A few armored war bears pulled heavy wooden carts meant to gather the fallen, while servants loaded them on to be burned.
The bodies were small as Ezer’s thumbnail from here … but still large enough to fill someone’s entire world, back home.
Death was strange. Because here, in the north, it became common.
It became a number instead of a name.
Ezer heard the whispers in the halls as she walked, following Arawn to the training room each night, where she failed to conjure any magic. But slowly, she began to block his advances with her sword. And once – only once – she’d landed a single hit to his side.
Though she suspected he’d allowed her to, if only to boost her confidence. Now that Kinlear wanted Ezer and Six to cross the Expanse, she was grateful Arawn had encouraged her physical training.
Grateful for every aching part of her body, because it meant he’d pushed her beyond the limits she’d initially thought for herself.
She was no longer weak.
No longer a shadow of what could be.
And though she’d come to love her days training with Six and Kinlear … it was her nights with Arawn that she craved.
His solid presence as he guided her, his impressive strength and swift movements.
And the look he had in his eyes each time he circled her in the training room, with nothing but a blade held between them.
You challenge me, Minder,he’d thought to her last night as he circled her, his voice like a caress against her mind.In more ways than one.
And why is that?she’d thought back. The moonlit swam across them, bathing them both in silver.
His breath tickled her ear as he’d leaned in and whispered aloud, ‘Win this fight, and I’ll tell you.’
She was so distracted he’d knocked the sword from her grasp, and his secrets had stayed safe with him.
‘What will it take?’ Kinlear asked Ezer now, and she was instantly colder as he pulled her back to the present. ‘An entire castle full of gold to convince Six to fly?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ezer said. ‘Butshehas to be the one to decide.’
‘It reminds me of someone,’ Kinlear said, chuckling as he looked at her.
She scooped up a snowball and tossed it at his feet.
He looked like he would repay the favor, until Six growled behind Ezer.
‘It’s haunting,’ Kinlear said, ‘the two of you together. The nightmares I have each night, when I see you in my dreams.’
She blinked at that. ‘You dream of me, Kinlear Laroux?’
He suddenly found the sky quite interesting.
‘Tomorrow,’ Kinlear said, ignoring her question with a grin. ‘We’ll try with her again.’
Six let out a soft growl, and a vision entered Ezer’s mind.
Kinlear’s white cane, left alone in the snow. Covered in blood.
She gasped and nudged the beast in the belly… and promptly felt Six’s paw stomp down over her boot.
‘Be nice,’Ezer whispered.
The raphon’s tail twitched twice.
