Page 28 of A Sword of Ice
She didn’t, but she didn’t know how to say that, so she just gestured at the empty space beside her. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
For a moment she thought he’d already fallen asleep, but she felt the graze of his hand against her wrist.
“Magic,” he grumbled.
She tilted her head in his direction. “What?”
“Next time you fight him use magic, too. He knows you’ve been holding back. That’s why he wins. Use skillandmagic and you’ll best him.”
Huh. She hadn’t even realized she’d done that. Perhaps because when she’d started, she’d separated the different types of training and had never thought to meld the two together.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Ryker didn’t reply.
He was already asleep.
* * *
Sometime later,Weylyn’s urgent whispers woke them up. Shula jumped to her feet before her eyes were even fully opened, her hand gripping the hilt of her sword and unsheathing it.
When she opened her eyes, it was to find the others had done the same.
Weylyn peeked out at the window and gestured that they come look. Reluctantly, quietly, they went. It was then that Shula felt a rumbling on the ground, like the very earth was moving.
She held her breath as she looked outside to where Weylyn was gesturing, only to find a human soldier in the building across from them, gluing long strips of parchment, one after the other, onto the walls.
They were posters Shula had come to recognize almost immediately. She’d seen them often enough around other cities. Most recently, she’d seen one with the image of her own face on it.
Like the ones she was looking at now.
Her face and Valerio’s.
“Fuck,” she hissed.
“Listen,” Weylyn ordered.
Her ears perked up.
The sun had already risen, though the sky seemed perpetually gray. Even with the snow covering the ground to quiet footfalls, there was no mistaking what the rumbling sensation was, or who had caused it.
She’d felt this kind of thing before.
Her eyes cut to Valerio’s.
“Now we know why your instinct led us here first,” the prince said. “The humans, they’re marching to Porir.”
15
Duty to the Fae
“This is a bad idea.” Clay shuffled his feet in the rising snow. His breath puffed out in thick clouds.
Julius didn’t know how the asshole managed to look so fuckingprettyall the time. Nose red with the cold, the wind blew his hair against his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were bright in all the grayness surrounding them.
“You scared?” Julius taunted, unable to help himself. He liked fucking with Clay because he was his best friend, and Julius knew he could take anything he threw his way.
They’d been friends for years, before the wars that decimated Tir na Faie had depleted their numbers and changed their world forever. When Clay had still been a pretty little royal, stuck under his parents’ thumb, whoring his way through the Sapphire Court out of boredom, and Julius had been a soldier in the court’s ranks.
