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Elma’s heart stopped. “But you can fight?”
“It depends.”
The Fang, unaware and uncaring for their hurried conversation, pelted across the arena, his wolves flanking him, the kill count ribbons bright in their fur.
“The wolves,” Elma repeated, and then the Fang was upon them. Snow burst up as he skidded into battle, the roar and snap of wolves’ maws filling the air.
Elma was good with a sword. She had never doubted that fact. But she was not as good in full armor and worse than Rune, even in his current state. Had they both been in full health, Elma with her own sword and a full breakfast and a body that did not threaten to collapse under the weight of dread, then they might have made easy work of the Fang. The fight should have lasted longer. Elma should have been able to protect herself and Rune.
As it was, the battle was breathless, painful, frenetic, and slowly going in the Fang’s favor. No matter how many times Elma swung at him, sure she would at least catch an artery with her blade, he managed to dodge her. He seemed to be playing with her, seeing how far she might stagger about, swinging uselessly at him until he could easily push her over the edge into death.
Rune kept his back to hers as much as possible, but they were far from immovable. The wolves kept attacking from different directions, driving them apart, until Rune was forced to take the wolves on alone while Elma held off the lanky Fang.
It seemed as if the battle was only just beginning when Rune fell. Elma had just blocked a blow from the Fang, her arm throbbing in pain with the force of it, when she saw Rune from the corner of her vision.
He staggered, a hand pressed to his side, then stumbled to his knees. He lifted a hand, and something glimmered there,as if he were about to summon Rime Ice, to give away his secret. But the frost at his fingertips disappeared, and, in that brief moment, the wolves took their opportunity.
Elma had no time to think. No time to breathe. Knowing its extra weight would only slow her down, she dropped her sword andran.
She reached him just as the wolves did. She acted on pure instinct, not a coherent thought in her head. As the wolves fell upon Rune, she dove between them, putting herself in the way of their jagged teeth.
Elma’s sudden appearance made the wolves pause — just for an instant. For a breathless moment, Elma put up her arms, hoping against hope that if they killed her first, Godwin would call off the Games. In her heart, she knew it was futile, but she had no choice.
She loved Rune. She would gladly die just to give him one more second of that world. One more second of cold air on his cheeks, one more second of snow, one more second of glorious breath in his lungs.
The wolves fell upon her. She hadn’t expected their teeth to pierce her armor, but they knew how to kill. They had done it countless times before. They went straight for the neck.
She heard Rune’s voice from far away, but it didn’t matter. She felt a hot gush of blood at her throat, felt it seeping into the seams of her armor.
No, she thought.This isn’t how it ends. I’m the Queen of Rothen. And I don’t die like this. Rune does not die like this.
An inexplicable sensation took hold of her, then. It began in her heart and spread outward, an icy chill. As if the mountains and the frozen rivers and the snow were all inside her, flowing through her veins, filling her up from head to foot. The sensation heightened, almost blinding her, vibratingthrough her skin. A prickling cold, coalescing at one single point — her hands.
Crackling and glinting against the snowfall, its blade extending with the speed of a flash freeze, a sword grew out from her hands. Bright and deadly and firm in her grip, the blade of Rime Ice swung as if bidden by her thoughts.
It cut through the first wolf, severing its head with unbelievable ease. With a sweep of ice, the second wolf was dead, and blood spread out before the Queen of Rothen.
Elma sat up, then staggered to her feet. The wound in her neck was throbbing, but somehow, she knew the bleeding had stopped. It was as if she had been waiting for this all her life. The snow, the ice, the land — reverberating in her veins, anointing her with the power and wisdom of a thousand queens before her.
It was all too easy to put down the Fang. Without his wolves, he was nothing but a man. And with Rime Ice in her grip, it seemed as if he moved in slow motion. Her blade was like a living thing, its surface changing like the frozen sea, and it sang in the voice of a glacial wind as she drove it through the Fang’s heart.
His body fell with a thundering sound, snow flurrying outward from his body. Elma stood for a breathless moment, the snow swirling around her, a blade of magic in her hands. She stared up at the stands where Godwin sat.
“Come and face me,” she said, though of course he couldn’t hear, not from that distance and over the crowd’s low, agitated hum.
Movement in the snow caught her eye. Rune. As if waking from a dream, her thoughts clarified as the Rime Ice withdrew. He was crumpled on the ground, still alive, and she fell to her knees at his side.
“Rune,” she said, cradling his head in her lap. He smiled,though he was deathly pale. “Use your Rime Ice,” Elma said quickly, her words falling together like tumbling stones. “Your secret’s out now, use it, hurry. It healed me.”
“You’re a queen,” Rune murmured, lifting a blood-encrusted hand to tangle in her hair. “The land needs you. I’m just a prince. Not as powerful for me, I’m afraid.”
“Well, you can’t just…die,” Elma sobbed, not caring that she sounded like a petulant child. “I love you.”
Rune grinned, slow and self-satisfied, his blue eyes bright with emotion, even as the snow grew redder all around him. “Come here.”
Elma leaned down, pressing her cheek to his, her hot tears dripping down her nose and onto his neck.
“And I love you,” he murmured, so quiet, as if it were a secret they held between them, a gentle spring flower untouched by the frost. “I didn’t expect to love a queen of Rothen. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. You are inescapable.”
