Page 123 of Frost Like Night
I blink, and Mather catches Theron’s sword.
How did it—there was no way Mather could have moved that fast—
A glow of yellow emanates from Mather’s other fist, one of the many rocks here imbued with the source’s power over the years. Just like the original conduits that used to run rampant through the world, giving single jolts of magic that people eventually used for the evil acts that created the Decay. Compared to the Royal Conduits, individual conduits are laughably small and temporary, good only for quick influxes of power.
But quick influxes of power are just what Mather needs.
The stone in his hand dims to a muted shine and he tosses it, spins under Theron’s next swing, and grabs a glowing blue stone that helps him catch Theron’s jab. He’s using the magic only to defend, not attack.
Snow above. He figured out on his own what Rares and Oana had to teach me through violent lightning strikes.
A split shakes my ears and I look up in time to see a crack in the top of my ice shield, plummeting down, straight for me. Angra’s magic—he’s breaking the ice barrier. I have no weapons left, nothing I could use to attack him.
Except the ice.
Angra gives me no further time to think. I launch back as my barrier explodes, slivers of ice cutting through the air and scraping my face in small frozen blades. One large shard whirls after me, and I catch it before it shatters on the stone.
“No,” I snarl, at him, at myself, at this whole awful war, and it’s the only thing I can say as I stand there, the skin on my palm breaking open as I grip the ice shard.
Angra stands, triumphant among the ruins of my ice barrier. “Go ahead and try, Winter queen. Spring will always win.”
My useless broken arm stays clamped to my body, but the rest of me moves to fight without any prodding, knees bending, waist shifting, good arm coiling as I throw the ice shard at Angra. He slams one arm up, a shield of Decayincinerating the shard before it touches him. But I let another fly, scrambling through the debris around me to hurl any and all pieces I can find. A particularly large chunk drops into my palm, and my magic flares with recognition, wanting to break free, so I let it—but only to creep down my left arm and heal the break. No other magic use. I can’t risk magic in what could be an attack on Angra, a negative action that could feed the Decay.
I’m too close to lose.
Ice shard after ice shard, and each one lets me take another step closer to Angra, to the edge. Closer and closer, my arm a repetition of grab, bend, throw—grab, bend, throw—ice flying toward Angra only to dissolve as he wrenches up barrier after barrier against my relentless attacks. His face bends with vehemence, brows caving over his eyes in a glare that matches the growl he unleashes.
A few more steps, just a few more—
One ice shard flies, smaller, and instead of dissolving in Angra’s barrier, it hits him, only because he lets his defense fall to fling his arms straight out at me. The ice leaves a thin red line along his cheek, blood welling in beaded trickles as his magic flings me back, high into the wall, but instead of crashing to the ground again, I’m held there, pinned to the stone.
Angra pants, one hand lifted to keep me defenseless against the rock.
“If you kill me now,” I say, “all of Winter will becomejust like me. Conduits. There will always be someone to fight you.”
“You think they can stop me?” Angra lowers his hand and I grind down the wall, serrated rocks cutting into my back. A sharp scream bursts from my lips before I can bite it away, and the noise makes Mather pause in his fight.
He turns toward me. Just a flinch.
Theron rakes his blade across Mather’s stomach.
I feel the cut as if it happened to me, a hot sear that empties my body of rational thought.
“Winter welcomed me,” Angra continues, unmoved by anything happening outside us. “Your kingdom opened its doors to me once I told them the truth of our power. Conduits or no, they worship me. Theworldworships me, Winter queen, and you cannot defeat me.”
Mather crumples, one hand around his gut.
Theron circles him, grinning, his sword tinged red.
Watching Mather scramble for another conduit, his wound leaking scarlet blood down his thighs and Theron readying behind him, blade rising, all I can see is death.
Sir, and Nessa, and Garrigan, Alysson, Noam, Finn, myself—everyone I couldn’t save.
Angra thinks this is his war, and maybe it once was. But it has become something far greater, something that makes him inconsequential by comparison.
This has nothing to do with him. This has nothing to do with his magic.
This is about all the people I couldn’t save and all the people still out there now. This is about a future, a true future, the one that died when I was a child who had weapons instead of toys. The future that died when Mather had to grow up thinking he was the king of a lost kingdom, when Theron’s father forced him to live a life by Cordell’s rules, when Rares and Oana couldn’t have a child, when Ceridwen had to bow to her brother’s tyranny.
