WE MAKE HASTE, RACING ONthe king’s black steed through the white land. Pressed forward over the saddle, the Frost King at my back, we move to the sound of thunder.
Something terrible awaits me at the Shade. There will be blood. I’m sure of it. The only question is how much.
The darkwalker, Phaethon, weaves a precarious path. The land rises steadily, more uprooted trees piling up the higher we climb, casualties of avalanches, those hammering gales. Snow retreats in the presence of the exposed rock faces.
“Tell me what to expect,” I cry, ducking my face against the scoring wind.
The darkwalker leaps over a fallen tree, clearing it easily. Its shadows reform as four legs once it hits the ground. “Mortals flood my lands as we speak. The rest of my force will arrive shortly. They have the authority to kill on sight.”
A frozen creek glimmers between two hills like a vein of molten silver, but then we are past it, climbing higher, the momentary brightness vanishing behind the rising terrain. “Prepare for the worst,” he warns me.
Phaethon streams into a weightless gallop, snow and mud flinging from its hooves. Up, up, and still up, beyond the tree line, where the land spreads without interruption. The darkened Shade. The curvedband of the Les. Weeks ago, all was pristine. Now the barrier has torn, its edges fluttering.
The violence hits without warning, and only now will I learn whether I can absorb it, whether I will stand or kneel. Bodies litter the ground. Metal screams against the air as the Frost King’s soldiers beat back the swarming townsfolk, whose weathered boots and thin clothes appear to hang from their emaciated bodies. Some can barely lift a weapon.
Yet they spill through by the hundreds, desperate for change, for vengeance. Upon catching sight of the Frost King, they surge toward us, and I clutch the arm banding around my waist.
A change overtakes the townsfolk. Shadows drift like a fog from their limbs, and their eyes shutter, pupils swelling like growths. Their hands crimp as their fingers grow claws.
Darkwalkers.
My blood ices over. Darkness eats at the boundaries of their skin. It’s as though the townsfolk’s forced entry into the Deadlands bleeds corruption through their mortal bodies.
When the first darkwalker reaches us, the Frost King swings his spear in an arc that spews blood. The creature falls, but another corrupted mortal takes his place. Then another. And another.
It’s a killing field. Snow runs red with hemorrhage, and corpses rise like hills.Prepare for the worst, he said. I could never have fathomed something this horrific.
“You will need to feed the Shade your blood,” shouts the Frost King, knocking an arrow aside with his spear. Ice shards fly from the tip, and the screams pitch, dozens of them, as ice meets skin. “It’s the only way to halt their intrusion.”
The king’s blood-drenched breastplate rests coldly against my back, chilling me through the fabric. Men, women, even children, raise ineffective weapons against a god: nailed boards, fraying rope, broom handles, and pails.
And they fall, and they fall, and they fall. Bodies tossed in snow. Beasts buried in mud. Carnage. People just like me.
“My men and I will push them back,” he grunts, narrowly avoiding a knife to the leg. “They are untrained. It shouldn’t be difficult.”
Desperation can compensate for lack of training. Back in Edgewood, raiders would occasionally strike as those starving years passed. Most of the townsfolk couldn’t tell one end of a sword from another, but we managed to hold our own. Now? They are mortal no longer. They must be put down.
The king’s arm tightens around me. “Keep your seat.” Then he cries, “To me!”
A unit of soldiers breaks away from the fighting. Locking into formation, they flank the king as he pushes forward, driving through the throng to pinch out a narrow path. The Frost King was right. The townsfolk are untrained. Everywhere I look, darkwalkers and half-transformed mortals are slain. A sword to the chest or a belly split open. Soon, we are overwhelmed.
Phaethon rears, clipping a darkwalker in the spine. A few corrupted souls latch onto my legs, and the memory of Neumovos, of hands on flesh, my body crushed into the road, ignites fear in me. I scream and kick one in the face. The Frost King blasts the rest backward with a wall of wind.
“Make for the Shade,” he growls in my ear. Two hands at my waist, and he lifts me clear of the saddle, setting me on the ground.
He cuts a swath through the thickest of the fighting, using his winds to drive back the interlopers. Someone slashes at me with a sword. I duck and drive my dagger into their belly. I snag an abandoned bow, rip an arrow from a dead man’s eye. In seconds, the arrow is nocked.
Pain shreds open my back and I scream, whirling around to release the arrow blindly. It hits a half-shifted darkwalker square in the eye. The pain is so great my hand spasms and the bow slips from my grip.
Beyond, the Shade pulses like a dark heart.
I lurch forward.Stop the influx of people into the Deadlands. Stop the darkwalkers from multiplying. Only a couple of feet separate me from the Shade. In my periphery, the king battles a group of beasts. His eyesmeet mine across the field. “Do it,” he bellows, and I swear fear fractures his voice. “Do it now!”
I press the dagger into my palm. My captor will not die on this day. I cannot squander my chance to kill him, cannot sacrifice my plan in a moment of eager revenge. The time will come. Soon.
Pain blooms bright beneath the knife’s edge. My blood hits the Shade and swirls red among the black. Holes knit together, the neatest seams, until my reflection stares back at me: a wide-eyed woman who has failed her own people. Even if this helps stop the cycle of darkwalker creation, it is not a solution. I am sickened by my own powerlessness. Nothing I’ve done has been enough.
“Well done.” The Frost King has reined in his beast at my side. He gazes down at me with approval—a first. “In a moment of uncertainty, you remained loyal.”
