Page 113 of Realm of Wind and Vines
My heart pounds, but I say it out loud anyway as I try to combat the feeling of suddenly being incredibly pressed for time. “She’s looking for information about what happened to the Gold Clan. What else would she be doing in a library?”
“Yeah,” Draven agrees. “We need to get going.”
I nod. Spinning the knife in my hand, I slit Kil’s throat.
Across the room, Draven does the same to Sharptail.
The moment Draven cuts his throat, my magic detaches from his chest and that warm sparkling feeling of pleasure disappears. I suck in a shuddering breath at the cold harshness that replaces it, but the sound is thankfully drowned out by the crack of lightning.
Gordon and the tavern keeper drag in synchronized gasps, but they’re cut off when white bolts of lightning hit them in the chest. They tense up and then hit the floor. Dead.
I blink hard a couple of times, still trying to push aside that jarring feeling when the pleasant effects of my magic disappeared. My mind urges me to connect my magic again. Just for a little while. To make the transition smoother. I manage to suppress the urge with great effort. We have a job to do.
“Let’s go,” I say, more to get my own head back in the game rather than to Draven, while wiping off my knife and sliding it back in my thigh holster.
Draven does the same with his blade before shouldering the door open. Once we’re outside, he pulls out a pair of lockpicks and locks the door behind us to prevent anyone from going inside and seeing the dead people on the floor. No prying eyes watch him as he finishes his task.
Since it was nighttime when Galen and the others scouted outthis place last night, it was impossible to know if this street would be busy now during daytime. Thankfully, it’s as deserted now as it was yesterday. Only silent stone houses watch us as Draven and I pull up the hoods of our cloaks again and start jogging down the street.
Though, the reason for the strange emptiness on a lot of streets in this city is quite sinister. I realized it when we first arrived. There are no humans in Frostfell anymore.
I have no idea what happened after I lit the spark of the human rebellion here last year, but since the Icehearts still control the city, the humans obviously didn’t win. And now, there are no humans at all in this city. I don’t know if that means that the Icehearts executed them all or if they just banished them.
And I simply cannot bring myself to care. I know that I am partly responsible for whatever happened to them. But I don’t feel bad about it. I’m so done feeling bad about doing what needs to be done. So I push the thought of it out of my mind and instead focus on our more pressing problem. Our incredibly time-sensitive problem.
“If Lavendera finds the Gold Clan…” I begin while we hurry towards our rendezvous point. “If the Icehearts get the Gold Clan, and then the Green Clan too, it’s over.”
“I know. We need to finish this before she succeeds.”
My heart pounds as I feel that sudden time limit hit me. We’ve made a plan, and we always wanted to execute it as fast as possible, but now that unexpected stress of fighting against the clock is making me jittery.
I have no idea what is going on inside Lavendera’s head most of the time, but what I do know is that she is smart. Dangerously smart. She managed to fool not just me, but every single contestant in the Atonement Trials, into thinking that she was one of us. And even afterwards in the Ice Palace, she managed to trick me into trusting her and caring about her and sharing my plans of escape with her. And all the while, she was workingundercover for the Icehearts. Despite being halfway insane, she is also viciously intelligent.
If she has been locked in that library for the past two days with the sole task of finding out what happened to the Gold Clan, there is no telling how much she might have already pieced together. So we need to get her out of there. Right now. Before she gives the Icehearts the key to winning this war.
Disbelief ripples through me, and I even shake my head at the absurdity of it all, as Draven and I jog the final streets down to our meeting spot. I knew that Lavendera was an important player in this game, but I never expected that that crazy girl would end up being the key to the whole thing.
If we get Lavendera, we will take away the Icehearts’ ability to use dragon steel, which means that we will be able to get Rin Tanaka on our side. And once we have her on our side, we will have half of the other clans on our side as well. Including the all-important Green Clan, who might even be able to tell us how the partnership between dragon shifters and Seelie fae works. It will also get us the dryads, who are both terrifyingly powerful and also connected to the entire continent.
And all of it comes down to one certifiably insane fae woman who is blindly loyal to our enemies.
How the hell are we going to get this done in time?
“Do you have a location?” Galen calls as Draven and I draw closer to our prearranged meeting point.
Alistair is casting worried glances up and down the street while Lyra is practically bouncing on her feet in anticipation. Orion and Isera are nowhere to be seen.
“Yes,” Draven replies as we run the final few steps and skid to a halt before them. “She’s been locked in a library for the past few days.”
“Searching for the Gold Clan, we think,” I finish with a grimace.
“Shit,” Galen curses. “Where?”
“That building with the green door halfway between the Silver Clan barracks and the palace,” Draven says. “I was never stationed there myself, for obvious reasons, so I don’t know what the security is like around the building. Do you?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Lyra?” Draven asks.
