Page 30 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

My focus snaps to the north, back toward the burning towers, the direction from which the force originated, my eyes wide.

What new threat is this?

Chapter Nine

Thyra

Ihave a final moment of choice.

The blood-soaked ribbon gravitates toward my right hand, floating between snowflakes that jump and collide with each other as they’re pushed outward by the ribbon’s radiating power.

A power I’ve set free.

Energy thrums in the air between my outstretched fingertips and the ribbon’s bloodied edge, the gap narrowing with every beat of my heart.

What choice do I really have when hope has abandoned me?

What kind of rage could keep my shattered pieces from spiraling apart?

Without another thought, I snap my hand forward and close my fist around the dark material, snatching it from the air.

In that heartbeat, everything stops. The snowflakes suspend around me, the wind stalls, Nara freezes, and my thumping heartbeat suspends.

A single note chimes around me.

More beautiful than anything I’ve ever heard.

Within that sound lives a thousand moments of love and compassion and family, and then…

Destruction. Torment and pure, fucking wrath.

A thump of power tears through my arm, crashes through my chest, and drives me to the ground.

Whoomph.

Icy energy explodes out from me.

Out across the snowy field, ripping first at the vines I’m kneeling on, picking up the anvil and hurtling it across the snow, knocking Nara back even as she digs in her claws and tries to hold her ground. To no avail.

Only Stellen’s body remains as still as stone as a violent snowstorm kicks up around me with such speed that I can barely take a breath.

Fresh snow plummets from the sky and ice swirls up from the ground, the two colliding so furiously, so suddenly, that the world fills with a snowstorm within the blink of an eye.

I don’t have time to scream before the next pulse of power floods my hand, racing along my arm, crushing my heart⁠—

Whoomph-whoomph.

The force knocks me toward Stellen. I hit the ground beside him, crushing vines as I end up on my side, my right hand dragged toward his chest. All around me, the storm rages and I’m aware of Nara crouching low, now at least twenty paces away, before the icy air engulfs her and I can’t see her anymore.

I tell myself she’ll be okay. She slept outside every night during snowstorms.

Whoomph.

The next pulse pins me against Stellen’s side but also wrenches my arm up off his chest. At the same time, the ribbon’s ends whip around the back of my hand and cross over themselves.

Within seconds, the bloodied band has wound in opposite directions around my wrist, tightening and tightening⁠—

Whoomph-whoomph.