Page 89 of Frost Like Night
How much worse will it get?
“You could leave,” Sir says, his low voice rumbling up my arms. I flinch, then hear him. What? “But you won’t, because you’re stronger than even the worst thing that could happen, and that makes you undefeatable.”
Panting, I look up at him, my eyes shifting over his features like I haven’t seen him in months. Maybe I haven’t—all the time I spent being angry with him never let me see how much this has changed him, too. Impossibly, the Sir I see now looks . . . soft. Comforting. And his words soothe the fire in my heart, one cold burst of air in the inferno of my grief.
He releases his hold on my arms as if to prove his point, that I can stand on my own. He steps to the side, clearing the way to Mather.
I swallow a shuddering breath. Nikoletta is helping Conall place Nessa’s body with the others who died, while some of the Thaw now lift and carry Phil’s body there too. Mather stays on the ground, hands over his face, back hunched. The whole area hums with sorrow, shock that can’t be soothed.
Before today, this war was in our control. Some small part of it, at least. Now the looks on everyone’s faces—they’re afraid.
Angra found us. Whatever safety we thought we had is a lie.
I drop to my knees beside Mather and curl around him,my face in his neck, my arms pulling him into me. He surrenders willingly. I think he apologizes, but I don’t say anything.
This is the future I will have, if I keep moving forward. Nothing but tears and blood and pain, with the eventual hope of happiness—for everyone else.Is it worth it?
The question is covered in the blood I’ve seen, broken beneath the pain I feel. But I ask it nonetheless, my eyes squishing shut on fresh tears as Mather adjusts his arms on me.
My magic responds.
Yes.
In Autumn, the kingdom of endless trees and dry leaves, they have to take the bodies to a clearing wide and empty enough so as not to spread the flames beyond the dead. Which means properly burning all the bodies would take at least a day of travel that the army doesn’t have.
So we leave Nessa’s body with the eight others who fell during the attack. Nikoletta promises me she will be given an honorable funeral, one fit for Autumnian royalty.
And I will give her an honorable future,I think.Her memory will live on in a world free from Angra.
Hours later, we leave.
Those who won’t join us at the final battle site gather on the eastern edge of camp to see us off. Nikoletta and Shazi; Jesse and his children; Kaleo and Amelie; all theAutumnians, Winterians, Summerians, and Yakimians who can’t fight along with a small cluster of soldiers who will remain to protect them.
But since Phil revealed this location to the Cordellans stationed in Oktuber, the camp will move too, for a new, safer location—only after we have gone. We’ve seen now, more than ever, the ruthlessness of Angra’s magic. Should any of us fall to the Decay and have knowledge of the camp’s new position . . . It’s better we don’t know where they are. We’ll find them when it’s over.
I wince at my own thought.
Casparwill find them when it’s over. And Ceridwen. And Mather, and Sir, and everyone else who will survive this.
That’s the only part of our plan that has changed now. The rest—march to the valley, reveal our location to Angra, and wait for the final battle to begin—stays the same.
It doesn’t feel like it should, though. Nessa’s death, Phil’s betrayal, the shattering of our sense of security—it all feels like our lives should be irrevocably rocked by this.
I turn in my horse’s saddle where I sit at the edge of camp. The space before me can’t exactly be called a clearing, but the trees are thin enough to allow our army to gather in a mostly cohesive formation. The edge of the camp is lined with those bidding farewell, weeping families who cling to soldiers and whisper words of encouragement.
Conall stands in that group not far from me, his hands folded behind his back. He’s still staying here, whether tofulfill my final order or because, unlike me, he cannot bear to not say farewell to his sister. He didn’t get to mourn Garrigan either.
He’s the only one left.
He meets my eyes as if he can sense what I’m thinking, or maybe he’s thinking the same thing—it shouldn’t be me.
I pull away from him, unable to hold his gaze without tears rushing back in. But when I look ahead, at the departing soldiers who fan out into the forest as they say their good-byes, I see the same emotion. Regret capped by mourning for the fate we’re marching toward.
My eyes flit of their own volition to Sir. He sits on a horse beside Henn and Dendera, embodying the presence I knew so well growing up—a general marching to war.
Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.
Before, we knew the danger Angra presented to the world, but we still thought, foolishly, that we would be safe until we chose to march into it. Now I see, we all see, the truth of this war, how it will find us no matter where we hide or how safe we think we are.
