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She kissed him where his jawline met his neck. “Don’t be sorry. I’m fine. You’ll be all right. If we can get you to a healer—”
“Stop,” he said, and with every word, his breaths grew slightly more labored. “I’m not sure you’re aware, but these are called the Death Games for a reason.”
“Do not give up on me,” Elma demanded, sitting up to hold her assassin’s gaze.
“I’m not,” he said, grimacing with pain. “It’s just… I seem to be losing an awful lot of blood.”
The arena horn cut through the air.
Elma started, suddenly aware of the silence in the arena, an extended hush. Whoever they sent out next, Elma would cut them down. She would do it again and again until no one was left to fight her. She would carry Rune out of the arena herself if she had to. She would cut her way throughGodwin’s soldiers. She would carry him over the mountain pass, across the Frozen Sea, back home where he belonged.
They could not have him. She would not let them have him.
The crunch of snow drew Elma’s attention — someone was approaching.
“Stay alive,” Elma murmured, lowering Rune’s head to the snow. “Just do that for me.”
She stood then, steady on her feet, placing herself firmly between Rune and the new opponent. Snow was falling so heavily now that she couldn’t quite make out the champion, but she could see that it was someone tall. A man armed with a sword.
“I hate to interrupt what appears to be a touching farewell,” he said with an achingly familiar voice.
Forty-One
Snowflakes clung to Godwin’s hair and beard, at last near enough for Elma to recognize, to see with clear and seething hatred.
“If you touch him again,” she growled, “I’ll kill you and feed your entrails to the citadel swine.”
Godwin tutted, stopping in his slow approach. “I should have twisted the blade,” he said, glancing over Elma’s shoulder to aim a scornful glance at Rune. “He should be dead by now.”
“What do you want?” Elma demanded. “Was that not enough of a spectacle for you? Thought you’d come and end things on your own terms?”
He smiled ruefully. “You know me too well, niece. I could have been patient, waited for the Slödavan to bleed out. And then, in your anguish, called for your beheading. It would have been poetic, I’ll admit, and more than a little tragic. But I’d rather not risk the people seeing you as some kind of martyr, or, gods forbid, a hero. Better you go down swinging, with bloodlust in your eyes.”
“Fine,” said Elma, and already she could feel the coldburning in her, the glacial power. Now that she had found it, calling it forth was almost nothing. She had spent a lifetime seeking some connection to Rothen, a meaning, and now that she’d found it, the land would never let her go. She was its rightful ruler, and the man who stood before her was a usurper. Somehow, the land understood that.
I am the Queen of Rothen.
The air snapped with cold as the Rime Ice blade extended from her hand, long and angry. She yearned to drive it through Godwin’s blackened heart.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said, waiting for him to draw his weapon. Or perhaps he would fall to his knees, crumbling in the face of her magic, to the true queen.
But he did neither. He only smiled, a cruel curl of the lips. And then, to Elma’s distinct horror, her uncle’s arm seemed to grow a layer of frost. Ice leapt out in jagged angles over his flesh, like a sped-up snap freeze, until — from one breath to the next — Godwin brandished his own blade of Rime Ice.
A distant gasp rang out from the crowd.
Elma’s blood ran cold, her heart seeming to sputter to a stop. All her queenly confidence began to teeter, her stomach lurching as if she’d been walking down a flight of stairs and missed a step. “How?”
Her uncle hefted his blade and ran one finger along its flat, the ice crackling as he did. His smile broadened. “Last night, dear niece, I was crowned King of Rothen. A small and intimate ceremony, of course, but it did the job. You were kind enough to tell me how Rime Ice worked, that it could only be wielded by monarchs. And there was no point in delaying, so…” He twirled his blade, and it sang in the snow.
Elma thought, distantly, that something about the ring of Godwin’s Rime Ice resonance sounded wrong. Like a noteplayed just out of tune. As if his cruel nature had tarnished the magic itself.
She grit her teeth, allowing the pain of every hurt her uncle had caused her to flood her veins like wildfire, tangling with the ice until her heart was aflame. There was no need to speak. With a guttural roar, she lunged for her uncle.
He parried her first attack, and their blades seemed to sizzle where they met. With the power of two glaciers crashing into one another, Elma and Godwin fought toe to toe. They were evenly matched — Godwin was taller and stronger, but Elma was faster, and she wore full plate armor.
Shards of ice burst outward each time their Rime Ice blades clashed, and Elma settled into combat, the flow of give and take, parry and lunge. But she knew better than to get comfortable. The second she let her guard down, her uncle would take the opening.
As they fought, the crowd reacted, though Elma couldn’t tell who they were cheering for.
