Page 54 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

“A terrible blade for a dreadful betrayal.” Miriam is suddenly motionless, her outstretched hand suspended above one of the daggers.

Lilis betrayed me with those blades, stabbing one of them into my heart.

Without warning, Miriam’s hand snaps down, closing over the dagger’s hilt, wrenching the blade free.

My instincts fire, but the older woman moves impossibly fast.

In a flash, she stabs the blade at Thyra’s heart.

Chapter Nineteen

Maxim

Frost blasts from the heart of the storm, an explosion of ice obscuring my view of Thyra and my aunt.

I’m running, my fire pulsing, arms pumping as I race across the dunes, spearing toward them.

The women standing behind me all cry out at once.

Before the frost exploded, I saw what they no doubt saw: my aunt stabbing Thyra and Stellen retaliating.

What the fuck?

Why would Miriam do this?

My heart is in my throat as I blast through the dissipating ice and race into clear air.

I jolt to a stop.

My aunt lies on her side ten paces to my left. She’s awake. Alive. A frost burn raises a welt across her upper arm, the smallest of the injuries I imagined she could have suffered.

Stellen hunches over Thyra, rocking back and forth, but he’s near-shouting. “She cut the band. I thought she was going to kill Thyra. She cut the band. But I thought…”

The bloodied band that was strapped around Thyra’s hand and wrist now hangs severed.

Blood floats up from the cut ends, like liquid released from a vein, fat droplets defying gravity to stream up off the material and away from Thyra’s fist, amassing into an orb in front of her unconscious form.

“There’s no time to explain!” my aunt cries. “You have to trust me.” She clutches the ice burn with one hand while gesturing wildly at Thyra with the other. “The blood, Maxim! Burn the blood!”

“What?”

“Only your fire is hot enough,” my aunt says. “Close your hand around the blood and burn it. Now!”

A final droplet rises off Thyra’s fist, leaving her hand clean and joining the orb, which is now several inches in diameter.

The orb writhes in the air, already gravitating back toward Thyra’s hand.

I’m shaking my head, backing away. “I can’t use my fire this close to her.”

What if I lose control? What if I burn Thyra like my father’s assassin burned Antony’s brother? What if I maim her? What if I tear her body apart?

“Maxim!” my aunt screams.

“It isn’t safe,” I roar.

“Now it is.” Stellen’s determined declaration snaps my attention to him.

The corners of his mouth are turned down. Icy air wafts from his left hand, the finest particles of frost drifting around Thyra, cooling the space around us.