The cold doesn’t matter anymore. The thin air slicing through my lungs like glass doesn’t matter. The exhaustion weighing down my limbs, the blood still seeping from cuts we took on the slide over jagged rocks to the cliff edge, none of it matters except reaching her. Yet we are absolutely helpless as we watch her disappear out of sight, pushing forward with fierce determination that both terrifies and amazes me. She moves like a force of nature, deadly and beautiful and completely out of reach.
Every second feels like an eternity stretched on a rack. Every sound, every scream in the distance, every flash of magic flying through the sky is a fresh wound across my chest. My nails diginto my palms, drawing blood I’m clenching my fists so tight. The metallic scent mingles with the ozone smell of magic and the bitter cold of the mountain air.
“How will we know she passed?” Rue asks in concern after what feels like I’ve aged ten years since we’ve been waiting so long.
Locke moves closer to the barrier, each step deliberate and measured. He raises his hand, letting it hover just shy of touching the surface, when the entire wall shatters abruptly.
The sound is deafening, like a thousand mirrors exploding at once, making him jump back with shock. The magic flares brilliant white, then vanishes completely. The wall holding us back collapses in on itself with a sound like thunder, fragments of energy dissolving into nothing. We don’t wait. We don’t even pause to process what just happened.
“If that’s all you had to do to make the damn thing come down, you could have done that ages ago,” Rue chuckles, but there’s no real humor in it. He pushes forward, daggers drawn and ready, his movements sharp and precise despite the tremor in his hands.
“Not now, Rue. Wolf, shift. Find our girl,” Locke calls back to me as we run, his voice carrying the authority of a born warrior.
My body shifts in a blur of bone and fur, the transformation violent and necessary. Clothes flutter to the ground like shredded confetti, fabric tearing as my frame expands and reshapes itself. I hit the snow in my wolf form mid-stride, paws thudding across the icy ground with brutal force. Each step sends shockwaves up my legs, but I don’t slow down. I take off, bounding ahead in search of my mate, my heart hammering against my ribs. I hear Locke shout something behind me, hear Rue swear as he passes a fallen rock, but I don’t look back. Nothing exists except the desperate need to find her.
I can smell her, smell her blood, and the blood of other creatures my wolf doesn’t recognize. It’s thick and metallic, permeating the air like a copper fog, but there are no signs of battle anywhere. Just untouched snow stretching endlessly ahead, pristine white broken only by Esme’s footprints winding forward. It’s as if whatever happened here was completely wiped away, erased by some cosmic hand. Did she finish the trial? That’s a good sign, right? So, where the hell is my mate?
Everything is too quiet. Too still, and that only makes me more anxious. The silence presses against my ears like a physical weight. My paws burn against the ice as I run faster, pushing harder, lungs heaving as we follow her trail across the summit. The cold air sears my throat with each desperate breath.
Then like a mirage shimmering in desert heat, she appears. My relief is short-lived. We stop suddenly, Rue and Locke cursing at the same time at the sight before us.
Esme’s standing at the edge of the cliff, facing Queen Lucelle with the kind of defiant posture that makes my heart swell with pride and terror in equal measure.
A shimmering portal glows just behind the queen’s soldiers, dozens of them arrayed in perfect formation. Magic-wielders in black and silver cloaks that ripple like liquid shadow, blades drawn and gleaming, spells already crackling at their fingertips like caged lightning. The air around them hums with deadly energy.
My heart stutters as I spot the king, bound in glowing shackles around his neck, wrists and ankles. The restraints pulse with malevolent light, clearly designed to drain his power. Slumped and pale, long gone is the man I met the first day we arrived at Castle Noire. In his place is a man that looks his hundreds of years, bent and broken. His mouth is open like he’s trying to call to Esme, but no sound escapes, the shackleshave stolen even his voice. Or I can only assume the queen has deprived him of it.
Queen Lucelle raises her hand with theatrical flourish and shouts, “Kill her.”
