“A mortal creature that was already filled with hate and vengeance for the High Prince of Winter,” Perth rattles, “was the perfect apprentice for my teachings. He will bring honor to the Green Flame and earn his own retribution by doing so!”
Then I hear it: a series of harsh bangs and the rush of wind. An unearthly chill shudders through me.
To the eastern flank, a hailstorm of deadly icicles bursts upon a platoon of Autumn Guard and Kryodian Riders. Each shard of ice strikes with deadly accuracy, impaling the soldiers. Screams of agony and pleas for mercy cut through the wind.
Ezryn snatches the chains around Perth’s wrists and yanks hard. “How are you conjuring this wickedness?”
But Rosalina answers, her voice a panicked cry. “It’s not him! Farron, look out!”
Farron blinks rapidly, standing alone now on the crest of a small hill, scroll in hand. “What’s happening—”
But he doesn’t finish his words. Dark ice crawls up his legs, over his torso, and quickly devours him—like it did to Koop and Flicker.
Farron! My heart constricts. We’ll get him out, we’ll get him out.
A cloaked figure emerges from behind Farron, a deep green crystal crown glowing on his head. “Ah, the first monster that tried to end me. It will be so easy to shatter him this way.”
That voice. I fucking know that voice.
He throws off his cloak, and I see the twisted features of Lucas. But he’s changed, now one of those wraiths. His skull appears fractured, frozen back together by frost. A sickly greenish-blue glow courses over his frozen body. Huge icy mounds grow over his shoulders and arms, and jagged spikes stick out of his chest. What sort of monster has Perth turned him into? And he has one of those crowns…
It’s as if I can sense Ezryn and Kel’s thoughts as my own. He will die. Again.
Keldarion drops Perth in a heap, draws his blade, and storms toward Lucas. “One death wasn’t enough for you?”
“Wait, Kel don’t—” Rosalina yells.
But he doesn’t listen. Kel leaps, sword raised. It connects with Lucas’s neck. There’s a shimmering clang, like steel meeting stone. Keldarion pauses, blue eyes wide as ice skitters from Lucas’s neck onto the sword. It crawls up the blade, then onto Kel’s hands, over his arms. He tries to pull away, but he can’t break free. He casts one horrified look at us before the ice encases him.
Rosalina lets out a terrible cry.
This monster just took down the most powerful fae in the Enchanted Vale. And he didn’t even swing a sword.
Ezryn lets out a furious growl, then nods his helm at me. “Take her and run. I’ll destroy the crown.”
I stumble back almost instinctively at his command. The battle is in chaos as soldiers are swept away by the hailstorm or flee from the deadly ice shards.
“We can’t leave them,” Rosalina shrieks.
I feel her desperation. Fare, Kel, Ez—I can’t abandon them.
Ezryn charges, but he’s sheathed his sword, not willing to touch Lucas like Kel did. A powerful blast of fire erupts from his palms. It wavers around his body, then falls away.
“Fire isn’t enough. The crown must be destroyed first!” Rosalina calls.
But it’s too late. Lucas throws his hand out, fingers extending into terrifying icy claws. They rake down Ezryn’s chest plate. An icy shell devours Ezryn before he can scream.
Lucas turns, that crystal blazing a sickening bright green. Rosalina clutches her wrist. Ezryn may have healed the skin, but the scar remains, visible or not. “It’s time to shatter your prince,” he says.
I stand in front of Farron’s frozen body, drawing my double blades. “You will not touch him.”
“If you want to be near him so much,” Lucas growls, “then be with him in death.”
A line of ice, quick and slithery, weaves across the ground then strikes at my legs. I don’t even have time to yell before it starts to crawl up my body.
The last thought I have is to swing out my arm, pushing Rosalina away. “Run! Run, Rosie.”
She backs away, looking down at her wrists covered in thorns. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Nothing happens.
The ice reaches my torso, a cold cutting deep within me.
Rosalina looks from us to the battlefield, but she doesn’t move.
“Run!” I yell again.
Lucas steps forward. “Oh, she’s not going anywhere.”
A great wall of ice grows, closing us in. Trapping her.
Frost creeps up my neck, and I gasp for a final breath.
I wasn’t strong enough to save her.
86
Rosalina
This… This is what it’s all led to?
I heave in a shaky breath and spin in a circle. Lucas’s magic encases us on all sides, Autumn’s blue sky shut out behind the thick ice.
He stands before me, changed and mutated from the man I once knew. But he’s not unfamiliar. It’s like his outside finally matches the inside.
My princes are trapped in here with us, their bodies frozen, their pain and fear visible even within the ice.
It really has all led to this.
I’m exactly where I was eleven years ago, trapped beneath the ice, with only Lucas.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he says, his voice all jagged edges. “But that crazy ice faerie gave me a second chance. So, I saved you from those beasts. Saved you again.”
I glare at him through my tears. “You didn’t care about me then. You don’t care about me now. It’s always been about what makes you feel powerful.”
He gives a cruel laugh. “I don’t need to feel powerful. I am power.” He flexes his fists, green fog lacing through his fingers. “I’ve always known it, and now I’ve proven it. Even those beasts couldn’t defeat me. Is this what you wanted? To play the role of adventurer, of princess? Fine. Stop fighting and play pretend with me.”
Stop fighting. It would be so easy just to follow him, to be his shadow once again. To give up this foolish idea that I have any say in my world.
But that’s not who I am anymore; my princes taught me that. And I proved it to myself. My men stand around me, silent sentinels of ice. I rise, trying to feel for the connection of the briars on my wrists. When I saw Lucas, the magic seemed to ebb away from me, lost within my wild fear.
But there’s no other choice but to find it now.
Power surges through me, and two thorns break free, tearing through the hard earth and striking up at Lucas like hissing snakes. The sharp briars tear at his arms, ripping past fabric. Black blood leeks from the wound. Black blood like the goblins.
He grimaces at me. I take careful steps, not taking my eyes off him. My briars are alive, coiling up my arms.
I send another thorn-shot up at him, aiming for his head. But this time he’s ready, catching it with fingers covered in ice claws. The entire briar crystallizes then shatters.
“What foul magic is this?” I spit. In all my research, I never read of magic that could rival the High Princes of the Enchanted Vale. A sinister smile creeps up his face. Green mist curls around the crown. I need to break that damned thing.
I place my hand behind my back and grow a single sharp thorn, then launch myself at Lucas. Vines wrap around my legs, propelling me higher. I scream, bringing the thorn down on the green crystal.
Lucas doesn’t have time to react, and I strike true. The thorn connects. For a single heartbeat I’m suspended in the air—my thorn pressed to the crystal—and my vision fades to black. The world spins upside down, and an image appears before me.
A woman, writhed in shadows, black hair swirling around her like tendrils of smoke. She kneels in a cavern made of massive green crystals. Her hands are splayed out, and her voice echoes in a terrible incantation. She’s calling something…
A sense of profound wrongness fills me, something so evil and terrible I can barely grasp it. My whole body goes cold, and the thorn splinters on the still intact gem as time speeds up. I collapse to the ground.
“Now, Pumpkin.” Lucas’s rough hands grip me around the waist, and he hurls me across the icy cave. “That wasn’t very nice.”