Page 89 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

Blár stood in the center of the room, surrounded by twenty humanoid ice sculptures. He raised a hand and hundreds of ice needles formed in the air, all of them pointed to the sculptures. He lowered his hand and all the needles shot forward. The sound of ice cracking against ice filled the room and a gust of glittery dust fell in waves around the sculptures.

Kolfinna clapped her hands. “Impressive.”

Blár looked over his shoulder at her, his expression unreadable. “It’s not impressive. I’m just practicing my mana control. I think I’m getting rusty.”

“It’s impressive.” She smiled at the broken pieces of ice littering the floor. “I can’t do that with my stone magic.”

And she had been trying too. With Joran. In actually a very similar way to this, but with stones rather than ice. She thought bitterly of her last practice session, and the way her stones hadn’t hit the targets.

“You’ll get there.” Blár lifted a finger and his ice sculptures cracked and crumbled, turning to ice crystals immediately.

Kolfinna watched the destruction. The air was thick with cold and glittering ice fibers. “Are you busy?”

“For you?” Blár flashed a grin. “Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “Too busy for me, huh?”

“Unfortunately so.” His tone was light and joking. He crossed the room to where she stood by the open door and picked up a cannister of water off the metal bench against the wall. “Why?”

“Nothing. I was just going to ask for a favor, but since you’re busy …” She shrugged and jammed her thumbs in her pockets. “I guess I’ll ask someone else?—”

“Come on, I’m just messing with you.” Blár took a swig from the cannister. “So what is it?”

Kolfinna closed the door to the training room to keep anyone from hearing and spun around to face him. A shiver ran downher spine from the cold and when she spoke next, streams of white puffed out of her mouth. “Now, let’s get to business.”

Blár watched with raised brows and nodded his chin toward the now-closed door. “That’s rather scandalous.”

Kolfinna rolled her eyes again and made her way to the bench, but she couldn’t stop the blush from spreading up to her face. “I didn’t realize you were a jokester.” She eased down onto it but then sprang right up when the cold nearly froze her. “What the?—”

He laughed while she patted down her bottom with a hiss. “Careful, this whole place is rather winter-infested.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Kolfinna crossed her arms over her chest and glanced around the chilly room. Ice was everywhere, to the point that she could barely tell that beneath the layers of ice, the walls and floors were gray.

Blár chuckled, and his blue eyes twinkled in a way that made her heart nearly stop.

She tried to smile along, but the twinkle in his eyes made her wonder what he was like as a boy, and then she was bombarded with images of a young Blár holding his dying younger sister in his arms. Crying, with slippery blood running between his fingers, with her tiny little body nestled against him. All at once, her mood dampened and she had to keep herself from flooding with emotions; it wasn’t just empathy she felt, but something more. It prodded at her own traumas; she could just as easily imagine herself in that position. Except it was Katla in her arms.

Kolfinna banished those nightmarish memories from her mind. She had a task to focus on. “I’m thinking”—she cleared her throat—“of sneaking into Sijur’s office. I’m wondering if you can help me.” At his stunned expression, she continued quickly, “Yes, yes, I’m aware it’s a bit of a treasonous thing to do, but it’s important and you’ll have to trust me. Because believe me whenI say that Sijur isn’t as good of a guy as you think he is—or wait, you probably don’t like him at all, right? But anyway?—”

“Slow down, slow down.” He raised a hand to keep her from blabbering any further and she clamped her mouth shut. “You want to sneak into his office?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper in case anyone was eavesdropping beyond the closed door. “Yes. And I need your help.”

“Is this related tothat?” He pointed to her wrist and she inadvertently brushed a hand over it.

“Yes. He potentially has books that I need.” Kolfinna tapped her foot against the thick ice on the floor to keep her nerves in check. She had snuck around the fort before when she was searching for the elf woman, but the prospect of pilfering through Sijur’s office and all his important documents made her stomach clench together. “And he might have information about … you know, what happened to your family seven years ago.”

Blár went still, blue eyes widening a fraction of an inch. “Why do you think that?”

“I don’t.” She paced the slippery floor and thought about Eluf and then all the times Sijur proved to her that he couldn’t be trusted. She had no doubt in her mind that Sijur would use any method to string Eluf along into working for him. “He’s keeping secrets. I just know it. Call it a hunch, if you will.”

She couldn’t tell what Blár was thinking because his expression became shuttered. “And what do you need from me?”

“I need you to make sure he’s occupied while I go to his office.”

“You’re planning on going alone?”

“Yes.”

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