The pain made it difficult to concentrate, but some things you just don’t miss. Like Caedmon trapped behind some kind of ward, throwing his body against it uselessly. Like the fact that we were in a huge cave, like football-field huge, with a long slit of an entrance providing a vista of snow-covered peaks that went on for miles. And like the fact that a mass of what looked like the rock monsters the fey made were headed this way, only they’d gotten an upgrade.
In spite of everything, I just stared. They were shaped like manlikans, but the size . . . I had no idea how large they were, but if they’d been standing still, I would have mistaken them for mist-covered mountains. Mist-covered mountains with a tiny man—or fey, I guess—riding on the shoulder of each of them.
It was completely bizarre and strangely intimidating.
And then things became more so.
A woman turned to look at me from across the expanse of the cave, her diminutive blond beauty on display in a gossamer white gown. It blew in the breeze coming through the crevasse, like her long, unbound hair, perfectly complementing the snowy mountains and brilliant blue sky behind her. My thoughts screeched to a halt and then fell all over one another, like a multicar pileup.
Because that . . . wasn’t Alfhild.
I stared at Efridis, Caedmon’s beautiful sister, and wondered how we got it so wrong.
And then Louis-Cesare appeared, jumping through the portal, and I realized: we hadn’t.
There were two of them.
My brain went blank.
“I thought you said you could handle things back there,” Efridis said.
“I can.” It was strange to see such an expression of contempt on Louis-Cesare’s features.
And even more to feel his boot slam down on my neck.
“Then what is she doing here?” Efridis regarded me mildly. There was no contempt on her features. There was no anything. Somehow, that was more chilling than Alfhild’s open hate.
Efridis did not hate.
Efridis was indifferent.
Like her voice when she said, “Kill her,” and then turned away again.
“No!” Caedmon yelled, but nobody listened.
And then Louis-Cesare’s sword was coming down, hard enough to bisect stone—and flesh and bone and everything else. . . .
Only, it didn’t. It bit into the rock close enough to my back to slice through my little black dress, but didn’t touch actual flesh. For a moment, I just lay there, in a crumpled heap, barely conscious because of blood loss, and not even daring to breathe.
But there was no second stroke. Louis-Cesare walked off, his eyes on the vista outside and the giants headed our way. I stared after him, through half-closed eyes, and tried to think past the agony in my leg and my steadily slowing heart rate.
Louis-Cesare might have distracted Alfhild long enough to spare me, but I was going to bleed out in a minute anyway.
Maybe less than a minute, because the pain was already diminishing, and a pleasing feeling of warmth was spreading through me. I’d heard that people felt that way when freezing to death, mistakenly believing they were getting warmer, when the opposite was true. And although I knew the stone was bitterly cold against my wet clothes, it didn’t feel that way. Not that I was complaining.
Death was nicer than I’d thought.
And then somebody had to ruin it.
“Dory!”
It was barely a whisper, more a susurration of breath than anything else, but it annoyed me. Like a buzzing insect that wouldn’t go away. I wanted to swat at it, but for some reason I felt like I shouldn’t move. Why shouldn’t I move?
I couldn’t remember.
And then that warm feeling was back, only with a vengeance. It wasn’t warm this time; it was hot—to the point that I almost yelped in pain as what felt like a miniature lightning bolt went through me. And jolted me out of the fugue I’d slipped into.
I blinked around in confusion.
And saw Caedmon staring at me.
Okay, that explained why I hadn’t bled out, I thought. And then I realized that he was whispering something. I tried to pay attention—I tried hard—and it gradually got easier.
“—by the wall. Preferably more than one.”
I squinted at him. And finally realized that he was waiting for an answer. “What?”
He looked frustrated. “I know you’re in pain, and I am sorry for it—truly, I am—but I need you to concentrate. Please.”
“Okay.”
“There are crates of weapons—do you see? Along the far wall?”
I gazed around. I saw the crates—our missing weapons, I guessed. But they were dwarfed by piles and piles of bones. There were thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands. I stared at them blankly, wondering how I’d missed that. And why I felt so sick.
“Dory,” Caedmon said, very clearly and deliberately, “I need you to get to one of the crates and find something to destroy this ward. Can you do that for me?”
I looked at him. I looked at the crates. I looked back at him.
“No.”
“Dory, you must!”
“I . . . don’t have a leg.”
“But they do,” Caedmon whispered furiously.
I followed the direction of his gaze, to where a handful of trolls were staring at the approaching giants—including the two who had killed Olga’s nephew. They had their backs to us; I couldn’t see their faces. But those physiques were memorable.
And then a random troll wandered away from the rest, to relieve himself in a corner, and Dorina grabbed him. Near-death experiences were freaky, I thought, because I could almost see her, a dark shadow crouched on his shoulders, riding him across the room.
Had anyone been paying attention, the jig would have been up pretty much immediately, because the guy looked like he had palsy. He was jerking and shivering and staggering about as he tried to fight her off. But the giants in the mist were holding everyone’s attention.
I looked at Caedmon. “What are you doing here?”
“My sister.” It was vicious. “She met Alfhild at the consul’s home and they joined forces. She tricked me into coming here by telling me that she’d heard her husband talk about strange weapons being developed in the mountains—which I believed because we’d heard the same.”
“That’s what you wanted Claire to help you find.”
He nodded. “We’d heard rumors of Aeslinn establishing laboratories outside his capital, away from the prying eyes of any spies I may have been able to suborn. But it’s becoming harder to scout out his territories; his sentries are . . . formidable.”
Caedmon’s eyes found the walking mountains again.
Yeah, I guessed so.
Dorina’s troll lurched into some stacks of crates, spun, and lurched the other way.
Caedmon sighed.
“So, Efridis brought you here because?” I asked.
“She told me what I wanted to hear, that she was finally willing to give over her husband, and help us in the war. She told Aeslinn the same thing in reverse: that she’d only betrayed him in order to gain my confidence, so that she could deliver me to him. She knew it was the only thing that would get him out from behind his palace walls: the chance to kill me personally. In reality, she intends to blow us both up, leaving the throne of each kingdom vacant.”
“So her son can take over.”
He nodded. “We are not easy to kill, Aeslinn and I. But this”—he glanced around—“will probably do it.”
“And Alfhild gets revenge for what your ancestor did to her.”
“Yes. It seems they found common ground in my death.”
Great. Good to know. I wondered if it was a bad sign that the hard stone beneath me was starting to feel good, comfortable even. I closed my eyes, just for a moment. . . .
“Dory! Don’t go to sleep!”
“Yes, don’t nap now. You’ll miss it,” Efridis said, turning around. She had to be thirty yards away, but I suppose those ears are good for something. And then Dorina was flying back to me, as the troll took a knife in the gut courtesy of Louis-Cesare.
Like I was about to.
“Stop!” I said desperately. “Stop! You—you’re killing your own brother, because you want your son to rule? Why not just wait?”