Page 109 of Clash of Storms
Grabbing a fistful of Andri's hair, Roar kicked his feet out from under him and put a knife to his throat.
"Whatever they want of you," Andri rasped, "don't do it."
"We want nothing more than for your brother to put up his steel." Stellan wore smugness like a mantle.
He thought he'd won.
Sirius glanced down, considering the blades in his hands. Putting up his steel cost him little.
He hadn't come here to die, though he'd known it was a possibility. No, he'd come here to kill.
Sirius drove both blades into the marble with pure force. They quivered as he stepped back, holding his hands up with a smile as sharp as the edges of his swords.
"Now what?" he mocked.
His father faced him, hands clasped behind his back.
"I am unarmed," he told Stellan, and their eyes met.
His father alone was aware of the extent of his powers.
It was simply a matter of reaching out with his senses, and letting the world around him dim.
The world fell dark as though a veil of shadows had been drawn over his eyes. The mortal world slipped away, thedrekiin the room suddenly shimmering. Veins of violent gold shimmered through their bodies, their hearts pulsing in their chests as though he'd found the motherlode.
A chill ran through him as he reached out, wrapping his magic through their veins. The male beside Stellan shifted uneasily as if he could sense it.
"If you make a single move, Roar will cut his throat," Stellan said.
"If he cuts his throat, you're all dead," Sirius replied coldly. Sweat beaded on his temples. The longer he dragged this out, the harder it would be to hold them all. He'd never taken sixteen hearts at once. Could he do it?
"He's bluffing," Roar called. "You think I won't kill him?"
Stellan held up an abrupt hand, his face tight with crystalline lines of strain. "Don't move a muscle, Roar."
"Shall you tell him, or shall I?" Sirius let the frost begin to creep through his father's veins, twining threads of it around Stellan's heart. He sensed Roar behind him, and began the slow laborious process of setting his trap.
A stealthy spider web of pure frost laced through their veins.
Poison of bitter cold, twining throughdrekiflesh like thorns biting deep.
"Tell me what?" Roar demanded.
"All it will take is a snap of my fingers," he whispered, starting to shake with the weight of it all. Couldn't hold it... much longer. "And you're both dead. Can't you feel it? Father can."
Cold whispered through them all. The first faint chill of a winter's morning, painting icy shards across a windowpane.
"Stellan," the queen warned.
"What do you want?" Stellan stepped off the dais, and Sirius almost breathed a sigh of relief as his father strode to meet him.
"My life for Andri's," he said. "That was the price we agreed upon."
Stellan's hand slid to the hilt of his sword, fury obliterating his expression. "Then I shall take it."
"What?" Andri's voice rang through the chamber and the sounds of a scuffle echoed behind him. "Sirius, what did you do?Father?Damn it, let go of me!"
Steel whined as it cleared his father's scabbard. Sirius took a half step back, but he didn't dare remove his threads. Instead he wound them around his father's heart, snaking them into a trap that would snap shut if anyone dared move against him.
