Page 17 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

I experienced those icy temperatures for myself, kept alive only because Stellen sang to me. First, a cruel song that pinned my soul to my dying body, stopping me from sinking into death. Then a melody that stirred my blood and filled me with physical need. He made me cling to life until he could get me to the hot springs within the Alak-Teah.

“That’s how Brunkil found me,” Lilis says. “Shapeshifters are like white wolves. They can survive the cold. Brunkil told me he would help me. For a price.”

The alpha grins, his fingernails turning to claws beneath his sleeves as he points at Stellen. “The Winter Strife was my price.”

“A lifelong debt,” Lilis whispers. “The next morning, I waited outside that very gate, slathered in blood so Iker would think I’d stayed alive by crawling into my wolf’s belly.”

A chill creeps down my spine at her mention of being slathered in blood. “Whose blood?”

Lilis is silent, but Brunkil picks his teeth.

“Her wolf made a tasty meal,” he says.

Suddenly, I remember the aftermath of the encounter with Brunkil outside the Alak-Teah. Stellen ensured I took note that not a single white wolf except for Nara remained on that field. Lilis had ordered all of the white wolves away.

“From that moment on, I had two masters,” Lilis says. “I became Iker’s favorite courtesan while secretly training with the shapeshifters. It took five years, but eventually, I was strong enough to infiltrate Stellen’s palace and make an attempt on his life.”

“Except that she failed.” Brunkil snarls, beginning to pace again, his pack taking up formation behind him.

“I didn’t invoke the Winter Strife that day,” Lilis says, “but I saw my chance to escape Iker, so I took it.”

Stellen told me that Lilis had come to him for a quick death. Instead of ending her, he gave her the choice to join him.

He warned me that Lilis wanted him dead, and when I asked him why, he answered that she had many reasons.

She may have escaped Iker that day, but she didn’t escape Brunkil.

There is no mercy in Frost without a price.

“And now it’s come to this.” My voice grows harsh as my focus flashes to the bodies hanging from the wall.

When we arrived outside the compound, Stellen could hear only forty heartbeats within it, the same number as Lilis and the shapeshifters.

“What of the innocent fae who lived in this compound?” I demand to know. “The children, the courtesans, the lowborn who had no choice⁠—”

“They’re alive.” Lilis gasps, her breath hissing indignantly between her teeth. “Edgar got them out.”

“Edgar?”

“Iker’s son, the illegitimate one. When Iker died, Edgar was finally able to give himself a name. Before Brunkil attacked the compound, Edgar got all of the innocent fae out. I don’t know to where they escaped, and I didn’t ask.”

I had an Oracle vision about Edgar. It was the way he looked at Lilis in the vision that stayed with me. He was protective, worried about her. Maybe worried about what she was in the middle of and the part he had to play in it. He grew up in Iker’s compound with Lilis. A hellish life.

I don’t see him here.

“Is Edgar the one who carved that wolf for you?”

When I trained in Lilis’s quarters, there was an intricately carved wolf set in pride of place in a cavity in the wall outside her training room.

Lilis catches her breath. “Yes.”

“Why a wolf?”

“A white wolf,” she corrects me. “Because they’re loyal. It was Edgar’s way of saying he would never abandon me.” She leans against the thread around her throat, her purple eyes suddenly on mine. “No matter what I’ve done.”

We’re nearly to Stellen now. Only another few paces and we’ll reach him. And then I’ll have to make a decision.

To kill Lilis or let her live.