He lunged toward her, only for the ice beneath his feet to vanish. His shadows flared, turning to claws, keeping him grounded. She surrounded herself in flurries, rings of snow and wind and frost spinning around her, like she was a planet. Then she sent that ball of energy toward him, and his shadows barely blocked it.
“This reminds you of the Algid, doesn’t it?” she said, through the roaring of the wind.
He frowned. How did she know about the Algid?
“You took me there,” she said, as if she could read his thoughts. The mountain crumbled beneath her, and she leapt into the air, forced to land closer to him. She shifted her stance, and water wrapped around him, freezing, pulling him toward her. He portaled out of it, and the ice fell, shattering against the snow. He appeared right behind her, but she was already turning, as if she anticipated where he would materialize. Their powers met once more. “You showed me the maze. You told me you used to hide there as a boy. Hoping never to be found.”
His eyes narrowed as his shadows surged forward, sending her feet sliding back across the peak. Why would he have ever told her that? Her? AWildling? He stepped closer. Closer. Leading her to the edge. “You must have done a good job tricking me then.”
She shook her head. “You told me about your sister,” she said.
Those words made him stumble. That was impossible. There wasno chancehe had told her about Laila. He hadn’t told almostanyoneabout her. About...what he had done. He had spent centuries fighting hard not to think about it, burying it in the back of his mind.
“Liar,” he growled, though how would she know about his sister, then? Had she somehow gotten into his mind?
Or...had Oro told her? Of course. He had been foolish enough to trust the Sunling with that information in the few years when they had been friends.
“Yes, I am a liar,” she said, her blue-tinted, white-hot flames crackling against his shadows. “But not about this.”
The mountain between them crumbled away, and his hold on his shadows slipped. She saw the opening and took it. But instead of delivering a killing shot, she flew forward, right at him, knocking him onto his back. They slid against compact snow, and she was atop him again, pinning him down with her power. Freezing his shadows. His chest rose and fell against hers, her breath hot against his face, and he was confused by the chill that snaked down his spine.
She roughly removed the dagger that was still sticking out of his stomach from when she stabbed him in the oasis. He jolted from the pain and braced for another blow—maybe she’d slit his throat this time—but instead, like a smothered scream, the pain settled.
She could have killed him, right then and there. But instead....she was healing him.
And that...that, he couldn’t explain. Her eyes never left his. She must have seen his confusion there, because she smiled softly. “You showed me the licorice store,” she whispered, her words coming out in clouds. Her long brown hair whipped in the wind against her cheeks, made pink from the cold. The snow was thick, whirling around them both, and it was almost like they were the only two people in this broken world. “You gave me hot chocolate when I was injured.” Her eyes roamedhis face, searching for something. “You took twelve arrows through the chest for me. You...you gave yourlifefor me.”
He shook his head, vehemently. “I would never do that,” he spat, as his skin fully stitching together beneath her touch.
Her smile was sad. “You did it for me.”
The moment his wound was healed, he closed his fist. She gasped, clutching her throat, as his shadows wrapped around her windpipe, crushing it. She was lifted off him, into the air. With more distance between them, he could finally breathe.
“Then I was a fool who deserved to die. I’m glad I don’t remember,” he said, rising. She fought hard against his hold, her expression twisted in rage. Her feet kicking wildly. He almost felt disappointed that a fire like hers would be smothered. He hadn’t had a worthy opponent in centuries. Perhaps, never. It had been thrilling, dueling someone as skilled as she was.
He frowned at those thoughts.Nothingabout her was worth praising. He went to snap her neck to end her for good, but a blizzard swept them both off the mountain, right into another storm portal.
They landed in a forest. The remnants of one, at least.
He heard the Wildling fighting for breath. Good. It would be easy to kill her now. He was relieved to almost be free of whatever curse she had put upon him. She was clearly dangerous—Cronan was right.
He took a step toward that gasping, choking sound—and the breath shot out of his lungs as he was launched through the forest. All those twisted, gnarled trees...they were hovering in the air, their roots ripped from the soil. And she was standing in the center of them all. Blood dripped from her nose. Her eyes narrowed in concentration.
She was using emotions as power.
Fine. Grim dropped the vise around his own.
His power surged, fed by the pain and regret of his past, of his worst mistakes. His long-buried memories.
But without that wall up, new emotions came to the surface too—like his curiosity. All his thoughts turned to this woman who had uprootedan entire fucking forest. Who was she?
Her eyes seemed to glow with power as she forced those trees together, forming a massive blade that she hurled right at him. She seemed to know that compacting her power would make it more likely to break through his shield of shadows.
Fascinating. As he watched the tree-spun blade approach, Grim almost let it take him down. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die, at the mercy of the universe’s most intriguing woman.
Then he turned that thought to ash. She was his enemy. She had been proving everything Cronan had said right.
Grim transformed himself into shadows, the roar of the hundred compressed trees passing through his body. When it crashed behind him in a ground-shuddering thud, and she was temporarily spent, he flew toward her, knocking her down. With her pinned, he reached for his sharpened shades to skewer them through her chest.
