Page 123 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
“Hold on!” Nadya’s voice broke the stillness. “Our warriors notch them on the inside.”
“That’s why this crater has never had a Huntress,” I said with all the courage I didn’t feel–what I did feel was Geryll’s attention quickly crumbling back into doubt. “And why your warriors can’t do what I do.”
Nadya folded her arms in front of her chest. “They can all hit those targets, just like you.”
She truly was a handful, wasn’t she? I liked that–I’d been a handful, too. But I didn’t envy the Commander having to keep her in check during her rebellious years. If Nadya had been even half as mouthy as me, she’d gotten herself into some trouble.
A corner of my lips ticked upward, for what felt like the first time in forever. “Stand between me and the target.”
Nadya’s eyes widened. “It was just a remark, you can’t shoot me dead for it.”
“I won’t shoot you.” My smirk widened as my hand grasped the bow tighter; it was feeling more and more likeminewith each passing day, even if I’d been using it to get out all of my frustrations about the man who’d gifted it to me. “The Commander told you I wouldn’t harm you, yes?”
Nadya and Geryll nodded slowly.
Apprehensively.
Like they still only saw The Huntress, despite the Commander’s words.
When Nadya still hadn’t moved, I shrugged. “Fine, if you’re scared, I can demonstrate–”
“Solkar’s Reach warriors areneverscared.”
As Nadya marched with a vengeance through the snow and posted herself and her attitude a few dozen yards in front of my arrow, I hid my face in the hood as my mind raced like it had been trained to all my life.
Solkar’s Reach.
Solkar was one of their gods, Mrs. Thornbrew had said. Xamor, the merciless god of war and death, was the main deity in bloody Malhaven, but all Clans had their own particular divinities to answer to. Lunara, the powerful goddess of the moon and sea, watched over Aquila, drawing her arrows to pierce the skies to shower us with rain.
Solkar’s Reach was either the name of a local guild…or this entire maddening crater.
I squirreled that information away before I caught myself–so what if I knew the name of the crater? It wasn’t like I was plotting some grand scheme where it was actually useful.
I gritted my teeth and raised my head back up. After a lifetime of stringing pieces together to create solutions forproblems before they even hatched, my mind still searched for cues.
“Did you just tell me to move just so you could order me around?” Nadya raised her brow at me.
“See? Smart always wins,” I mouthed to Geryll before taking a determined step forward. “Notching your arrow on the outside gives you more flexibility. I saw a stranger on horseback doing it once, tried it, and never looked back.”
“Archers stay in one place,” Nadya said, with much less confidence this time.
“Not if they’re any good. A battle can get ugly fast.” A massacre even more so. “It works best if you also have an archer’s ring, but my Fangloop is gathering dust in my room as we speak.”
If my bedroom hadn’t been ransacked and all my possessions either burned or tossed in the sea, while Silas cackled on the sidelines.
“And even if they stay in one place–” I raised my bow and aimed my arrow straight at Nadya’s frowning face. “–they have another trick they can use.”
I inhaled long and hard. I hadn’t practiced this shot in ages, but it always shut people up when I needed to.
My hand pulled back the arrow to the point where the string almost snapped.
Nadya took a step back.
“Don’t move,” I said with a grin, pointed the arrow just shy of her shoulder, and released it.
The string snapped with a satisfying sting. The arrow raced through the air right in front of Nadya’s suddenly terrified eyes. But instead of slashing her forehead, it curved around her, before embedding itself straight in the middle of the target. The thump wasn’t as powerful, but the effect was strong.
“Wicked,” Geryll breathed out.
