Page 63 of Frost Like Night
She had failed. Again.
Ceridwen screamed, but not from the threat of the attacking Yakimians.
There was no forgiveness to be had. Simon wasdead.
A thought hit her, then. Some faint recollection of a time without pain, one of her only happy memories: Jesse, in the refugee camp, talking of fresh starts.
The Yakimians’ own hatred compelled them to attack her, Angra’s magic blinding them to any threat but the Summerian princess, so they didn’t flinch as Cordellan soldiers swarmed the room and blades pierced their spines. Ceridwen dove for the first Cordellan, but he hurled her to the ground. She slid across the floor and slammed into a table overturned in the crowd’s departure, her body rebounding limply.
She’d come back to Juli to stop Angra—and all she’d done was open more wounds.
A blast of ice cooled the scorching air of the celebration hall. All Ceridwen managed was a feeble acknowledgment—Coldness in Summer? Meira?—before hands heaved her upright.
“Ceridwen—” Meira started, but her voice cut off at the way Ceridwen could only stare at the floor. One of the Winterians who had come with her from the camp held her up, taking her weight. “Get her out of here,” Meira told him, and they started moving, hobbling for the door as more blasts of ice warred with the hall’s heat.
“Do you think Angra’s magic got to her?”
“She’d be . . . doing something, then, wouldn’t she?”
“Is she hurt? They hit her in the head?”
Meira knelt before her. Dirt streaked her face, sweat making a paste of the sand and grime from this hidden passage. Ceridwen hadn’t been surprised at all when her group had found this former sewage tunnel still boarded up—it had made an easy, hidden entrance into the palace by way of the underground wine cellar.
She glanced around, taking quick stock of who was here and who was not. Meira, a new group of Winterians, General William, and Henn; none of the Yakimians; two of her Summerians. Lekan was one of them, and Ceridwen pinched her eyes shut against the burning tears of relief that he had made it out.
Flame and heat, what would she have done if he had died because of her?
“Ceridwen,” Meira tried. “What happened?”
She didn’t sound angry.
She should.
Five deaths had come because of this failed plan. A few of Meira’s Winterians had been hurt too—one had a deep gash across his arm; another had a cut along his forehead; Henn had taken a sword to the ribs as he helped Ceridwen limp out of the hall. A single lantern cast shadows on their dirty faces, each of them straining for any sound of approach.
And all because Ceridwen had let guilt blind her.
She slammed her head back against the wall, the roughstone threatening to puncture her skull.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Meira slumped to her knees. “It’s all right.”
“Itis?” choked one of the Winterians—a boy, who was even now tying a bandage around the one with a cut arm.
“Phil,” the injured one chastised him, and Phil dropped his head, scowling still.
Meira kept her eyes on Ceridwen, as if the mission hadn’t been a disaster, as if there wasn’t a barrage of injuries around them. “What happened?”
Even just hearing that question made the tears in Ceridwen’s eyes overflow, and she pinched the skin above her nose, face contorting to push back a scream.
“Angra’s magic,” she started. “It got to me—”
“How?” Meira pressed.
She should have expected that. She owed them all the truth, why she, who should have been the most able to resist magic, fell at all. Was it because of her own weaknesses, or Angra’s strength?
“It should have been Simon,” she whimpered, “here tonight. And I hate that I think that, but I’d rather he be alive for me to keep fighting him than—”
