Corbin, one of my father’s quintet members, called me an undisciplined, rambunctious rascal and said the best way for me to get out my “godsforsaken childish energy” was if I had an outlet for it—fencing, they decided.
The first few practices were brutal. The equipment was heavy. The private instructor shouted at me the entire time. I left sore, bruised, and frustrated. I wasn’t good at it, so I started to hate it.
When Alaric learned I was shit at fencing at the grand old age of six, he sat me down and calmly explained that he would find a competent heir somewhere else if I kept turning out to be an embarrassment to the Frost name. Back then, I still cared about making my family proud. It was all I was taught to care about, so I returned to my fencing class the next day and kept my mouth shut when I left with welts and bruises.
A couple of years later, they added swordfighting to my fencing lessons.
Every day, I worked to become the best. Even long after I realized how much I hated my last name and everything that came with it, I practiced out of spite. Twenty-one years later, whether I’m holding a sword or an épée, it becomes an extension of me.
But I never enjoyed it.
Until now.
With a flick of my wrist, the tip of my sword slashes through Alaric’s face, leaving a cut that’s almost a perfect mirror to the scar marring my face.
He swears, choking as he covers his face. He’s lying on the floor, scrambling back toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall as this penthouse filled with ice continues to frost over. After Maven’s revelatory words and the divine fury she began raining down on the elite legacies in front of Arati’s temple, my parents freaked out.
They were ready to run and leave me frozen to the couch, but ghosts—fucking visibleghosts—appeared out of nowhere and furiously swarmed my mother. She’s now dead on the groundseveral yards away, foam frozen around her mouth as she stares sightlessly at the ceiling.
Whatever gave them the ability to end my mother, the ghosts vanished—except for the one that freed me. I nearly had a damn heart attack when one of them passed into me next, but all it did was shatter the ice and rip through the straitjacket, freeing me.
I’d grabbed a sword off the wall to stop Alaric from making a run for the elevator, and it quickly became Frost against Frost.
He’s been putting up one hell of a fight, for someone who just lost his quintet bond. Even though I still can’t summon ice, I’ve barely been able to melt each of his attacks. Now I stand over him, glowering down as he clutches his bleeding face and wheezes, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he shakes and swears.
I’ll never forget what it felt like to lose my bond to Maven. It's the moment all my nightmares are made of. As a keeper with four freshly broken bonds, he must be in agony.
Good.
Spitting out blood, my father sneers up at me. For once in my life, he doesn’t look perfectly polished. “Enough. You wouldn’t kill me, so put down the sword.”
I scoff, letting the tip of my sword bend the flesh at his neck. “I’ll show you how wrong you are as soon as you tell me where the stolen etherium for your safe haven’s shield is.”
The second they live streamed my keeper’s face to the rest of the surviving world to prove she was back, I realized shit is about to hit the fan if we survive this. People were already way too fucking comfortable talking about my dead keeper and feeding off her posthumous fame.
Now, news of her return and her true identity will spread like wildfire. Countless people will be trying to get to my snowdrop—to see her for themselves, to attack her, to marvel at her…whatever the fuck it will be, they’ll want to get close to her.
Which means it’s only a matter of time before the news of her reaches the Entity.
I want another shield to keep her extra safe from it all, once we get back.
Alaric grips at the center of his chest as the pain from losing his quintet continues to sink in. His cold, pale gaze is almost wild with desperation. “You want it, you have to spare my life.”
The smile I give him is humorless. “So you can live for what? Your safe haven? Your quintet? Your precious Frost name? That’s all gone now. Come to think of it, I can just look for the etherium myself, so if you have nothing else to say?—”
I move my sword, fully ready to slit his throat, wipe my hands clean of the Frosts entirely, and go looking for Maven. But Alaric shouts in alarm, holding up his hands. I don’t miss that he tries to summon ice again in one last attempt to harm me, but he’s too weakened from losing his matches and tapped out from our fight.
I smirk when he’s left panting, scrambling back until his back hits the frosted glass. I follow, replacing my sword at his neck as he splutters, making one last desperate attempt to survive me.
“Y—your sister!” he sputters.
That makes me halt, unease settling in my gut.
After the chaos of the Upheaval, I had been so lost to soul-crushing grief and depression that I didn’t go looking for Heidi until four months ago. Even after sending Douglas and his hellhound to track her, I was never able to find her—or Ian, for that matter. The vampire I’ve known since childhood was fully aware that my sister has always been my top priority for him to keep an eye on, but he was no longer in Hawaii, where he went into hiding after faking his death.
Aside from searching for Crypt, I’ve spent months looking for my sister and worrying about what I would find.
And my father must know it, because he has thatgotchalook on his bleeding face.
