Kaelen’s features turned even more grim as he confirmed every thought running through my mind.
“Your uncle is trying to rally the clans against Winter, claiming that you’re being held captive here. They’ve been experimenting on the monsters, building new weapons. He’s preparing for a war.”
Chapter 35
Everly
Athousand questions ran through my mind, melding with those I could hear from Draven’s thoughts.
Was Vaerin successful in rallying the clans?
Had they learned anything from their experiments?
Was he planning to launch an assault, or was it only theoretical?
A scream rent the air in two, and for a ridiculous moment, I thought it was only in my head, a visceral reaction to the idea of the war I had wanted so badly to avoid.
But this one echoed through the pass, guttural and terrified, and young.
Too young.
My heart lurched into my throat, too many questions crashing through my mind all at once.
Kaelen blanched, horror carving his features open.
“Keira,” he breathed, and then he shot upward, his wings snapping out with a loud crack of wind.
I barely had time to suck in a breath before Draven’s hand closed around my waist and the world folded into ice and motion.
We reappeared at the crumbling edge of what looked, at first, like a sinkhole. But the longer I examined it, the more the truth snapped into focus. The snow was heaped too neatly over loosely packed soil and broken branches, the pit below too perfectly shaped—too intentional.
And at the bottom, half-buried beneath cascading snow, lay a young Skaldwing. She wasn’t much older than a child, thirteen at most. Her dark, membranous wings thrashed wildly, sending glittering arcs of snow into the air as she fought to lift herself free. But every frantic beat dragged her deeper into the nearly invisible strands stretched across the trench. Threads so fine the light barely caught them unless she struggled.
Webbing.
Korythid webbing.
My stomach twisted. We’d been searching for signs of the frostbeast, and this young Skaldwing had just stumbled head-first into one of its traps.
“Stop moving!” I called down to her. “You’re making it worse. Just stay still, please!”
She froze, her chest heaving. A thin, choked sound escaped her before she bit it back hard, pressing her lips together until they whitened. Her hands curled into the snow web, knuckles sharp against the ice and fallen debris.
She forced the trembling in her wings to still, though they twitched in uneven spasms. Her chin lifted a fraction, as if bracing for whatever would come next.
“Draven—” I gestured carefully to the delicate strands.
“I see them,” he said, a muscle tightening in his jaw.
“Are you injured?” I asked, my mind already racing through ways we could free her before the monster came back.
The female swallowed, her jaw tightening as if trying to decide how much she should reveal. Then her lip quivered once.
“Yes,” she said flatly. “My leg might be broken…”
I glanced from the fine lines of her face down to where her left leg was twisted deepest in the webbing, a branch protruding from her calf.
Shards-blasted hells.
