Shouts of consternation and yelps of fear bounce between them. They take a few straining steps in one direction, then in the other, squinting against the shimmering snow.
It’s perfect, until some jerk I can’t see starts hollering directions from another vantage point. “Kirkland, fifty degrees to your left then straight ahead. Alverez, you’re going the right way now, just keep at it!”
The soldiers start making progress toward the jets again. Damn it.
I grit my teeth. I need a strategy that’ll stop them in their tracks without literally freezing them in place.
With a wave of my arm, I send walls of solid ice shooting up around the soldiers. For good measure, I surround the jets too, walling them off from their prospective pilots.
That wuss of a naiad who Peri befriended, the one we always called “the Drip,” sees what I’m doing—and it turns out she’s not any more of a wuss than Peri is. Which maybe I should have expected at this point.
Setting her face with concentration, Fen extends her hands and tosses out not just drips but a whole torrent of water that rises against my walls. Catching on to her intent, I freeze the deluge as soon as it rushes into place, making my walls twice as thick.
The naiad flashes a grin at me, and a flicker of friendly warmth kindles in my chest despite all the wintery power I’m tossing around.
This is how I dreamed about my life being, isn’t it? Supporting my fellow shadowkind, working together with them to create a place in this world we’d all be happy in.
Okay, so I didn’t dream about pursuing that goal by hemming in soldiers on a military base, but it’s progress all the same.
There are shadowkind who’ll look to me for an example of what to do. Shadowkind who’ll jump to help me the second I ask. That’s all I really need to see my goals through, however exactly the safe haven I pictured comes into existence in the end.
I enjoy that sense of satisfaction for about five seconds before everything goes to hell again.
The soldier pilots have rifles too. A blare of gunfire rings out, and my icy walls start to crack.
Fuck.
Scowling, I push even more ice in to fill the cracks. Fen sloshes out more water for me to freeze, but her arms tremble as if she’s on the verge of running dry. I’m not sure she’s ever pushed her powers even this far before.
It’s not enough. More cracks spider through the glistening walls with every passing moment and every new blast. Shards start to fragment off.
Any second now, my prison will shatter completely.
Anger twists inside me, and for an instant all I can see is those razor-sharp shards whipping around in the wind and spearing the assholes straight through. Tearing them apart like the men in the woods did to my fae mentor all those years ago. Splashing blood and gristle all across the icy yard.
They’d deserve it, wouldn’t they? They want to blow up not just the rift but everything that’s come out of it, including us.
I suck in a breath, and a ball of guilt sinks in my gut like a stone.
No.
I know that isn’t the right way—not just because Peri would be upset, but because I’ve seen how hanging on to resentment ruins everything.
I almost lost her, the best thing I’ve ever had in my life, because I couldn’t see past the animosity that was eating away at me.
How much more awful will humans get if this situation devolves into a real war?
As the soldiers pummel the frozen walls, breaking off whole chunks now, I yank my gaze to the jets.
They’re the real problem. If they can’t get in the air, they can’t drop any bombs.
And no one’s going to get as upset about broken planes as they will about broken skulls.
My awareness of our environment prickles with an uneasy tremor. The materials that make up those aircraft started with natural sources, but they’ve been warped to human ends.
All the same… The fuel that fills the tank deep inside the steel-and-aluminum shell is a liquid like any other.
Every liquid has a freezing point.
