Page 60 of Realm of Wind and Vines
Galen and Lyra, who are hiding in the other room just inside the open doorway behind us, flip their levers.
A white stone wall slams down from the ceiling, cutting the room in half and separating the Icehearts from the rest of us.
I smile. Since the levers were well hidden in the walls, and there was nothing visible in the ceiling either, none of us knew that this very convenient contraption existed. No one except Orion, who apparently has a similar mechanism in his owncastle. It looks like the Seelie and Unseelie Courts used to share knowledge and ideas before we became rivals.
The moment that the wall hits the floor, Gremar whips around in shock.
But the rest of us have known what to do since the moment Draven said the wordfour, so we are already moving. Next to me, Isera summons a mass of ice and slams it straight into Gremar, pinning him to the wall and trapping him there. Orion yanks open a door behind him and darts into it while Draven runs into the room where Galen and Lyra are waiting. Windows are slammed open inside that room.
Yanking out a piece of steel, I sprint towards where Isera is keeping Gremar trapped. Alistair runs towards me from the other side.
Deafening roars echo across the palace grounds outside as Draven, Lyra, and Galen jump out of the windows and shift into dragons. Massive black bodies are briefly visible on the grass outside before they lurch into the air.
“I will kill you for this, you filthy fae bitch,” Gremar snarls while he starts trying to melt Isera’s ice with his lava magic. “And then I’ll?—”
She yanks the ice up over his mouth.
Dark red lava bubbles under the thick ice, and water runs down it as it starts to melt. Gritting her teeth, Isera keeps building the ice up over and over again.
Alistair and I skid to a halt in front of Gremar. While still pouring ice magic over his body, Isera suddenly removes the block of ice that was trapping his wrist.
I shove the piece of dragon steel against the naked skin of his wrist, right below the edge of his armor. Gremar’s eyes widen in shock, and his lava magic falters. Not hesitating a second, Alistair summons his fire magic and rapidly heats the metal.
A hiss rips from my lips, and I almost drop the piece of dragon steel.
“Shit, sorry,” Alistair blurts out, and grabs the metal from my fingers. “I forgot that you can feel the heat too.”
Since he is immune to the effects of his own fire magic, he doesn’t get burned when he holds the searing piece of dragon steel. Gremar thrashes against the ice bonds, and if Isera wasn’t silencing him with ice, I’m pretty sure that he would be screaming.
Alistair awkwardly bends the metal rod with only one hand while keeping a blue flame in his other and using it to heat up the material. At last, he manages to get the two ends together so that he can weld them together.
The moment it’s done, Isera yanks down the ice over Gremar’s wrist again to cool down the metal. A hissing sound fills the room as the cool ice meets the hot dragon steel.
Outside the walls, dragons roar as Bane and Jessina fight Draven and the others. The noise is so loud that the windows around us rattle in their frames.
“Go!” I tell Alistair. “Help them. We’ve got it from here.”
“See you on the other side,” he replies, and then whirls around and sprints into the other room.
A moment later, he leaps out the window and onto the grass outside.
Fire roars into the sky in a massive torrent.
I channel my magic and shove it straight into that piece of dragon steel. “Don’t fight back.”
Gremar immediately stops moving.
I suck in a sharp breath. This was the only part of the plan that we couldn’t really test beforehand, so I was worried that it wouldn’t work. That I would mess this up and ruin it for everyone. But it worked. Goddess above, it worked.
My heart beats hard in my chest as I stare at Gremar. I’m bending him to my will with dragon steel. The mere thought of it should horrify me. But it doesn’t. This is the man who has tormented and punished us all my life. The man who has killedand hurt and humiliated any fae who dared to step out of line. And now, I holdhislife in the palm of my hand.
Vicious revenge burns inside my soul, adding more fuel to the wildfire of rage and hatred that I let loose inside me when we left the Unseelie Court.
A few steps away, Isera lets her ice magic fade out and instead walks into the room with the levers.
Gremar only stands there, glaring at me with murderous eyes.
“You are not allowed to take off the dragon steel, and you are not allowed to tell or show anyone that you are wearing dragon steel,” I declare. “You are not allowed to tell anyone what we did to you in this room. And you are not allowed to hurt me, Isera, Alistair, Draven, Galen, Lyra, or Orion.”
