For a moment, there is nothing but the snow falling around us, and another silent crack of icy lightning dances across the sky.
Then, from the shadows, a cloaked figure emerges from the cave.
31
Raina
I step into the construct’s dimming crimson light and drop my bloody knife and the Eastlander hatchet. Next, I strip off Alexus’s baldric and sword and toss them aside. Lastly, I shed my cloak, so the enemy can see that I’m unarmed. No more innocents will die because of me.
Especially Helena.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. We spotted the Eastlanders and their torches—and Alexus—a half-hour ago, but attacking thirteen warriors when we had no upper hand was unwise. We changed course, planning for Helena to lure them into the cave where I’d doused the fire. I would tear into them, one by one, as they entered the passageway.
Alas, the general had other plans.
“Good girl,” Vexx says to me. He stands with Helena, craning her head back at a painful angle against his shoulder. The God Knife’s tip is pressed to her throat, ready to open a vein. She’s alive, for now, and that sends a trickle of hope through me.
The general thrusts his chin at two of his warriors. “Must I tell you every time? Weapons. Hold her. And somebody check the cave.”
They kick away my only defense and bend my arms behind me. One of the dead Eastlanders that Vexx’s warriors are about to find managed to stab my arm. With my biceps wrenched like this, I can’t help but cringe from the pain.
“Raina!”
I follow Alexus’s voice. He stands closer to the bottom of the ravine, straining against iron binds while warriors hold him at bay. Iron stifles godly power—Neri’s power. I don’t know what that means for Alexus’s magick, but if he could access it, he would’ve already done so.
Our gazes meet. He calls out my name once more, but the woman at his side rams her fist into his jaw to silence him.
The general releases Helena and sheathes the God Knife at his hip, watching me closely as he moves my way. Behind him, two women take hold of Helena, forcing her to her knees.
Vexx isn’t an overly large man, not much taller than Helena, but his presence is like that of a rising storm over the vale, something I feel more and more the closer he gets. His eyes hold a deathly gleam, sharp and silver as a sword’s edge, and his stone-like face—with its weathered skin—has seen many battles, decorated with the scars to prove it.
“All of this—” the general gestures to the Eastlander-dotted hillside “—because of you and your friend.” He angles his head, staring at me past the falling snow like he’s puzzling me out. “A Witch Walker who can’t speak and can’t sing. That must’ve made you quite the disappointment with your people.”
“You pig!” Helena shouts, wriggling against the women pressing her down. “She has more magick—”
I stop her with a warning glare that could cut ice.
Vexx laughs, curiosity glinting in his eyes. “Does she, now? Interesting.” He pushes my hair aside and trails a fingertip down my neck and along my collarbone, tracing my witch’s marks.
After a moment, he seems to slip that nugget of information to the back of his brain, then he grabs me by my hair and forces me down the hill. Behind me, the horses nicker and Helena grunts, likely enduring the same fate as me.
We’re heading straight for Alexus.
Gods, I want to run to him. His eye is swollen shut, and bloody blooms speckle his tunic. He stands at an odd tilt, like something is wrong with his leg.
Vexx and I are two strides away from the bottom of the ravine when the whole world flickers. It’s like the light in a room at night, when a draft has kissed a candle flame.
The snow stops falling, and Vexx stops walking, and we all look up. Helena said a storm was coming, but this is no storm.
Like before, when Alexus and I entered the ravine, white lightning splinters the sky without a single sound. This time, there are a thousand jagged arcs of light shattering the red-tinted atmosphere, spreading like cracks through thin glass. That constant feeling of the construct’s magick, the sensation that’s been with me for days now, disintegrates, and the glaring light of day breaks through.
A cheer erupts from the Eastlanders, but it takes several moments for my eyes to adjust and my mind to absorb what’s happening.
What’s happened.
The Prince of the East won. He made it to Winterhold—the Witch Walkers couldn’t hold out any longer.
“It’s about damn time,” Vexx says. “This little expedition in the North is all but over now.”
I don’t get a single moment to bask in the warmth of the sun before Vexx shoves me forward, still holding onto my hair. His elation is evident in his quicker footsteps and the tightening of his grip, the pain and sudden sunlight making my eyes water.
I trip and fall, and a plug of my hair rips from the roots before I land in the snow. Someone—who is not Vexx—hoists me up, pinning my wrists at my back. I shake my head, trudging forward, blinking away the snow from my lashes.
And just like that, I’m standing there, panting, an arm’s length from Alexus.
The light of day brutally illuminates his injuries, and my body aches for his. The chains holding him bound are so solid and thick that I don’t know how he’s still standing.
The way he looks at me almost ends me. I see his fear, and I know that it isn’t for himself.
It’s for me.
“I’m so sorry, Raina.”
I shake my head, hoping he knows that I don’t blame him. I just want to be back in that cave, curled with him near the fire, listening to his stories.
Gods, I wish I’d never let him leave.
A tear rolls from my eye as Mannus and sweet Tuck are guided past us, and the women leading Helena bring her to Vexx’s opposite side. The general turns to the red-haired giant holding Alexus’s arm.
“You can say goodbye to your little friend, Rhonin. She escaped you and nearly cost us everything. Surely you want to punish her.”
My heart pounds. Rhonin.
I lean forward, meeting Helena’s glassy stare. I pray she was right, that he let her go. I pray that he is not as evil as his general or his prince.
Rhonin looks like he doesn’t know what to do or say, a moment of shock passing over his face like a cloud. Alexus peers at him, but Rhonin keeps his eyes fixed on Vexx.
“We can let her go.” He glances at what looks to be an early afternoon sky. “We don’t have time for this. She’s nothing to us. Nothing to our prince or our mission.”
Vexx tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “Rhonin, sometimes I wonder if you have the mettle required to even be in this army.” He shoves Helena toward the Eastlander. “Either you punish her, or someone else will.”
The muscle in Rhonin’s jaw feathers. With apparent reluctance, he lets go of Alexus. He has blue eyes, and that cerulean gaze finds Helena, though she’s staring at the ground, chest rising and falling fast.
“Fine,” Rhonin replies. “But her beating happens in private. I don’t like audiences.”