The words fall from her lips like a malicious battle cry, and everything explodes into motion.
Locke charges first, his swords flashing in twin arcs of silver death. The blades sing through the air, extensions of his will and fury. Rue follows close behind, daggers sailing through the air with lethal grace, each throw precise and deadly. I lunge ahead, tearing across the snow, aiming straight for the thickest knot of soldiers between me and Esme. My claws find purchase on the ice, propelling me forward like a missile of fur and rage.
I can do nothing but watch in awe as twin blades of ice form in Esme’s hands, materializing from nothing but her will and the frigid air around us. Battle ready, no hesitation, she’s become something magnificent and terrifying.
She launches herself into the fight like she was born for this, like violence and grace are written into her very DNA.
She is a blur of ice and gold, blades slashing with impossible precision, power flaring from her like a Fury. Light blasts from her hands, forcing back wraiths and soldiers alike. Snow melts around her in perfect circles, steam curling from her fingertips as she cuts down attacker after attacker with movements too fluid to be entirely human. My warrior, my queen, my goddess made flesh. Mine, completely and utterly mine.
The battlefield becomes a blur of fur and steel and fire. I tear through the soldiers in my path, jaws locking on limbs and throats, tasting blood and fear and the metallic tang of magic. I don’t slow down. I don’t stop as their blood turns the pristine snow crimson around us, painting abstract patterns of violence across the summit. All I see is Esme, still fighting, still pushing forward, trying to reach the King with single-mindeddetermination. Every time one of us gets closer, another wave of soldiers marches out of the portal like some endless nightmare. The fight feels hopeless, eternal, but we keep fighting because there’s no other choice.
As the tide begins to turn in our favor, bodies piling up around us, the queen begins inching closer to the portal with every breath. She doesn’t give a shit about the amount of fae lost here today, about the lives being spent like coins for her self-serving agenda. Her eyes are fixed on escape, on preserving her own skin while others die for her ambition.
Fuck no, she doesn’t get to run. Not after this.
“I need to get to my father!” Esme shouts over the cacophony of noise, her voice cutting through the chaos.
I bound toward her side, snatching bodies out of her way with my teeth, clearing the path with brutal efficiency. I will get her there, I tell myself as I push forward with teeth and claws and desperate love. Nothing will stop me from protecting what’s mine.
Just when the queen is within reach, close enough that I can smell her perfume mixed with the scent of fear-sweat, she looks me in the eyes and smiles. It’s a cold, calculating expression that makes my blood freeze. With a wave of her hand, another wave of wraiths materialize out of thin air, descending on me with shrieking voices that make my bones ache. I watch in horror as she pulls the king by his chains back toward the portal, dragging him like a piece of baggage. There is no way for me to retreat, no space to give myself room to fight as they attack with brutal efficiency.
Claws rake across my spine, each one like a line of fire drawn across my flesh. Teeth pierce my side, fangs sinking deep enough to scrape bone. Pain rips through me so fast and so complete that I don’t have time to cry out. They tear at my flesh like I’mnothing more than meat, until the snow rises up to meet me in a rush of white and red.
I hit the ground hard, air blasting from my lungs in a whoosh that leaves me gasping. The world spins like a broken carousel as the battle wages on around me, sounds becoming distant and echoing. Blood pools beneath me, warm against the ice, and I can feel my strength ebbing away with each heartbeat.
“Sam!” I hear Esme scream, and the sound of my name on her lips is both agony and salvation. I can’t move, can’t even lift my head. Pain wracks my body in waves as my vision blurs, my breathing grows shallow as the blood pours from me. The mountain top shakes from the force of her cries and her magic, the very stone trembling under the weight of her fury.
Wraiths disintegrate like smoke in a hurricane. Soldiers and magic wielders go flying in all directions, falling to their deaths over the side of the cliff with screams that fade into nothing. The air crackles with her power, raw and uncontrolled and absolutely devastating.
