Page 106 of Court of Winter

Power still spiraled around me as shocked whispers and shouts came from the crowd. I was out of control. I didn’t know what was happening, but fire and wind still swirled around me, bathing me in light and air that the prince seemed immune to. Or maybe it was purposefully cushioning him. I didn’t know.

“Nuwin, hold her,” the prince said, his expression savage as he handed me off to his brother.

Nuwin supported my weight as the prince flew to Vorl on the same beat. Rage contorted the crown prince’s features as he grabbed Vorl by his shirt and lifted him up. Prince Norivun’s affinity rose with a vengeance as a look of sheer terror covered my archon’s face.

“You dared hurt her?” The deadly calmness of Norivun’s words sent shivers down my spine, and the quietness of his question was more terrifying than any anger that could pour from his lips. “She’smine, and you touched her?”

“I didn’t! I would never—”

The prince slammed his head into Vorl, nearly knocking the archon out, and then his affinity was like death on wings. Vorl let out a torturous bellow as an answering throb of power came from my gut when Vorl’s head lolled back. The archon’s body seized. His eyes rolled white.

Something wispy rose from his body. Translucent and sheer.

Vorl’s body slackened in the prince’s grip as that shimmering shadow rose higher and higher.

Dying.

The archon was dying.

Prince Norivun was sucking his soul, his face cold, the deadly intent in his expression clear.

“No,” I whispered. My affinity shot out of me and latched onto that floating shadow, as though I’d somehow commanded it to do so. Vorl’s soul stopped. It hovered mid-air, and my conscience tugged between death and life.

I could let him go.

I could let the prince finish what he’d started.

But despite all that Vorl had done to me, despite all of his tormenting, bullying, and vindictive rage,thiswasn’t the answer. Punishment, yes, but not death. There had been too much death.

“No, my prince,” I croaked quietly as my throat ached.

The prince whipped toward me, just as my magic fully wrapped around Vorl’s soul. Phantom hands enclosed his departing spirit as an instinct awakened within me. It was the same sensation I’d sensed in High Liss when the prince had killed the shapeshifter and then when the guard had nearly died at my arrival to the castle.

This.This was what I could do. My affinity didn’t createorem. It created life. The prince was slightly wrong about my power. Only the gods could create naturalorem, but my life-giving affinity was able to replenish our land’s naturaloremwhile also giving life to plants and souls that were being taken to the divine realms. My affinity was the opposite of the prince’s momentous power.

I grabbed Vorl’s spirit and wrenched it from the air before slamming it back into the archon.

Vorl’s eyes opened wide as his mouth gaped in a sudden inhale. Shocked screams and muffled cries came from the crowd as the prince’s eyes widened in shock.

I staggered under the depth of magic that had just been pulled from me, but Nuwin supported me, holding me up.

The prince dropped Vorl as though he’d been burned. He stared at his hands, disbelief lining his features as the crowd erupted in a flurry of shouts and hissed comments.

“What is she?”

“What did she do?”

Their comments drifted toward me, but I barely heard them.

I swayed away from the maze, toward Vorl as he sat on the ground, breathing but unconscious. When I reached his side, the prince shifted closer to me.

“Ilara?” he said quietly, a tremor to his tone.

But then the magnitude of what I’d done stole all of the energy from me. It felt as though a veil descended over my eyes, and then the ground was rushing up to greet me.

A scream came from the crowd as a crescendo of fireworks exploded in the court’s finale.

The last thing I remembered was someone catching me before my head cracked onto the ice.

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