Page 117 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

She could hardly breathe for a few seconds. Her hands shook as her fingers skimmed over the broken skin and the tears in her chainmail.

A shiver ran down her spine.

She had beenthisclose to losing her head.

Kolfinna staggered to her feet. All around her, people started using magic. Clashes of fire and water and stone erupted everywhere.

At the same time, coldness brewed in the distance. Slowly, it spread throughout the battlefield. Kolfinna barely had timeto lurch back as ice shot through the ground, spreading farther and farther in waves. The earthen creatures suddenly stopped moving, their legs encapsulated in ice.

Shrieks filled the air one by one.

Blár.

Had he been trapped in the rune ring, unable to use his magic?

It seemed that way because the tide of the battle swiftly changed.

Kolfinna fought through the thicket of soldiers, her vines ripping against black, scaly armor. She didn’t think, she just moved toward the core of the wintry chill. If the other fae and elves realized what was happening, they might try to lock Blár in a magicless ring and kill him. She needed to be by his side. Not only for this battle to succeed, but because she didn’t want to imagine himgone.

A fae soldier barreled into her and she narrowly missed losing an arm from his sharp blade. She shoved a wall of vines between them and pushed him into the fiery blade of a human soldier. The more she stumbled forward, the colder it became. She followed that intense wintry coldness, pushing through the ranks until she finally found Blár.

He fought so effortlessly. His body moved quickly, freezing everything that came close to him. Blood smeared one side of his face, but it only made him look all the more terrifying. Ice spears formed in his hand and he shot them out in quick sequences. More and more ice rose from the ground, peaking in seconds and spearing the flying fae by the dozens. He looked like a monster out there. A living, breathing, winter king.

Kolfinna kept an eye on him as she pushed back the enemies closest to her.

Half an hour must’ve passed by before a horn blared in the distance.

Suddenly, the fae and elves began fleeing.

Blár raised a hand and walls of ice began to form around the battlefield. Kolfinna watched in stunned amazement as twenty-foot ice walls were erected from the ground up. They spread faster, caging in the soldiers and stopping them from escaping. The fae flew up in the air, and Blár let them escape, but the wingless fae and the elves weren’t as lucky.

Kolfinna turned back to Blár. His breaths were white with cold, but his eyes were alive and vibrant, wild from battle.

Thiswas a black rank in action.

27

“Blár!”As Kolfinna rushed to Blár’s side, her foot slipped across the ice and she almost fell face first onto the icy earth.

Blár’s hand shot out quickly and caught her before she could fall. The cold, tundra-like expression on his face, hardened with battle and the grimness of war, melted at the sight of her. It was like a thin sheet of ice splintering away to reveal what lay beneath—pure relief. He pulled her closer to him until her face smacked against his chest. His cold breath tickled the nape of her neck.

“You’re safe,” he breathed, and despite the cold he exuded, warmth spread over her body. They were in the middle of a battlefield, with corpses around them, with ice and fire and charred bits of grass and stones surrounding them in chaos, death, and destruction. And yet he warmed her down to her toes.

She closed her eyes and fell into the embrace. She rubbed his trembling arms to bring some warmth into him and breathed through the foggy coldness that surrounded him. If he used up too much of his ice powers too quickly, he grew too cold. She had learned that a few weeks ago when he had erected a giant barrier between the Mistlands and the western border.

“I lost track of you.” Blár gently pulled her back so he could peer down at her. His blue eyes appeared so much darker against the backdrop of war. The blood on his face had already dried to a dark maroon color. “Do you know how terrifying that is?”

Normally, she wouldn’t worry about him in the midst of battle, where he was most in his element. Because he was Blár Vilulf, the strongest person she knew, the powerful black rank. But here, in this battle, where runes could snatch his magic away, a deep-seated fear nestled in her core.

Without magic, even Blár didn’t stand a chance against a fae, or elf, or human.

Kolfinna tried wiping the dried blood off his cheek with her thumb. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were looking for me.” She became all too aware that nearby soldiers were glancing over at them curiously. She cleared her throat and dropped her hand. “Um, well, maybe we should see if everyone else is okay? And, of course, we probably need to report to Sijur and see what we need to do next.”

“Just give me a moment.” Blár brought his forehead down until it was touching hers. His gaze pierced her straight through her soul. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. “I just … need a minute.”

Kolfinna blushed at the contact. “You’re being unusually touchy.”

His voice was muffled against her neck. “I’m drained. I don’t know what one of them did, but they touched me and stole my mana. Remember how during the Eventyrslot ruins Revna stole a lot of Eyfura’s mana and her … life, I guess?”

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