Dayton, Mother, and I crash upon the top of the hill, a charging entity of gold and flame.
Perth snaps a hand, and three hideous creatures sally forth on either side of him. The decaying horses, their bodies blue and frostbitten, have manes crusted with jagged frost and empty eye sockets. Two are ridden by wraiths. Unlike the bare-boned skeleton soldiers, these riders are freshly made.
Perth hauls himself up on the third dead horse and holds out a hand, creating a glittering ice spear, the fractals shining with that otherworldly green glow.
“Looks like we got his attention,” Dayton says.
With a cry, Quellos and his riders charge.
“Take out the wraiths,” I say, voice low. “Quellos belongs to Autumn.”
My mother stops her steed beside me and lowers her lance. We steel ourselves. Quellos and his riders crash upon us like a blizzard: a flurry of cold and snapping wind and violence.
Terrible noises of equine pain shoot into the air; though I can’t take my eyes off Quellos to check, I know Dayton has engaged the riders. My mother drives her lance into the visible ribs of Quellos’s steed, and it bucks. I lunge forward, blazing fire from my hands.
Quellos cackles—half-laugh, half-cry—and stabs his spear toward me. I leap backward, feeling the hiss of wind as it barely misses.
He struggles to gain control over his steed as flames catch between its bones and it stumbles. “Well, isn’t this touching?” Quellos winds his hands around the reins. “A High Prince finally finds something worthy of his presence.”
“You don’t have to do this, Quellos.” I step back and lower my hands. “Call off your army. Autumn has no quarrel with the Winter Realm.”
“Of course you don’t,” the traitor vizier snarls. “I’m sure Autumn loved watching Winter devour itself, being run by the pathetic excuse for a leader, Keldarion. Long did I serve him, thinking the fool would finally realize what was best for his realm and pass on Winter’s Blessing to me, a deserving ruler!”
Flames lick my fingers. “So that’s why you served Keldarion all those years. Not out of loyalty or a desire to help him succeed. Because you wanted him to grant you his power!”
My mother gives a cruel laugh. “You are an even bigger fool than I thought, Quellos. For all High Rulers know who is worthy of the realm and who is not.” She swirls her lance in her hands. “You will never bring peace to Winter.”
Quellos’s steed gives a strangled cry and collapses to its front legs. The vizier shoots forward but hangs on. “That’s where you’re wrong, Niamh. I don’t intend to bring peace to only Winter, but to all the realms. The peace of an endless frost.” He gives a revenant look across the battlefield. “The calamity of growth in Spring shall freeze. Bitter winds will ease the scorching heat of Summer. And greatest of all shall I remove the torment of Autumn: the constant death. Instead, all shall be at stasis. All shall be at peace.”
I throw Quellos off his dying steed. His glittering spear falls to the ground. Body atop him, I lace my hands around his throat. “Autumn is death, is it?” Flames erupt from my hands, red light casting over his wizened face. “Then I will show you death.”
But Quellos’s eyes only shine with mirth, and an unsettling smile crosses his face.
More fire. I need more fire to burn this monster from Autumn’s memory. To melt him into the ground and take all his walking bones with him. But the more fire I erupt from my hands, the larger he smiles. The red light of my flames is overtaken by the growing green from his crown.
“Your fire cannot hurt me, Prince,” he hisses. “I am no frost. I am the creator, the harbinger of a new season. The season of the Green Flame!”
He’s right. With growing horror, I realize my flames do nothing: he’s not burning, or even hurting. I fall backward, staring at my useless hands. My one weapon against him…
Quellos leaps up, eyes glinting with wild joy.
“Then I shall strike you down with steel.” My mother’s voice. She charges on her elk, lance drawn, and drives it straight through Quellos’s chest.
Blood spurts from his mouth, but his smile never fades. Instead, he throws his head back and howls with laughter as red flows from his blue-tinged lips. His crown glows again, and he snaps his head forward, eyes trained on my mother.
Without blinking, he wraps his hands around the lance and yanks it out of his body with a sickening squelch. The gaping wound in his chest festers with green light, then frosts over, ice cracking away to reveal new skin.
Absently, I notice Dayton smiting the wraith rider in flame, the other fallen at his feet. But I’m wholly focused on Quellos. A moment that seems to linger too long and not long enough—
“If you are so intent on death, Farron, son of Autumn, then I shall give it to you.” Frost explodes from Quellos’s hands, overtaking the lance, then elongating it, a hideous spire of jagged ice. And before the cry leaves my lips, Quellos hurls the lance through the air.
There’s a dull thump as the ice lance crests through my mother’s chest plate, then a soft, gurgling sound. My mother looks down, her own lance plunged through her heart. Tentatively, she feels the wound, eyes wide and unseeing. Then she slides off her steed and falls to the ground in a clang of metal.
Screaming. The swish of a sword. Dayton’s voice, his blades locked in battle with Quellos. But I think the vizier has done something to me, too. I’m numb, as if the frost has taken me from the inside.
I fall to the charred earth and crawl. My mother’s body convulses around the lance, and I flip her over, holding her hand in mine. Red stains her lips. I don’t understand. She looks so small with this huge thing lodged in her chest. Not like my mother, but a scared girl.
“Mother.” My words are a breathless cry. “It’s going to be okay.”
I grip the lance with the intention to pull it out, but her unseeing eyes find me, and she snatches my hand. “N-no—”
“Ez’ll fix you. We’ll get him and… He can heal—”
“It’s in my heart, clove,” Mother gasps. “No magic can save me now.”
“No,” I cry, desperately blinking away tears. This can’t be happening. My mother, my mother. Her hands are so shaky against mine, her face too pale. I clutch her, as if I could weave her lifethread back together. “Don’t leave me. Please.”
Warm blood gushes across my hands, and I curl over her chest, crying out, a sound more animal than man.
“Farron,” she says, voice hitched with shaky breaths. “Let me see your face as I pass into the wind.”
I take her hands in mine. She smiles softly, a smile I have not seen since my youth. So young, she looks so young. I gently lift her onto my lap, cradling my mother as she once cradled me.
Tears fall from my face and transfer onto hers. I can barely speak the words as she fades away. “What will the realm do without you?”
She reaches a shaky hand up to stroke my cheek. “Oh, Farron. The realm has you.”
Her eyes drift skyward. Then she smiles, a look both joyful and content.
She slips from this realm to the next.
And I am left alone.
82
Rosalina
Caspian is gone, and it’s just me and the briars. Shouts and cries sound through the battlefield. Blood and frost coat the ground. Gritting my teeth, I feel for my mate bond with Farron.
It snaps taut, and I see a flash of gold running up the crest of the hill. He’s heading toward Perth Quellos. I need to hurry.
Pushing down the fear shaking my heart, I run across the battlefield. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me Billy and Dom are still engaged with the giant wraith. I’m on my own.
A wraith charges me from the side. Instinctively, I raise my hands. The thorns writhe around my wrists and one shoots out, diving into the earth before sprouting larger. The sharp point strikes the wraith through the chest.