She had nothing to grieve for. No one left to mourn. Instead, she had a kingdom at her feet and the ruthless power it took to rule it. Others might say they’d kill to be where she was, but they were liars.
Irina alone had proven capable of wresting the life she deserved from those who sought to keep it from her. She alone had taken the bitter dregs of failure and turned them into triumph. Soon Lorelai would be dead, her traitorous heart in Irina’s hands, and Irina would find a way to renew her heart. All would be as it should. The pain she was pouring into her huntsman’s collar wouldn’t let him fail her again.
Awareness curled along the edges of her power, stinging her veins as magic surged toward her hands.
Something was wrong.
She closed her eyes and focused on the threads of magic she’d laid throughout her kingdom.
To the north. Beyond the Hinderlinde Forest. Over the Silber River and west.
Reaching out, she wrapped her bare hand around a vine of raven’s rose that crept up the side of her tower. The thick, stubby thorns pierced her skin. Ignoring her cuts, Irina said, “Prosnakh. Find what I seek.”
Her magic gathered itself and shot down the thorny plant in a stream of power that sounded like a clap of thunder when it merged with the ground. Irina closed her eyes and envisioned the mountains northwest of the Silber River. Duchess Waldina’s land with its villages, its mines, and Irina’s northern army command outpost.
The queen’s heart pounded unsteadily as her magic merged with the heart of the thorny climbing rose plant and exploded into a vine of its own, snaking beneath the capital city, crossing the Hinderlinde Forest, and burning a path straight into the western mountains, far beneath the sparse villages that clung stubbornly to the mountains’ unforgiving skin.
When the vine reached Duchess Waldina’s lands, it burst into hundreds of tendrils that crawled beneath the ground, seeking answers. In seconds, the tendrils tangled with the lingering strands of Lorelai’s magic, and the spells she’d used were revealed to the queen.
A vise of pain wrapped around Irina’s chest and stole her breath.
Her entire command outpost was gone. Destroyed down to the last stone. Her weapons were buried beneath a lake of hardened lava, her communications towers with their signal mirrors and carrier pigeons were crushed, and her soldiers had fled to the nearest village.
But worse than all that were the threads of magic that wrapped around the heart of the mountain and repelled Irina’s touch with implacable strength.
Lorelai.
Fury tinged with the bitterness of fear swamped Irina. She hadn’t trained the princess to use magic like this—to merge with the heart of something and turn it into a weapon. It had taken Irina years to learn that skill. Either Lorelai had been practicing, training with a rogue mardushka, or the princess had more natural power and talent than Irina had imagined.
Either way, the princess had just declared war, and Irina couldn’t allow that to go unpunished.
Tightening her grip on the rose vine, Irina whispered, “Nakhgor kaz`lit. Find the one I seek and punish her.” Irina poured her intent, every strong-willed, vicious thought she’d ever had, into the incantors. Her arm throbbed, and her heart sent spikes of pain into her jaw as her power shuddered through the vine and then burst into hundreds of smaller threads that moved throughout the capital, the Hinderlinde, and across the Silber into the Falkrains.
Irina opened her eyes and swayed on her feet as the effort it took to gather power from the increasingly reluctant Ravenspire ground took its toll. Gripping the balustrade with bloody fingers, she smiled coldly as she gazed north toward land that were now connected to her as intimately as her own heartbeat.
Her huntsman would be closing in on the princess, driven wild by his need to rip out her heart and end his torment. Any day now, he would complete his task, and Irina would sleep well at night knowing the princess had paid for her betrayal.
But if he failed, the threads of Irina’s power would not. The second Lorelai used her magic again, Irina’s spell would attack, and Lorelai’s foolish game would cost her everything.
TWENTY-FOUR
KOL’S HOURS WERE a blur of tree trunks, a pale sky that grew dark and star pocked before slowly giving way to dawn, and the torment that poured out of the collar and made him feel like every part of him was an inferno of unendurable pain.
The girl’s voice was a lifeline that sometimes broke through the terrible whispers of his collar, but the longer he stayed away from her, the harder it was to hear her.
By the time the sun rose on the day after he’d left her behind, her voice was gone, and he was alone with the whispers. The pain. And the vicious beat of his dragon’s heart.
He had to go after her.
He couldn’t.
He had to rip her heart from her chest.
He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t, but it was impossible to remember why.
Near midday, he stumbled, going down hard on his knees as the distance between him and the girl became liquid fire in his veins.
He was going to die.
No, she was going to die.
He wasn’t a killer.