A few? I stare at the rows of immaculately frozen people, monsters, and ravens gleaming in the cold sunlight. Small piles of powdery snow gathered atop the unmoving displays.
My gaze lands on a frozen winged, tailed incubus nearby. When a shiver of familiar, telling apprehension rolls over my spine, I raise my eyebrows.
“Are they all…alive?”
Everett nods, looking like he doesn’t want to talk about this. “Most of them deserved it. Some of them will be kept like this until they can stand trial, once a judicial government of some kind is formed again. Others are just…decorations. Until I decide otherwise.”
How cruel.
When he sees me smirking at him, he sighs. “I know, it’s really fucking creepy.”
He says that like it’s a bad thing. I stroll through some statues before noticing a corner of this courtyard is filled with misshapen frozen spheres.
"What's over there?"
Everett adjusts his coat sleeve a few times, grimacing. "Crypt's contributions from before he went missing.”
I walk closer and pause when I realize they're all…heads. Disembodied heads, dropped carelessly to the cobblestones and left to freeze, including the skull of the lich who scarred Everett during battle.
As in, the one I told Crypt to bring to me. He didn’t let that go.
Aww.
"Of course, you're smiling," Everett sighs.
"From where I'm standing—namely, in the living frozen collection of anyone who even mildly pissed you off while I was gone—you have no room to judge."
“She has a fair point,” Silas’s voice agrees from behind us.
My pulse spikes. I turn, a smile breaking across my face when I see my blood fae necromancer dressed in a sharp winter coat and an amulet made from my blood peeking out from under a red scarf.
He’s been cleaned up, but he’s still not okay. I don’t miss that his red eyes flick between all the frozen figures before he takes a step back. He flinches and swats at something that doesn’t exist before trying to focus on me again. The shadows of dark circles under his eyes and his more prominent cheekbones and thinner build remind me that he’s been slightly emaciated thanks to his self-imprisonment.
Still, he’s finally outside. Progress is fucking progress. I’ll take it.
“Is the amulet helping?” I check.
“I would not have chance threat left wrong you.” Silas’s words slur at the end. He flinches before trying again, except fae creeps in. When I still can’t figure out what he’s trying to say, he takes a centering breath and finally manages, “If I felt I was a significant threat to you, I would have stayed away longer.”
“Third time’s the charm,” Everett grumbles.
Here we go.
These legacies love being assholes to each other, as if they haven’t gone to extra lengths to help each other in secret in the past. They annoy the hell out of each other to disguise how much they care.
Silas gives the elemental a withering once-over. “Is it safe for you to stand so close to Maven, or will you freeze her like you have everything else?”
“It’s safe,” I cut in decisively, getting ahead of more bickering.
Luckily, Asher Douglas picks that moment to join us in the courtyard. He says something quietly to Everett, who is testyabout leaving my side, but goes off to ensure everything will run smoothly when we leave the stronghold.
I’ve been aching to see Silas again. I step toward my fae, wanting to be closer and smell the spiced bourbon scent always lingering on him.
But he takes a step back, swatting at nothing again as his blood red irises remain trained on me. “Only trust me as far as you can throw me,thanafluir.”
Again, he’s calling me Death Blossom. I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it.
Not that I mind that nickname.
