“True. But my hope is that by destroying the throne, you will cure him.”
“Cure him? I’m supposed to kill him!”
“Well,” he said, looking at me carefully from under his white brows, “I once told you that a reason we sought you out was because your mother was a healer. I have reason to believe that you will not need to kill the king. You might be able to save him.”
I spoke slowly and carefully, struggling to keep a rein on my temper. “I’ve been training for over two months to kill the Frost King, and now you suggest I don’t?”
He spread his hands. “I am only offering you another way.”
“I don’t want another way! My mother was nothing but kind to everyone, and they killed her in front of me! Can you even begin to understand—” I bit off the words as my voice broke. When I spoke again, it was low and calm. “No. I’m going to kill the king. That’s what all this was for. That’s… all I live for.”
“Is it? Is that really all you have to live for?”
There was a long silence. Part of my mind chattered at me that I’d found friends, I’d found people to care about here. There was more to my life than hate. But another part said that I would never have peace. I clutched my hands together in my lap, my mind in turmoil. Brother Thistle leaned forward and cleared his throat.
“Summer solstice is barely three weeks away, Ruby. You’ll leave us soon to attempt a task that has no guarantee of success. You need to decide what you’re fighting for. Who you truly are.”
Rage bloomed in my chest like a deadly flower. Pressure built behind my eyes and in my chest until it was too much to hold in. I wanted to scream and tear things apart.
“And you’re saying I’m a healer?” I nearly spat the word. “After everything he’s done to me, you think… I should try to heal him? I’d kill myself first.”
I strode to the door and found my way blocked by a hooded shadow.
Arcus.
The thought of him listening to the conversation, silently agreeing with Brother Thistle, made my hands tighten into fists. I came straight at him, plowing into his arm with my shoulder as I bolted from the room.
FOURTEEN
SOUNDS WERE DROWNED OUT BY MY ragged breathing, my feet slamming the earth. I’d been so desperate to have a home again I had given up all thought of what I was doing here. They had brought me here to use me, and I had agreed, eager to die for them because I was getting what I wanted: revenge. And now they didn’t want me to even have that.
The sun had set, but streaks of burnt orange still clung to the sky above the forest. I raced toward the trees, hoping the strong scents of pine and wet soil would calm my mind.
A sound like thunder rent the air. A wall of ice grew up in front of me, a glacier appearing suddenly as if it had risen from the ground, the reverberation knocking me off my feet and twisting my ankle. I cried out in shock, scanning the landscape.
A hooded figure stood near the abbey. Arcus had followed me.
Turning, I limped toward him, stopping a few feet away. The remnants of sunset transformed the lower portion of his face into a mask of beaten copper, dented strangely over his cheeks and lip. When I remembered the last time I’d spoken to him, my blood boiled in my gut like a fire fed with oil. I’d touched his lips, laid my affection at his feet, and he had shown me how repelled he was by my very touch.
“You promised not to leave,” he said, his muscles bunched for a fight.
Of course he would assume I was leaving again. I pulled my arm back and cracked an invisible whip. Fire corkscrewed through the air, flying inches from Arcus’s legs and spreading over the ground in a shower of sparks. He didn’t even flinch. I lifted my arm again, this time aiming at his chest.
He was ready. A breath of frost met my spiral of molten heat, dispersing it in a cone-shaped hiss of steam.
My hands spun out a funnel cloud of blistering heat. I had never been able to do the move successfully during training. Now the wind howled as it bore down on its target. He lifted his palms but wasn’t fast enough. The air hit him like a battering ram, slamming him to the earth. He lay on his back, unmoving.
I ran to him, torn by conflicting urges. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make sure he was unhurt. I wanted to leave him in the dirt and run away. I wanted him to stop me from leaving.
Shaking, I fell to my knees and put my hand to his chest. It rose and fell with each breath. A pulse beat at his neck. I had an urge to cup his cheek, to trace the scars on his face, to slide my fingers into his hair. He groaned and opened his eyes.
Relief coursed through me. I looked into the myriad of blues and then, unable to bear the cold, looked away.
“You lied to me,” I said.