1
Dark water surrounded her. Deeper and deeper, invisible hands pulled her under, into the arms of death. Eira didn’t fight their chilling grip as the ghostly fingers plunged through her skin, into bone and soul. She didn’t try to swim up toward the glyph of light that swirled above her.
Not until her eyes landed on Marcus. Her brother struggled up toward the shining light, mistaking it for sunlight—for a dawn they weren’t destined to see. Eira opened her mouth to try to call out to him, but cold water rushed into her lungs, silencing her.
Marcus.
He swam as hard as he could manage. The watery hands clung to him, reaching, ripping into his flesh. They dragged him down, demanding his life. Couldn’t he see them? Feel them? If he did, he still strove toward the light anyway.
Don’t.
Eira pressed her eyes closed and allowed herself to be pulled farther under.Take me, she mouthed into the inky tides, to the hands of fate that were hungry for blood.Take me instead.
Farther and farther, she sank. The light dimmed to nothingness. Marcus swam upward and far beyond her reach as the shadows crushed her. Eira inhaled deeply. She would become one with the dark and the cold. She would be its willing servant if it meant he’d be saved.
Eira awoke not with a jolt but with a frosty exhale. Her breath curled in the air as a white plume, as though her spirit was leaving her body. She stared at the now familiar wooden ceiling, covered in a pale blue frost.
It had been two weeks since her brother died. She was a champion for the Solaris Empire. She was in a cabin on a ship of the Imperial Armada and on her way to Meru to compete in the Tournament of Five Kingdoms.
The facts grounded her back in reality, separating her from the dreams that haunted her. Eira sat. Her cabin was small, her things neatly packed in two bags and a large trunk that were wedged between the wash basin and the door.
She held out her hand. This was not the first time her magic had reacted to the dream and she’d woken covered in frost. She much preferred the ice to waking up soaked. Eira twirled her fingers in the air, beckoning the magic back to her.
Except, it didn’t come.
Tilting her head, Eira tried again. But the frost didn’t budge. Instead, as if protesting, the coating of ice on the walls around her was getting thicker by the minute.
This wasn’t her magic.
Eira threw her blanket from the bed and jumped to her feet. She raced to her bag, sending ice shards scattering as she quickly tugged on a pair of trousers underneath her sleeping shift. Who was making the ice? And why?
This was another dream. It had to be. She’d wake up soon. Yet her hands trembled as she fumbled with the buttons of her trousers.
The frost kept closing in around her. She was living the nightmare of three years ago. This was what the room of the Tower apprentice she killed must have looked like. First that girl, then Marcus. Death and magic followed Eira wherever she went. She wouldn’t be able to escape. She would die here, finally punished for her crimes.
“Focus,” Eira hissed at herself as she pressed her eyes closed.
She wasn’t dreaming and she wasn’t in the Tower anymore. She was on a ship, heading to Risen, the capital of Meru. And something was going terribly wrong.
Eira yanked open her door, freeing it from the doorjamb with force. The frost had covered the hall and was encroaching on every room. Eira slapped her face, twice. It stung. Definitely not a dream.
“Wake up!” she shouted. “Everyone, wake up!”
Nothing happened. Her heart was beginning to race. All Eira could think of were her traveling companions—her friends—frozen and dead in their beds.
“Wake up!” Eira tried again and then crossed the hall to Alyss’s door. She banged on it several times before she heard movement.
“Eira? Eira! Is that you? What’s happening?” Alyss shouted through the door.
“I don’t know but—” Eira was interrupted by a sudden burst of flame over her left shoulder. Where a door once stood was now nothing more than a charred frame and wet ashes.
Noelle emerged from the steam and narrowed her eyes immediately at Eira. “Is this your fault?”
“It’s not me.” Eira ignored the stab in her gut at the suspicion. It was another reminder of three years ago—of two weeks ago, when she was sitting in a jail cell, arrested for her brother’s murder.I’m not a killer, she wanted to say, but now wasn’t the time for objections. “We have to find out what’s going on.”
“Move aside.” Noelle barely gave Eira a chance to step back before incinerating Alyss’s door.
Alyss stood, teeth chattering, snow and ice covering half her nightclothes. “What in the Mother’s name is happening?”
