Page 66 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

“They wouldn’t leave you,” Victor says. “They were trying to dig you out when we found them. You were buried deep. Two trees on top of you. They’d managed to move one, but Azul picked up the other.”

My brow furrows as I try to follow their path ahead of us. My eyesight isn’t serving me well right now, but I put it down to being frozen. “Where are they headed?”

“The eagles know where to take them.”

Before he can elaborate, a whistle cuts across the wind.

Cassia soars up beside us.

Her chestnut-brown bird, Fortuna, sails past as Cassia calls out, “We have company!”

Victor cranes to the right, where movement has caught my eye.

I home in on the single bird not far behind us, my eyesight clearing enough for me to discern the details before blurring again. “That’s a scout.”

The lone rider is quickly banking to the left, hurriedly turning tail, no doubt to report back to Hadrian.

“Don’t worry,” Victor says. “Azul will take care of them.”

The vicious blue eagle is suddenly right on top of the scout, snatching the rider from the eagle’s saddle. Blood sprays the air, trailing across the sky before Azul drops the rider’s body to the field below.

He isn’t done.

Azul soars back to the now-riderless eagle, shrieking and swooping while the other eagle attempts to fly backward, its wings spread wide.

The two eagles face off for a tense moment, but within seconds, the other eagle tucks its wings and hunches its shoulders, subservient body language.

Seeming satisfied with that, Azul soars toward us and the other eagle follows.

I’ve never seen eagle behavior like that. Eagles are raised to obey their riders and nobody else. “What just happened?”

I can hear the grin in Victor’s voice. “Azul happened. And now we’ve got another bird.”

“Who exactly is we?” The last time I saw Victor, he was imprisoned in the forges. Hadrian had threatened the life of Victor’s soulmate, Emiliana, to force Victor to make weapons for him.

“You’ll see, brother.”

I huff. “At least tell me you rescued Emiliana?”

Again with the audible smile. “I rescued Emiliana.”

My brow furrows as I focus in on Victor’s voice. “Wait…” I try to swivel, grateful that some of my strength seems to be returning. “The last time I saw you, you’d been exposed to iron dust. Your breathing was damaged and so was your voice.”

“The snowstorm,” he says. “It hit everything, including our hideout. Damn near killed me and the others, but when I came to, my chest was clear.”

“Frost,” I mutter.

“Frost,” Victor says. And then, grimly, he adds, “But not the ordinary kind.”

“Fucking Frost King.” Thyra wanted me to agree to a truce with Stellen and to my astonishment, he and I managed to come to an understanding. Temporary and breakable, but an accord nonetheless.

“We assumed Stellen made the snowstorm,” Victor says, “to repel Hadrian’s attack and to punish the Iron Kingdom.”

As much as it pains me to speak in Stellen’s defense, I say, “If it weren’t for Stellen, every single one of those warriors flying ahead of us would be dead. If he created the snowstorm, I don’t think it was to punish Iron Fae.”

I don’t need the Frost King’s Lethian power to hear the disbelief in my brother’s voice. “What?”

“He saved my warriors and let me take them with me.”