Page 43 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

Maxim is my enemy. I may have made a fragile peace with the Iron King, but the Ember King is a dangerous unknown. I’ve already lost my kingdom. The Winter Strife is done. By law, I’m no longer King of Frost, but Thyra is my family and⁠—

That thought alone would drive me to my knees if I weren’t already hunched around her.

She is my family.

I would do anything for her.

I press my forehead to hers, a new weight on my shoulders as I remember what Antony said to me during our first civil conversation. An exchange that feels like it happened a lifetime ago.

We have power over her fate.

It doesn’t matter what I want or fear. What matters is what she needs.

If she were awake, I would ask her, but until she’s conscious, I can only act on what’s in front of me.

I pray I’m not making a terrible mistake as I make my decision.

Holding Thyra close, I reach for Nara, sliding onto her back as sleet crashes around us.

“Nara,” I call through the deluge, hunching low and protecting Thyra as the white wolf rises to her feet again. “Take us to the eastern mountains and then south. As close to the Ember Kingdom as we can get.”

Without them trying to kill us.

We’re already near the charcoal mountain range in the east, and we can travel down it without fear of encountering Iron Fae along the way. Even if some Iron Fae were to venture into their forest-covered eastern mountains, they would never travel so far as to reach the burned-out cliffs that stand between their kingdom and the dead plains in the far east.

Nara raises her head to me as snow whirls around us, giving me a questioning snarl.

A final moment of choice.

“This is what Thyra needs.”

Nara doesn’t hesitate another second.

She takes off at a run, pushing through the storm. It’s only when we’re twenty paces from the gravesite that we pass the anvil. It must have been knocked all the way across here in the storm.

My family’s names now face the snow-filled sky.

I vow I won’t lose Thyra like I lost them.

Chapter Fifteen

Maxim

Consciousness brings pain.

But also…warmth.

And ice.

Contradictory sensations that make no sense as I try to open my eyes and move my limbs. Both are impossible. I’m lying on my back while a massive weight presses down on every part of my body, including my face, but now it’s lifting…

No… Melting.

Freezing water rushes off my body, and then my eyes fly open and air rushes into my chest as I take a deep breath.

My head is turned at a sharp angle and all I see at first is little rivers of glistening water rushing across the surface of thickening lava, the melted sand congealing and darkening to glassy, black rock at my side.

I must have burned the sand around me with my flames, creating a sea of lava before the avalanche crashed down on me.