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As she spoke, workers were sealing up the tunnel entrances to the arena.
My thoughts slipped back to Ava. No matter what happened here, at least she was safe. With that knowledge,I could die happily enough. Orla, too, had a chance to survive. Aeron would look after her. That was the best I could hope for, wasn’t it, to die with the hope that the people I loved were safe?
I closed my eyes, thinking of Ava sleeping soundly in a warm bed. When she’d slept next to me in the Court of Sorrows, she’d snored ever so slightly. I could picture her chest rising and falling. The image made my chest ache.
A great crack of stone pulled me from my vision, and I sucked in a sharp breath as frigid geysers burst from the stones around me and river water flooded the arena. Streams erupted around me. Murky water poured in from every part of the amphitheater, freezing my feet.
Modron chanted with a strange, ecstatic look on her features. Wisps of dark magic curled from her body and into the charcoal skies.
Cold water gnawed at my skin until my toes went completely numb. Overhead, the dragon swooped beneath the stormy sky, and murmurs of fear ran through the crowd.
Moria’s voice pierced the air. “The Sinach will help to execute this traitor. Only when the demon lover lies dead, when his treason is burned from the earth, will spring return to our land.”
When the dragon landed on the stone dais by her side, I felt my gut tightening. The cold didn’t scare me, no, but fire was another matter altogether. My freezing body had started to make my thoughts slow, as though even my brain were encased in ice. Mentally sluggish, Icouldn’t quite piece together what was happening. What was the point of the river water if she planned to use the Sinach?
The water was up to my waist now. Did she want to burn the top half of me?
When she barked out a sharp command, my heart skipped a beat.
On the stone platform, the Sinach reared, unleashing a stream of flames into the water. The arena seats erupted in screams. No one wanted to see this.
Slowly, through the fog of my freezing brain, I put the pieces together. She wasn’t going to drown me.
She was going to boil me alive.
38
AVA
The mirror dropped me east of the castle, and I immediately realized three things: one, the magical fragment had not come with me; two, wearing Shalini’s coat had been one of the best decisions I’d ever made because it must be negative twenty here; and three, this place had turned into an absolute hellscape.
And that suggested that Torin did not, in fact, have his magic back.
Dread whispered through me. On the east side of the castle, cages hung from the walls with prisoners trapped inside. A few of the cages hung open, but most of them contained people, frozen and half dead. Bile rose in my throat. If Torin’s throne were intact—if his magic had returned to him—he’d never allow this.
I scanned the cages desperately, searching for Shalini. No sign of her. A glimmer of good news.
In one of the cages, a woman crawled to the bars. Snow crusted her black hair and her pointed ears. “Helpme,” she rasped. “We’re here because we were loyal to the king. Please help me.”
“Who rules here now?”
“Moria. She took the king. She took him to the amphitheater.” Hysteria barbed her voice. “Help me, please.”
Horror hit me in the gut. “To the amphitheater? Why?”
“I don’t know!” she shrieked. “Let me free, and I’ll be able to think more clearly.”
I breathed in a sharp, icy breath, feeling as if my thoughts were splitting in two. I could either race to the amphitheater now or I could try to fix his throne. If I returned to him the awe-inspiring power of a Seelie king, he might be able to save himself.
I stepped back in the snow, keeping Shalini’s hood over my horns.
When I glanced to my left, I glimpsed two soldiers marching in the distance. Their maroon uniforms gave them the appearance of drops of blood against a white landscape.
Wasn’t that Moria’s favorite color?
Distantly, I heard the mournful wail of a banshee twisting through the air. Cleena, maybe.
A shudder snaked up my spine. Someone was about to die.
