Distantly, I heard Wynnie responding to the soldier, trying to calm him down and assure him that she would come to help, but I was only half listening because the description had sparked something in my memory… something that sent my hairs standing on end.
Enormous. Horns. Steam that came from its nostrils.
I grabbed my compendium from where I had been studying it just this morning on the nightstand, flipping hurriedly through the pages.
It wouldn’t be among the common frostbeasts in the front. I knew that even as I passed crude sketches of Brakhounds and Ice-lurkers, their neat annotations suddenly obscene in their harmlessness. I slowed near the middle, heart pounding, searching for something larger.
The illustrations grew darker there. Less precise. Notes scrawled in the margins instead of neatly inked beneath the images.Aggression unknown.Behavior inconsistent.Engagement not advised.
I tuned out the soldier’s convoluted story, focusing on the hasty sketches I had copied from my father’s library in the long, isolated years at his estate.
One page, then another, but it wasn’t here. Of course it wasn’t. I already knew where it would be.
“All right… what did you say your name was?” Wynnie sounded overly patient, like she hoped the question would interrupt his frantic stream of words.
“Maelen, My Lady,” came the rushed reply.
There, on the second to last page. A massive frostbeast that resembled a bull, wavy stenciled steam rising from its nostrils.Gorenvyr.
I bit back a curse. It was on the page just past the Korythid… in the section for theElderbornemonsters.
Wynnie took a breath. “All right, well Maelen?—”
“That’s not all, My Lady,” the soldier cut her off. “They said the only reason any of them survived is that they happened to be traveling with a former soldier.”
My breath stilled in my lungs, and this time, it had nothing to do with the ancient frostbeast with perilously few weaknesses.
Logically, I knew there was more than one former soldier in all of Winter, but retirement was rare. And there was something in the tone of the young soldier, some mix of hesitation andreverence. Somehow, I knew, before he even spoke, what he was going to say next.
“He says his name is Oryth Elarion.”
Draven came as soon as he heard my thoughts, ice-walking me directly into the small separated room that I had become far too familiar with in my relatively short time at the palace.
All because of the shards-blasted frostbeasts.
First, I had been here. Then Nevara. And now…
Amias stood between me and the male on the narrow cot, rocking back on his heels to acknowledge that we had arrived. His lips were pursed into a grave line.
“You may speak with him, but not for long. His injuries are… substantial.”
“How substantial?” I pushed, though I already felt the answer in my bones, could smell it in the blood and rot that clung to the air.
Amias met my eyes, taking a breath. “The head wound is the worst of it. I wouldn’t expect much clarity from him right now.”
So just like always then.
But I didn’t miss his non-answer.
I nodded mutely, pulling out of Draven’s hold and stepping around the healer to get my first glimpse of my father since the day I was chosen as the Frostgrave King’s bride, when I had urged Wynnie to take him home before Draven could find out what I was.
When he had left without putting up a single fight.
A stark white sheet hid the extent of his injuries, but there was still a frailty about him that hadn’t been present before. Though maybe that was just the blood crusted in his deep-bluewavy locks, or the bubbling skin along his neck that he scarcely seemed to notice.
His crystal-blue eyes were clear when they opened and landed on me, though his pupils were blown wide from his injuries.
Still, he was sober, which was even more perplexing than the fact that he washere.
