Page 104 of A Sword of Ice
The blade was centimeters from her face, the iron singeing the skin at her cheek.
For a moment, everything felt hopeless. Like this was the end. A finality lived in every inch he swallowed between them. She wouldn’t find her sister or liberate the Fae from the cages they found themselves in. She wouldn’t fulfill the will of Mana because she found herself staring down at the last fragile moments of her life.
This was where it all ended.
Where Mana would take her soul and she would be reunited with her family once again.
As soon as the thought spread through her mind, something else ripped through it in harsher increments. Louder. Demanding. Pulsing. A feeling she was intimately familiar with. A whisper of magic, of Mana.
One that told her not to give up.
Because there was still so much more she had to accomplish.
Magic exploded, her sword shattering between them. A flurry of snow and ice and sparks clouded between her and the human, and it rippled through her veins. It was a power unlike anything she’d ever felt before, born of her need to survive.
She opened her eyes just as the human’s sword swung a second time. Only now, she wasn’t afraid when it came crashing down against her skin…
Only to shatter in a thousand pieces.
The iron blew apart the moment it connected to her body. A body that glowed the same blue as her ice. Iona’s skin hardened, became a scintillating, indestructible force around her. A statue of blue, she rose to her full height. Her skin glowed, her magic becoming a force to be reckoned with. Like Shula’s fire against iron, she became impervious to it. Mana evolving within her, born from a need to protect.
Her sister needed her.
TheFaeneeded her.
And she would help save them all.
The human stumbled away from her new form, the acrid scent of his fear piercing through the air, rising above smoke, burnt flesh, and death. It only grew more prominent each step she took towards him. The reflective surface of her skin shone in his eyes beneath his helm.
She made a terrifying image. Like something out of legends. Like a goddess.
Like Mana given form.
He didn’t fight back as she stepped in front of him. Like he knew it was useless to even make that attempt. And it was. Because Iona wasn’t going to let him walk away alive.
She pressed her palm against his chest, raking her nails across his armor and willed her magic forth. The tips of her nails became knives that pierced through the metal, killing the human almost instantly.
Blood slid against her icy fingers and spread down her arm. She pulled away, her hand the only thing keeping him upright, and as soon as she stepped away, his body crumbled to the ground.
She didn’t spare his body another glance and turned. Her purpose pushing her feet forward. Dozens of doors spread across the camp. Rooms, whose blueprints she’d studied as easily as she studied the webs on her ceiling. Just another gift from George.
As if her mysterious Fae friend had prepared her exactly for this moment in time.
As if he knew she would use her gift to break down the bars of these prisons.
While the battle continued behind her, she ran towards the vaulted jail of her people. Her foot lifted and connected to the iron. With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she dented it and tore it off its hinges.
She stepped into the room. Darkness greeted her from within. Slivers of light crawled across the ground in skinny beams that did nothing to illuminate the despair within the bowels of the cage. The stench of feces, piss, and vomit penetrated her nose, and inside, rail thin, malnourished bodies huddling together in a corner?
Fae.
Their frightened shouts reached her ears, dying into whimpers as they took in the sight of her. The glow of her skin illuminated their expressions. Fear, haggard and starving, their eyes wide, the skin pressing in a thin layer against their skulls. They were nothing but skeletal figures leaning against death.
And beneath all that despair and terror, hope.
She released a breath and with it, the powerful magic enveloping her. It sucked back in her body, rivers of glittering blue through her blood until the ice settled back into that special place beside her soul.
A cold breath clouded in front of her, disappearing as she stepped forward, holding her hands in front of her to appear as nonthreatening as possible.
