Page 23 of Frost Like Night
Angra interceded with a touch on his arm. “That’s enough. We can use him.”
Mather snarled. Theron looked just as infuriated, but he pulled back, watching Angra.
“That was my mistake last time,” Angra told Theron,but the pitch of his voice made it clear that his words were meant to be as much a dagger in Mather’s flesh as Theron’s conduit. “I let weak rulers live even though I had the key to power greater than anything they could fathom. This time, I will strike until only those are left who will bring about a new, awakened world. And these boys will help me force the Winter queen to pick a side—especially him.”
Mather panted. “There’s nothing you can do that will make me help you.”
Angra, still facing Theron, smiled. Then he looked down at Mather.
“And what makes you think I was talking about you?”
Understanding shattered what restraint Mather had left.
His eyes moved to Phil.
“No,” Mather wheezed, then a shout, “Don’t touch him!”
Phil’s face broke. He scrambled back, trying to stand, but Angra’s men descended on him first.
Mather wrenched against the soldiers, managing to get onto one foot so he propelled forward. But the men tackled him flat on the ground, and the wagon’s wheels were all he could see, his arms bent against his spine.
He couldn’t do anything when Phil started screaming.
7
Ceridwen
THE QUEEN OFYakim had bought them from Raelyn’s men.
The Ventrallan soldiers left them in a rush, and though Giselle had given her and Lekan a way out of Raelyn’s clutches, the Yakimian queen never did anything without a calculated reason. As Ceridwen planted herself on the darkening street in Rintiero’s south quarter, she folded her arms and glared at Giselle, who silently mounted her horse and arranged her heavy wool skirts around the saddle.
A distant yet powerful wail echoed down the street. Panic flared in Ceridwen’s muscles. A warning siren? A call to arms?
She was intimately familiar with the everyday sounds of Rintiero, music and laughter and happy conversation so different from Juli’s raucous bellowing. The siren called her attention to the way the noises of the city soundedsuddenly . . . different. It was night, yes, but even at the latest hours, songs played from the music guild. The only things she could hear now were distant shouting, metal rattling—the noises of war.
A cold wave washed from her head to her toes.
Raelyn’s coup had spread. Was finding Meira and stopping Angra even feasible anymore? She needed to get to the palace. Now.
Lekan, mounted with one of Giselle’s soldiers, pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded. He understood. Whatever Giselle had in store, he could handle, and he was far safer with Yakim’s uncertainty than Raelyn’s guaranteed torture. Ceridwen could leave him here and—
A cold hand grasped her shoulder—Giselle, leaning down from her saddle. “Do not do anything foolish, Princess. Likely they’re dead already.”
She snarled. “Then I will obliterate Raelyn.”
Giselle rolled her eyes skyward before kicking her horse. “Are you not exhausted by all this passion?”
Before Ceridwen could respond, Yakimian soldiers moved in. A few quick jerks, and they had her arms knotted in front of her, a rope tugging her wrists high where it connected to one soldier’s saddle. Lekan snapped forward, but the soldier on his horse simply butted his wounded knee with the hilt of a sword, which made Lekan cry out.
“GISELLE!” Ceridwen’s roar echoed off the buildings.“The moment you untie me, I’ll kill you!”
A few horses up, Giselle shook her head. “You are quite the terrible negotiator.”
“And you are quite the terrible ally. For decades you sell to Summer, andthisis how it ends—with you taking me prisoner? I knew Yakim was selfish, but I didn’t think you were heartless.”
That made Giselle yank her horse to a stop. After a moment, her party started on again, but Giselle drifted back until her horse kept step beside Ceridwen’s fumbled mix of walking and being dragged.
“We are not heartless—we are practical.” Giselle’s back was rigid beneath the burnished, double-bladed ax that sat against her spine—Yakim’s conduit. “And we are one of the few kingdoms, might I add, not currently involved in this war. Winter is here, Summer, Ventralli, Cordell—Spring. Autumn has been invaded, or so I heard, and Paisly has never bothered to be more than mountain rats. Being practical is what will keep my people alive. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same for your kingdom, had you the foresight to protect it.”
