Page 235 of Season Warriors & Wolves

The land would not accept my magic.

Shaking, I walked inside and beside death, warm and embracing as always. My darkness was always so warm. My magic faltered inside of it like it always had, but not enough, barely enough this time.

This was it.

There was no changing fate.

Not entirely.

Aurora’s breathing picked up when she noticed me through Kilian’s shadows, her magic almost useless inside the veil of my husband’s cold gift that had grown.

I reached forward and wrapped a hand around her throat, squeezing tight, ice forming beneath my palm and spreading all over her skin again.

“Where were we?”

She laughed madly. A mad amusement I knew well. “You cannot kill what I am.”

We have the sceptre, Visha yelled in my head.

“That was in the past. Change of plans. I’m sending you home. Now, bend,” I said, and the dark shadows fluttered with the harsh command. Aurora choked, struggling and attempting to summon more of the white fire smothered between ice and death. “Bend!” I shouted and the ground beneath my feet shook, cracked and hallowed into a massive crater. “I said. Bend!”

Aurora’s half frozen body shook, and her knees gave away, but she still burned hot under my touch. Her choked laughter drew creeps over my bones and rage overtook me when she said, “By law of gods, I never bend to the lesser.”

Lesser.

But what I was no lesser.

What I chose to be was.

I glanced at my sword still etched in Vas’s body and the dagger I held in my hand. Soul killers.

The sword etched in my chest from the visions. Soul killer.

She would not bend to a half human. To half divine. To an incomplete half. To two incomplete halves.

The game had changed and was nearing its end.

It had the same ending despite.

Snow, no, not yet, Visha’s voice screamed at the back of my mind. Do not kill her.

I won’t. Make sure to send her back to where she came from after I command her back to the sceptre. Send Eren to Valda Acme with it. Tell them all goodbye for me. And that I am sorry. Tell Mal to do as I have said, to hold him back.

What? Snow, wait.

The seal has to open now. I can’t hold her for long.

Snow, wait, I can hear—

I shut her voice down.

A sob escaped my lips and my eyes drew shut when a brush of his spring air caressed my cheek.

Once the seal opened, there was only one way to keep them safe from me.

I no longer held back. For all of them I would no longer hold back. My lips moved to silently form the words that I’d promised Lysander and Visha with my life to never say.

“Osca argata.”