force the potion down your throat?” I continued, ice flying in the air again, scratching and burning skin. “Or did you just love feeling like an animal, so you decided to become one as well.”

Row, row this fucking boat, gently down the angry seas.

Her body crashed against mine, knocking me to the ground. Her fist met my jaw before I could push her off. “He was locked there, too,” she said between clenched teeth, hitting me again. “With me and others. Sometimes for days and sometimes for weeks. Did you ever see his own scars, little sister?”

I knocked her jaw back with the heel of my palm and she rolled off from me, dizzy and bleeding from her mouth. “You taught him?” I asked, stabbing a sharp shard of ice through her palm, and pinning her to the floor. “Such a kind heart, ice queen.”

Her eyes fluttered open. “He was put there to learn.” She pulled her hand through the ice, freeing and punching me. The skin and bone began mending as if there had not been an injury to begin with. “Shame he never did. It would have spared me all this bull crap.”

“Oh, he learned. Praise the gods he never had to prove himself.” No one but me, him and the skies had seen what he’d done to protect me and Thora. How many souls he’d drained out of air. Anyone who doubted our magic, anyone who had seen, felt, smelled something to indicate what we were. The bodies he’d left behind without no one knowing. Alaric had taught him precision, resistance and agility, to triple and quadruple the impact of a sliver from his magic into the size of an avalanche with the fatality of a hurricane.

At a point, even I’d been thankful he’d sworn to never draw magic again.

The question that poked my relentless thoughts was why had he never told me he’d been taught by this one, too?

Or perhaps he had.

And I just…didn’t remember.

I caught her fist again and pushed my elbow back hard on her face. “What did he lose in there?” I asked, pointing to the scar in the middle of her head and she flinched. “It hasn’t healed. That is some dark, dark business.”

She attacked me again, viciously, not sparing me a single moment to attack back. “Is this how you fight?”

“No. Is this how you answer?”

Magic rose one more time, yet again, I let her have her fun, let her unleash all that pent up adorable frustration. “No.”

I twisted round, missing all of her attacks and hit her knee with the heel of my foot, making her stumble to the ground. “Others have little scars, faded scars, burnt marks, some even look like moles from a distance,” I said, pointing to my neck where most of the soldiers who stank of dark magic had a small unhealed scar. “You’re the only little beast with one this big and no scar on your neck.”

When her attention slipped to Melanthe, I laughed. “There. Got you. You were the first one they turned. Interesting. Actually, no, it is not. I lied. You’re a prime Verglaser. The best test subject. No surprise there at all.”

“How…did you know?”

“That’s enough,” Demir said, finally on his feet and panting with rage. “Get out of there, Moregan.”

Even after all that, I was feeling oddly refreshed. Refreshed enough that I was cruising down to the dungeons where father kept Mal.

The guards behind me followed swiftly along with a hooded Crafter who had not even let out a breath since she’d stepped before me. The only one who had looked remotely afraid. But she wasn’t only afraid of me. From the way she nervously glanced down the corridor, heart beating louder the closer to the dungeon gates we got, told me she was afraid of what was behind them, too. Or who.

The heavy gates rattled when four guards pulled them open. The stink of craft almost made me gag, it had not been this heavy around me. Did they really need all that to contain Mal?

From the pale faces down the narrow alley leading to a fortified cell, I realised that it probably wasn’t even enough. He was a spiritual Aura. He could find feed for his magic from someone’s yawn alone. Emotion was a weapon. In Mal’s hands, it was deadly too.

He stood in the middle of an iron cage with nothing but a bed in it, sat on the ground, hands resting on his bent knees while his head hung low between. “Sister-in-law,” he croaked, lifting his head up. Though half hidden from the shadows, I could make out his grin. “What a treat for the sore eye.”

The guards shivered and shifted on their feet, their knuckles turning white from the force they gripped their spears.

“Mal.” His name was all I was able to murmur, my chest suddenly heavy with the weight of all that had happened and memory—so much memory.

He stood and reached me, fitting his arms between the metallic bars and pulling me into an embrace. “Don’t let them,” he said in my ear, his whole body shaking. “Don’t fucking let them.”

I drew in a stuttering breath, gripping his shirt to draw him closer. He’d kept me alive this far. He’d kept me from turning this place inside out. From drawing flaming hells in the heart of winter. “Tell me they have not hurt you.”

His fingers dug where he held me. “No. They have not hurt me. Have you heard from Kil?”