A growl leaves Neri, a sound that reverberates across the wood. Fury lights the god’s amber eyes, and he presses a massive hand to Colden’s chest, just over his heart, digging his blackened claws in too deep.
Heart pounding against my ribs, I bring the dagger up, certain an attack would be a foolish attempt, but I can’t let Neri kill Colden.
Neri turns his beast-like eyes on me, and I can’t move. Not from terror, though there’s plenty of that roiling through my blood. But because he’s stopping me, as though all he had to do was think about stilling my hand—and the rest of me—and it was done.
The wolf beside me growls and stalks closer, snaps its teeth.
“Just do it!” Colden shouts in Neri’s face. “Just end me if that’s what you mean to do!”
The god slides his amber gaze back to Colden. The dark and vicious look on Neri’s face rattles my soul. It’s the savage expression of someone who enjoys torture and means to dole it out.
“There are far worse fates than death,” Neri replies, face contorting into a sneer. “Isn’t that what you said? Perhaps I shall let you discover how very true that statement is.”
Neri pulls his hand away, and with it comes threads.
They’re so luminescent that I squint, astonished and trapped in Neri’s invisible vise as Colden’s body bows off the ground.
He lets out a hair-raising shriek of misery, and the world around us grows colder than ever before. Colder than the frozen lake. Colder than the bitter wood. Colder than death. Cold, everywhere, chasing a painful chill across my skin, brittling my clothes, glinting on shards of splintered wood, even coating my dagger in a glaze of ice.
With a wrathful howl, Neri closes his fist and jerks his arm back, ripping the threads from Colden’s soul with so much force his blue velvet coat tears open, golden buttons scattering in the snow. Those threads, ice blue and snow white, coil around Neri and melt into his skin, as though they belong inside him.
But…wait. They do.
Neri made Asha a deal. If she gave him her heart once again, this time for eternity, he would do the thing she could not. He would make Fia Drumera immortal as well, but worse, he would cast within her the element of fire, and in Colden Moeshka the element of frost, that they may never—for all their infinite days—come together again.
Neri just removed the curse he placed three hundred years ago.
And stole the Frost King’s power.
37
Raina
Neri cuts his eyes at me again. It’s impossible to look away from his snarling, wolfish face.
“Tell him that I did save you.” He growls behind the words. “Tell him that if not for the great God of the North, he would have lost you on the road south. Tell him that if not for Neri’s mercy, you would be nothing more than a bloody stain in the snow. Tell him that I will not save you forever. You can both rot in earthen graves for all I care. The White Wolf’s debt is paid. Do not summon me.”
There’s a shrill tinkling sound—like glass shattering on glass—and Neri is gone, leaving behind nothing but a fading, cloudy vapor and a bitter, metallic taste on the back of my tongue. His wolves even retreat, vanishing into the wood, and the white mist he rode in on dissipates through the forest.
His power lets go of me, and I exhale in a rush. Quivering, I shake the blade from my hand, the icy metal sticking to my skin.
I try to puzzle together Neri’s words.
He meant for me to tell the Frost King all those things?
Colden groans and gets to his knees, shrugging off his broken chains. Long moments pass as he utters No, no, no, no, no over and over before extending a quickly reddening, trembling hand.
He splays his fingers wide and focuses his gaze straight ahead. The veins in his temples and neck pop from the strain, standing out sharply in relief against his fair skin. His whole body shakes with effort.
Nothing happens.
Panting, he drops his head, blowing out a ragged breath. He curls his fingers into a tight grip and pounds a white-knuckled fist against the ground. “Well, fuck all. We’re balls deep in trouble now.”
Whispers of uneven breathing and the crunch of footfalls across the icy wreckage send me scrambling for my dagger. The cold hilt is in my hand, its sharp tip aimed at a slender neck, in the time it takes a heart to push out a beat.
Just as fast, a hand grips my wrist. I gasp and draw back. I’m on one knee, the person above me wide-eyed as a startled doe.
Nephele.
I shove to my feet and crush her to me, ready to take her and run, like Rhonin said.
“Raina!” She squeezes me tight and pulls away to look at me, smiling, stroking my face with her thumbs. “My sweet girl.”
It’s been so long, yet she feels the same. Sounds the same. Smells the same. Gods, I’ve missed her so much. So much that it takes all that I am not to break down into a puddle of tears right here on this godsforsaken road.
How did we get here? Two farmers’ daughters from Silver Hollow fighting a truly evil man to save Tiressia? Breathing the same air as an ancient god?
I hug her again. My heart has so many wounds—it’s shredded—but I swear, being here with Nephele, hearing her voice, seeing her face, looking into her eyes, has already begun a sort of mending.
Some of the witches from her wagon stumble alongside the road while others help those in need. I look Nephele over. A knot swells on her forehead, above her eye, and there are bruises and cuts, visible in the moonlight. She looks so very tired.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “Is anyone badly injured?”
“I am fine,” she signs. “We are fine. Battered and drained, but we have endured worse than a wagon tumble.”
A wagon tumble. Was it an accident? Or…
No. Neri did this. Neri and his mist. He could’ve killed us. Maybe that’s what he intended. Or maybe he was only coming for his nemesis. Either way, Colden was right. Neri left his people here, abandoned, in the wood of his land, with Eastlanders.
I hate him even more than before.
Colden clears his throat. “This is a truly lovely reunion, but I’m fairly certain that the battle for the end of Tiressia is happening just up the way. So if you ladies would care to join me, we still have a fight on our hands.”
Amid everything, Nephele darts across the remains of our destroyed wagon where Colden now stands, throws her arms around his neck, and kisses him right on the mouth. Colden smiles, too, even while he embraces and kisses Nephele in return.
There’s actual joy in his expression. The frigid Frost King, grinning like an imp, even after facing Neri and having his power torn from his chest. It’s almost as alarming as seeing the naked God of the North form from fog.
Nephele presses her forehead against Colden’s. “I didn’t know what happened to you after they took you. And then I saw…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I saw. I couldn’t have seen what I think I saw. I must’ve hit my head harder than I believed.”
“I’m fine.” He kisses her once more. “You did see it. Neri was here, which makes absolutely no sense, but it was real.”