Page 112 of Frost Like Night
She blinked, brow twitching.
Not all the soldiers around her wore Ventrallan armor.
She strained against the magic to look toward the line of Winterian trees. More fighters ran to join the Ventrallans, adding numbers alongside a few great iron contraptions rolling on creaking wheels.
Angra’s army. And they had brought his cannons—not many, few enough to allow them to travel quickly, but even as Ceridwen analyzed this new addition, one sparked to life and shot a burst of black smoke behind a deadly stone ball that tore into the lines of fighters.
They had already been outnumbered against the Ventrallans. Now . . .
Ceridwen’s heart shuddered, and it had nothing to do with the bed of snow cradling her.
Raelyn too noticed the influx of fighters. She cackled, giddy, and her eyes landed on something just as Ceridwen’s did.
An impenetrable black cloud polluted the air at the line of trees.
Angra.
Ceridwen should have been incapacitated by horror.
But as she lay on that awful cold ground, pinned by Raelyn’s unbeatable power and watching Angra drop into the valley, she saw a way, the only way, to fight the Ventrallan queen.
Angra strode forward, his Spring armor gleaming as hemoved from shadow to sunlight. A figured dropped out of the blackness behind him, the remnants of smoke wafting up into the trees.
No.
Theron caved forward, wailing as though every nerve had been frozen, burned, and frozen again. Angra had brought himself and Theron to this fight—by magic.
And if he had brought Theron, that meant Angra had first gone to Jannuari to retrieve him.
Ceridwen gagged. Meira—what had he done to her? How had Angra even used his magic to bring Theron here? She knew Meira could use her magic to transport other Winterians, but Angra shouldn’t be able to affect Theron, aCordellan, like that. Unless this was a further trick of the Decay? All Ceridwen knew was Theron screaming, rolling in the snow. Whatever Angra had done to get him here, it had worked, but it didn’t seem . . . right.
Angra paid Theron no heed, simply marched toward the heat of the battle, his posture tall and his face livid.
That alleviated Ceridwen’s worry. He wouldn’t be this furious if he had succeeded in killing Meira.
Raelyn applauded his arrival. Clearly she hadn’t yet figured out what Angra would do, but Ceridwen had. They had anticipated that Angra would attempt to infect the opposing army with his Decay, and Ceridwen had been ready to block him.
But the seed of an idea blossomed in her mind, makingher grit her teeth. Angra’s Decay would latch onto everyone in this valley, and though most would fight it, it would eventually worm its way through and infect them with the same mad power that encouraged Raelyn’s evil.
Please, Meira.Ceridwen sent the thought out into the void of her heart, holding it against the choice she was about to make.Please hurry.
Angra kept moving, gliding past Raelyn and Ceridwen. As he did, more of his cannons fired behind him and he stretched out his arms as a father would to intercept a child. But his face told a different story—lips curled, teeth bared, eyes ablaze.
He jerked his arms forward.
Murky blackness streamed out of him, snaking through the armies. One tendril broke off and barreled straight at Ceridwen, and Raelyn watched, waiting for her to writhe and struggle.
But she didn’t fight it.
The magic collided with Ceridwen until she was nothing more than power and strength. Angra pumped as much into her as she wanted, poured it over her like bucket after bucket of water on a dry, dusty ground. She felt his desperation in that offering, how he wasn’t holding back as he had with the small amounts of magic he had given to his soldiers.
This was the final war for both sides, and he would make the world his.
Ceridwen met Raelyn’s eyes.
“When you want to kill someone, kill them, don’ttaunt them,” Ceridwen grunted, and jammed her arms up at Raelyn, shattering the magic’s hold with her own influx of Decay.
Raelyn’s face took on a look of utter shock just before her neck popped. The Ventrallan queen’s body dropped to the snow beside Ceridwen, her eyes frozen in a permanent state of surprise.
