Page 126 of Frost Like Night
Though the earth still shook with the aftershocks of the chaos, Mather scrambled down the incline, hurling himself from rock to tree to rock again. His palms tore against the sharp stones, but he couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, his heart vibrating right alongside the earth.
“Meira!” he screamed. Desperation gurgled through him, the aching grief that had sprouted in his gut the moment he had watched his father die. He clung to his tiny well of hope, but even that darkened, melting like ice in his palm.
He staggered out from behind one last cluster of trees and into the battlefield. Or what had once been the battlefield.
Soldiers from each side stood motionless, gaping up at the continuing eruption of fading magic. Most droppedto their knees as if they had all been driven to the ground by the same life-altering revelation. A few wept, staring at their hands as if seeing them for the first time. Most simply knelt there, soaking in the emptiness that permeated the air.
Mather felt it, too. Even those on the field who hadn’t been possessed by Angra’s magic felt it, their eyes widening and their chests heaving with the deep breath reserved for inhaling pure air after too long spent in squalor. They turned to those who knelt, and joyous cries began, just as they had in Abril, when he’d first thought all this was over and Meira had stood triumphant over Angra’s work camps.
“MEIRA!” The agony in his own voice echoed back to him, countering the happiness of the field. It should have worked—Cordell’s dagger should have been a good enough sacrifice. . . .
Maybe it had been, but she had been too close to the destruction.
Maybe Angra had managed one final blow before the end.
Mather tripped into a boulder and smacked his palm against it, beating his sorrow out on the stone. “NO!” he screamed, shoving that word into the mountain, forcing it to feel everything it had taken from him.
A hand on his shoulder. “Mather?”
He spun, launched away, tears blurring his sight—no, despair blurring his sight, making him blind with need sohe breathed her name, “Meira,” in one quiet, hopeful plea.
But it was Trace. And Hollis behind him, Kiefer, Eli, Feige.
His Thaw.
He hadn’t lost them too.
Mather dropped to the ground, doubled over near the rocks that led up to where the chasm’s exit had once been. Trace knelt with him and said something, quiet words that Mather refused to hear. Someday, maybe, he’d be able to hear them—but now, all he could do was unravel on this field, in the midst of celebrations and relief and the victory Meira had wanted.
She should be here. If anyone was to survive that labyrinth, it should have been her.
Somehow Mather found himself upright, maybe urged by Trace or Hollis. Ceridwen stood behind them now, battle beaten, her brows pinched over teary eyes. She already knew—everyone who gathered did. Caspar, his generals; Rares and Oana—how had they gotten here? Dendera, her face contorted as if she had been weeping for hours—and Henn wasn’t with her.
No. Ice above, no more loss.
Mather studied their faces.
“The world will need you after this.”
It had been one of Meira’s last pleas to him, and he grabbed onto it, willing the order to consume his every emotion. Something to do past his grief, while everyonearound looked to him for explanation or leadership.
Mather shifted forward. Eyes brightened at his movement. He cleared his throat, and Ceridwen clamped her hands over her mouth, her eyes welling with tears that made her shoulders jerk forward in a sob.
Caspar smiled. Rares laughed, no,bellowed, nearly toppling to the ground as Oana held him up and joined his laughter. Even Dendera smiled, but smiled through tears and closed her eyes to brace herself.
Mather frowned and looked to his Thaw for explanation.
But none of them offered any words, too shocked to speak.
Two fingers pressed against the back of Mather’s neck.
It had been a game when they were children. One he’d played on her, mostly, sneaking up and pressing two fingers on her neck in place of a weapon.
“You’re dead!”he’d shout to her shrieks that it wasn’t fair, that she’d take him in a real fight, that she hadn’t been ready.
Hewasn’t ready. He was never ready, and every time he snuck up on her, her violent swirl of confidence stunned him speechless. No matter how many times he saw her fight, he was always struck dumb with wonder that someone could be so unapologeticallystrong.
So he shouldn’t have been surprised at all when those fingers landed on his neck. He shouldn’t have doubted herability to survive, not for one second.
