Page 14 of Frost Like Night
RARES GLANCES BACKat me with a frown as I sprint for the entrance. I don’t make it two paces before a force drives me to my knees.
You thought you could escape me?Angra jeers.You’ve never escaped me, Highness, and you never will.
My vision distorts, the twitching orange of this cave rippling away in favor of utter blackness. I fight it, getting patches of Rares and Alin racing back for me interspersed with Angra materializing in the gloom of my mind, his face contorted in a snarl.
Through my terror, one clarifying thought rises from Rares’s earlier explanation:“Being part of the same magic allows for a mental connection. Touching another conduit intensifies the reaction. . . .”
I ignore everything around me—Rares and Alin shouting, Rares’s magic tingling on my skin—and see onlyAngra’s image in my mind. He’s there, all of him, watching me from the shadows.
Without considering the ramifications, I reach out and grab his wrist.
Shock is clear on Angra’s face. He may not be here physically, but he is in my head, and I am touching him now.
I use this one small opportunity to delve into his mind. I want to know so many things—if he caught my friends; what he made Cordell do to Winter; what his ultimate plan is—
I feel the last inquiry connect, and every other sensation dissolves around me.
A young Angra crouches in the halls of Abril’s palace, a woman’s head in his lap, her blood staining the obsidian.
I’ve seen this before—or, rather, I saw Theron’s memory of this, one of the things Angra shared with him while he was a prisoner in Spring.
In Angra’s lap, his mother’s lips quiver. “Please,” she moans. “Please stop him.”
The scene changes and I see an older Angra, huddled in one of Yakim’s universities, poring over books, then standing in Summer, beseeching their king to teach him about magic, anything he can use to overthrow his father. Because this is long ago, only the smaller conduits exist, and for every conduit Angra uses, his father has one to match. But the kingdoms of the world have no time to help a desperate Spring prince when their lands are being savaged by the Decay.
The solution to the Decay comes in the form of the Royal Conduits.Angra sees his father gather every small conduit from Spring and return from the chasm with a staff of ultimate power.
Angra tries to combat the staff. Blood and punches and magic fly, and he crawls away in a bloody heap every time. His father is too powerful now—but his father is prideful and stupid, and Angra tricks him one night into releasing the staff. One moment is all he needs.
But his father still lives, lying broken on the floor of the throne room, and Angra can’t use the staff until his father is dead. He doesn’t want to kill his father—no, he wants his father to suffer first. But how, if Angra has no magic himself?
The Decay. The other Royal Conduits made it weak, but it is strong enough to infect one sad, broken man.
Angra keeps his father alive at first. But the Decay needs magic to feed off soon, so Angra kills his father in a glorious display of blood and revenge.
The staff links to Angra, and the Decay morphs with it. Angra rejoices in the power he and the Decay accumulate over decades of control.
From that, an image unfolds—the future he wants. One of control, where all who oppose him cower as his father cowered, slaves to their darkest emotion—which he will be sure is fear. Only fear. He made it so in his kingdom, and he will make it so the world over.
He wants to make all of Primoria his Spring.
Cold air fills my lungs.
I’m crouched on the cliff outside the cave’s entrance, fingers tight on the ledge. Rares and Alin kneel on either side of me, their hands on my shoulders, panting as hard as I am.
“Meira,” Rares says. “I’m so sorry. I dropped the protection too soon—”
“No.” I shake my head, unable to get my breath under control. “I’m . . . glad for it.”
Rares stares in disbelief. I stay there, fumbling for explanation, until I realize I don’t have to explain at all.
Instead, I twist toward him and press my hand to his, willing him to open up and see what I saw.
He sits there, and all I can read on his dark face is an ancient horror. He flips his hand over to squeeze my fingers, his gaze moving to Alin.
“Stay on guard,” he says. “If anyone approaches—anyone—notify me immediately.”
Rares leaps up and starts down a sloping path carved into the mountain. I scramble to my feet as Alin returns to the cave, the wall closing behind him with a burst of air.
