Page 47 of Frost Like Night
Oh, yes, murder was what they’d come for. A few had weapons on their belts, their hands taut around the hilts of swords. But under each of their left eyes a brand sat, their flesh burned into the grotesqueSthat proclaimed what they were. Summer’s property.
Ceridwen frowned. “The mess I made? Wasn’t it your queen who sold you into slavery in the first place?”
The lead man’s expression darkened. “Do not pretend to understand why aRhythmqueen would—”
Ceridwen lifted the seal to silence him. “I know the reason Giselle did what she did. She was the one who revealed your existence to me. She gave me her seal as confirmationof her new order—that you are to serve under me as we fight Angra.”
The soldier narrowed his eyes. No retort yet.
“We don’t have the numbers to stage an outright battle,” she continued, and motioned to Lekan. “But my leaders and I have begun altering the tactics we used to rescue slave caravans. We’re planning a small, direct attack while Angra is in Juli—”
The soldier laughed. “Juli? You expect us to risk our lives to reclaim Summer—for whom, exactly? Your brother is dead. Our queen revealed her plan to you, so you must know of her intentions, and if you expect us to retake Summer foryou, a Season royal—and one of the wrong gender, at that—you’re sadly mistaken.”
Jesse stayed quiet beside her, true to his word, but she felt him tense, and she couldn’t help but glance over at him. She wasn’t used to him in these situations—it had always been Raelyn or his mother who had overseen similar meetings in the past. But now he stood here, arms crossed, eyes spitting daggers in her defense.
Was she dreaming?
The Yakimian soldiers grunted in agreement with their leader, a few fists thrown in the air.
“Steady, Cerie,” Lekan murmured on her other side.
Ceridwen bit down on her tongue. Lekan was right—screaming at these men would do nothing. They wereYakimian; they would respond to reason and logic.Calmreason and logic.
Flame and heat, that went against everything her Summerian blood begged her to do.
“The Spring king has risen up as a threat not only to Winter this time—he threatens the world,” she started, her tone surprisingly level. “He has already taken Ventralli and Cordell, not to mention Winter and Summer. Summer is the closest and newest of his acquisitions, and the one that gives us the best chance of taking him down. My fighters know that kingdom better than Angra does. With your help, we can defeat Angra while he is there and, ultimately, keep him from adding Yakim to the list of kingdoms he’s subdued.”
The soldier took two quick steps forward and snatched the seal from Ceridwen’s hand. He looked at it for a moment and then turned to his men. “The seal is Yakim’s,” he announced, as if Ceridwen might have forged it. He swung back to her. “And we will defeat Angra—but not for you. This war will only be won if those skilled in warfare lead. You will let my men and me take charge, and when Angra is killed, it will be done by Yakim’s hand.”
Ceridwen’s calmness slipped away, a raging current sucking a boat downstream. “Absolutely not. My fighters and I are the ones who know Juli best, and I have far more experience in warfare than you.”
“And how was anything you did warfare?” the soldierreturned. “The only thing you did was the usual Season barbarism. You know nothing of strategy or else you would have realized my queen’s plot long ago. Now the threat facing us comes fromanother Season, and you expect me to let you lead the fight? That is the definition of pointless.”
Not even Lekan’s stern hiss could stop her. She lunged at the man, a hand’s width from his face, so incensed she thought smoke should be billowing out of her mouth.
“You will not conquer Summer. I promise you, Giselle’s plan will fail. I will never yield to that Rhythm bitch.”
The soldier reared back, fist wound, and would’ve blackened her eye—
If not for the hand that stopped him, grabbing the soldier’s wrist.
“You will not raise your hand to her.”
The confrontation with the Yakimians had drawn attention. Heads poked out of tents, people lingered on the streets that led from the perimeter. But Jesse ignored them, his assertiveness making Ceridwen’s mouth drop open.
Not a single speck of doubt emanated from anywhere in his posture. Even his mask did nothing to lessen the intensity of his glare.
He released the man. “I have seen the evil that started this war,” Jesse told the soldier. “I watched Angra tear Ventralli apart. I know what it will take to defeat him—it will take leaders like Ceridwen, who have proven their resilience against oppression. She will stop at nothing to make theworld a safe place foreveryone, and someone like that is exactly who you want leading us. This war will not care if we are Rhythm or Season. It will affect us all, and so we must face it with a mind to save and protect equally.”
Jesse shifted to Ceridwen and smiled at her.
“The world is changing.” Jesse still spoke to the soldier, but his eyes remained on hers. “We cannot deal with problems as we have in the past, or we will always end up where we started.”
The soldier shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when a Rhythm king would defend a Season royal.”
Me neither,thought Ceridwen.
Jesse nodded. “That’s only the first of the wonders that will come.”
