Page 32 of Frost Like Night
Each passing minute reminds me of all I’m letting happen in my absence, made more potent when I tell Rares to weave news of Angra into our training.
Rares can only give me updates based on what the Order observes—which means he can’t tell me any specifics about my kingdom or my friends. Though this also means Angra hasn’t spread his evil to them yet, which is infinitely preferable to having more concrete news of them. They escaped Rintiero. Angra hasn’t yet reached Winter. I have to believe they’re all okay.
The other news stays much the same—Angra approaches Summer; Ventralli is under his control, Raelyn’s troops are readying to move out; Cordell has sent extra soldiers to supplement Angra’s army; another force gathers in Spring, presumably to join Angra as well. Yakim remains untouched; Autumn is a mystery. Rares can tell me the state of citizens within each kingdom Angra has overtaken as he spreads his magic to them. It’s faint—small currents of connection that only let Rares know they’ve succumbed to Angra—but it’s enough that I become very, very good at retrieving swords.
By the time the last sword clanks against the others under the orange evening sky of the second day, sweat drips down my face despite the coolness of the proper spring air. I slam the lid closed with only the barest thought and throw a glare at Rares.
“How many more times—”
But he isn’t looking at me. Through every clumsily lifted sword he watched me, arms folded, eyes bright, but now he stares at the main wall of his compound. For the first time since I met him, he looks worried, and panic flares in my heart.
I’m reaching for the crate to draw a sword back to me when Rares spins around.
“No,” he says. “Alin found . . .”
He says a word that doesn’t process, not here, so I shake my head.
“What did you—”
“Winterians,” Rares repeats.
My muscles go slack.
“What?” is all I’m able to say.
“Two,” he tells me. “Alin says one is hurt—he’s unconscious.”
All my incapacitating shock breaks away under that, letting turmoil rush in.
Winterians.
He’s unconscious.
Mather?
I take off toward the gate, the iron bars already groaning open at my command. Before I make it two paces forward, Rares is there, his hands digging into my shoulders.
“Alin will bring them here,” he assures me. “He’s on his way.”
I glare up at him. “But how did they even get here?”
The question hits Rares, making him wince.
“What?” I shake him.“What?”
“When we first arrived in Paisly,” Rares says, “Angra found you right away. How did he know where to search for you? I simply assumed he’d figured out on his own where we’d be. But what if . . . someone told him?”
I’m numb. A river frozen solid.
I don’t know the full story yet—it could be that Mather and one of his Thaw followed me on their own.
It isn’t—itcan’t be—that Angra caught them, dug mylocation out of them, and planted them here for me.
But my heart whispers the truth, and I look over the wall.
Rares squeezes my shoulders again. “Alin will bring them here,” he promises me again.
I step out of Rares’s grip and the gate thuds into the dirt. “Just get them here,” I say before I square myself in front of the gate, arms crossed, chest humming with an emotion I know all too well—terror.
