Page 51 of Frost Like Night
Oana wraps her sleeve around her hand and runs it down my cheek. “I know, sweetheart,” she says, and somehow, that undoes me more than if she’d sobbed her farewell.
I hug her and Rares. “Thank you” is all I can get out, and it’s weak and pathetic and not even half of what I want them to know. But they take it and pull back, eyes shining.
I turn to Mather and Phil, who are just as loaded down with supplies. They’re barely healed, and already I’m pushing them on. But they don’t question me or complain.
Though they might after what I’m about to do to them.
“This will hurt,” I warn. “And feel . . . terrifying.”
Phil’s eyebrows launch up. “What?”
But I don’t give them a chance to worry. I take their hands and release the magic in my gut to take us to Ceridwen’s refugee camp. An instant heaviness yanks down on my chest, the strain of magic use, but intensified—I haven’t done this before, transported myself, let alone others, and the weight of it drags at my endurance as though I’m lifting a sword heavier than I’m used to. I falter, but hold.
The only problem is, I’ve never been to Ceridwen’s refugee camp. The only location I have is what Mather told me—that it’s a day’s ride from where the Langstone meets the Southern Eldridge Forest. Is that all I need? Or do I need to have a specific place in mind? This isn’t the besttime to worry about this, I realize, as the whir of magic launches us into the void—but I refuse to let overthinking unsettle me, not when Mather’s and Phil’s lives depend on me. So with what concentration I can muster, I focus on the border of the forest where it meets the Rania Plains.
Half a heartbeat later, a solidwhoomphricochets through my body as my feet plant on the ground. Black sky gleams above me, dotted with stars, and stalks of prairie grass wave all around. The earthy, dried scent of the plains clashes with memories of the moist air of Rares’s compound. I pause but, thankfully, the only dizziness that comes is minor, and no nausea incapacitates me this time.
I can’t say the same for Mather and Phil.
I’m fairly certain Phil started retching before we even arrived. He heaves into the grass while Mather, seated on the ground, presses his face to his knees, hands over his head, emitting a low moan.
“What . . . did you . . .” Mather squints up.“Do?”
He notes the landscape. His eyes widen. He folds to the side, mimicking Phil.
I almost rush forward, but their nausea was caused by magic-induced travel—maybe magic can undo it?
A single thread of iciness launches out to them, and both Mather and Phil turn to me with looks of utter confusion. The ease of magic use still shocks me, how uncomplicated it is now—which makes me realize one other thing I need to do.
We’re so far removed from anywhere Angra might know to look for me that his magic hasn’t found me yet, not like it did in Paisly. But I still relax my mind, creating the same sort of protective barrier that kept Rares out of my head. Angra won’t find me until I want him to.
Phil wobbles to his feet, hands out as though he doesn’t trust his body. “What the actual snow above was that?”
I start to answer when Mather huffs a laugh.
“That is how we’re going to win this war,” he says. “The more I see what you’re capable of, the more I start to fear for Angra.”
Phil looks utterly horrified, his lips curled back before he catches Mather watching him and shakes it off, opting for a tight-lipped stare. “You’re stronger than Angra?” he asks me.
I fight off a wince. “Magically? No. But in other ways . . . I hope so.”
The edge of the Eldridge hovers a few paces to my left, shadowed in darkness, while the plains sweep outward on all other sides, ripples of grass as far as I can see. Heat rises from the earth, lingering from what was surely a warm day, and as I shift my chakram along with the satchel strapped across my shoulders, I groan.
“It isn’t as useful as it would first appear,” I say. “I have no idea where Ceridwen’s camp is from here. Or if everyone else even got there. . . .”
Did Jesse free Ceridwen? Did the Winterians get the Ventrallan heirs out of the kingdom?
Mather squares himself in front of me as if he has the ability to hear the chaos in my mind as clearly as Rares did.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says.
“But—”
“We’ll figure it out,”he says again, putting both hands on my shoulders. “They’re all there. I’m sure of it. Now—left or right?”
I swing my head in both directions. Prairielands one way; prairielands the other. I can’t think of a way to use my magic to help me decide. For this, I’m just Meira.
That thought isn’t nearly as terrifying as it once was.
