Page 144 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

“But sadly not my blade visions,” I add.

He nods. “Well, the tree I saw in the vision is enormous. The pieces I took from Hadrian’s followers are nothing compared to it. I’ve been stashing those pieces in the bloodlands, but my mission feels hopeless now.”

“The tree is in the east,” I say. “I heard its screams when I opened the Chronicle to a page showing the wasteland in the east.” Even now, I shudder at the memory of that painful creaking, the wrongness of breaking wood. “Hadrian needs to transport the wood here somehow, right?”

Antony gives me a suddenly vicious smile. “We can destroy his supply route.” He arches his eyebrows at me. “You’ll have to come with us, Thyra, since we need to stay at your side.”

I match his smile. “That’s fine with me.” But my grin fades. “But first, there are things you need to know about my time in the Frost Kingdom.”

I tell Antony about the Alak-Teah, and the shapeshifters, and training with Lilis, then the fight for Stellen’s life and unearthing the other yellow ribbon.

“That was the cause of the snowstorm?” Antony asks.

With a nod, Stellen picks up the story from the moment I blacked out, describing how he brought me to Ember, where Miriam extracted the tainted blood and Maxim burned it.

Back to me and I tell them both everything Miriam told me about Maxim’s mother, faltering when it comes to retelling the story about my mother, but Stellen’s reassuring hand on mine helps me through.

When I fall silent, Stellen speaks up again with a soft, “My turn. But I’m starting from further back.”

With his hand wrapped around mine, he speaks about his family, telling us everything about his mother’s and sister’s deaths and the horror he caused afterward. He describes the way he carved their names into the dragonstone anvil and used the stone as their gravestone, his shoulders hunching over as he speaks.

“Fuck,” Antony says softly.

Stellen’s voice becomes a snarl as he says, “I’m telling you this because you need to know what I’m capable of.” He raises his gaze and it’s suddenly clear to me that he’s speaking to Antony now. “I am no longer heartless. My rage is not safely put away. Thyra is my family. If anything happens to her, if I lose her, you need to know what could happen.”

Antony is still as stone. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Stellen snaps. “Because you have others to lose, Antony. You have Cassia, Victor, and now your mother. If anyone you care about is within hearing distance of my Voice, they won’t be fucking safe.”

Antony doesn’t flinch. “I would tear out your fucking throat before I let you hurt my family.”

The tension leaves Stellen’s shoulders. “Good. Whatever it takes.”

I try to catch my breath as Antony gives Stellen a firm nod.

Then, as if he and Stellen hadn’t just made a death pact, Antony asks, “What else do you need to tell us?”

Stellen’s grip on my hand eases and now his speech sounds careful. “When I first heard Thyra’s voice, I felt her power.”

I sense how carefully he speaks as he recounts how he first heard my scream, and the impact my voice had on him. He speaks of seeing the icy-blue thread for the first time, and then, even more carefully, he tells us about his encounter with Stanimir and how cleverly Stanimir got away.

“He appears as a lowborn, but he is not to be underestimated,” Stellen says. “There aren’t many who can slip away from me like that.”

He describes how, when he returned to the Frost Kingdom to study the scrolls, an assassination attempt was made and he experienced my blade vision on the temple’s roof. He told me about this already, how he’d taken hold of the icy-blue thread between us and stopped me from falling, but now he says something new.

“You were already strong, Thyra.”

An uneasy shiver races down my spine at his intense gaze. “What do you mean?”

“This was before the blood bind,” he says. “You were strong enough to pull away from Antony. You were defying him.”

I can’t shake off my unease. “Because of the blade vision.”

“I’m not so sure,” Stellen says. “Your scream at the village shattered my world. On that rooftop, your scream sent a blast of frosty air across the space between you and me. Frost power, Thyra.”

I fight my shiver as I say, “I don’t see how that’s possible. Even now, I don’t have any control over frost. Or power over fire, for that matter. I can hear as sharply as you can. See as far as Antony can. I can levitate—sort of. Stay warm in cold environments and cool in hot environments. I’m stronger than I should be⁠—”

“Not more than you should be,” Stellen says, his gaze even more intense. “You’re as strong as you are.”