Page 8 of Frost Like Night
Ceridwen shoved Lekan away and tried to scramble to her feet. The shortness of the wagon’s roof made it impossible and her back cut along the stained ceiling. She toppled forward, wrists popping as they caught her weight, the wagon rocking with her frenzy.
“Quiet in there!” a Ventrallan soldier shouted from outside.
Ceridwen leaped up again and slammed her whole body into the side of the wagon until it teetered even more, but it didn’t break stride as it continued to haul them through the city. She screamed, reared back, slammed again, because if she didn’t let it out in some form, her body wouldn’t be able to sustain the misery within her.
She shouldn’t feel miserable for Simon’s death. She hadwantedhim to die—she had wanted him to feel just a piece of the terror he inflicted on his slaves. She had wanted that damned eternal smile of his to burn out so that he’d weep for forgiveness instead of brightening at the sight of her.
Ceridwen choked, sobs twisting in her throat.
He always brightened when he saw her. He’d smile like she was his favorite person in all of Summer, and that made her whole body feel like it was incinerating. She remembered when he’d first met Meira in his brothel in whatshould have been some show of politics, but his primary concern had been where Ceridwen was, whether he could see her.
Flame and heat, he had alwaysloved her, even as he destroyed their kingdom and drove their people to destitution. She had wanted, more than anything, for him to hate her, because—
Then, maybe, she could hatehim.
Lekan clamped his arms around Ceridwen and jerked her down as a blade shot through the narrow window, the one that had been boarded up shortly after they were tossed inside. A flash of silver licked the air above Ceridwen’s head.
The remnants of her screams made her throat raw, pain shooting through her mouth. It was fitting for sorrow to hurt, especially this sorrow, this . . . betrayal.
That was what it was. She had turned her back on Simon. And he had still loved her.
Ceridwen desperately clutched Lekan, unable to relax for fear of what she might do again. There was nothing left in her, very little that Raelyn could take from her. Ceridwen had given up Jesse hours before, and now Raelyn had taken Simon and Summer, too.
But no, it hadn’t been Raelyn. It had been Angra, if Raelyn’s mad ramblings were to be believed. Ceridwen found herself wishing itwasall Raelyn. She hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about undoing what Angra had done. She didn’t even entirely know the extent of all that hadhappened—he had given Raelynmagic. He had given Simon the power to control non-Summerians.
This war was so much bigger than her. Corrupt kings, she could handle; butthis? Dark magic and webs of evil that stretched through all of Primoria?
Terror threatened to cripple her, but she inhaled the smoky, nauseatingly sweet air, using Lekan to orient herself.
“Meira got away,” she told him, because she needed to believe it. “She’ll stop . . . this.”
One of Lekan’s arms unhooked from her and dropped with a thud against the wagon floor. He flexed his fingers, rubbed his injured leg, and hissed in pain at one of the movements.
Ceridwen ripped sections from another quilt and made a pathetic compress before Lekan could protest. She tightened it over his knee and rubbed her hands on her thighs, working rational thoughts back into her mind.
“They locked the doors?” she asked, more of herself than him.
Lekan adjusted the compress. “Raelyn left five guards for us, took the rest with her.” He paused, and Ceridwen knew what other piece of information flitted through his mind that he didn’t voice aloud.
She also took Simon’s head with her.
Ceridwen crawled to the doors at the back of the wagon and pressed on them. Sure enough, they held, so she fumbled around the edges for a weak point in the frame, or asplinter of wood she could pry free to replace the weapons they had been stripped of. She found nothing.
But the blankets and pillows—they could be tied together into something like rope, which could be used to choke unsuspecting soldiers when they opened the wagon doors. That would no doubt happen in the palace complex, where Raelyn would have many more than just five soldiers waiting to subdue her prisoners. Ceridwen could use one soldier as a hostage, keeping the satin rope tight around his windpipe until she and Lekan scrambled free.
But Raelyn still had control of the city. She was filled with Angra’s dark magic.
And she intended to murder Jesse and his children.
Ceridwen grabbed the nearest blanket and started tearing. Lekan shifted to lean more completely against the wall, his gaze hard on the ceiling in an effort to ignore his pain. He was too injured to be of any use in a fight. Ceridwen needed to get him to safety, then come back, and—what? Take down the entire Ventrallan army on her own? Surely someone in Rintiero was still loyal to Jesse and would help her save him and his children. She would have to find them—or Meira. Meira would help her.
Unless Raelyn had already killed her. The entire city could have bowed to Raelyn’s coup, and Jesse and his children could be dead, and every last trace of hope could have been snuffed out while Ceridwen sat helpless in a wagon.
Her hands stilled. The emptiness inside her whisperedthat she shouldn’t care so much what Raelyn did to Jesse. She had been pretending for four years that she didn’t care what Raelyn did to him—why should she start now?
But every other part of her screamed in protest. This wasn’t at all like it had been for those four years. This wasn’t just ignoring the fact that Raelyn would sleep with Jesse in the same bed in which Ceridwen herself had slept with him—this was ignoring the fact that Raelyn wouldkill him. And not just him, but his children, and Ceridwen didn’t care what had recently happened between herself and Jesse—she would not let his children die. Part of what had always made it so difficult to leave him was how much he loved his children. A man, aking, who crawled on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom just to make her squeal with laughter . . .
Ceridwen would free Jesse and his children. That would be the first step in this war—free the Ventrallan king. Find the Winterian queen. Regroup against Angra, and make him pay for daring to claim Summer—and for letting Raelyn kill Simon.
