She gestured behind her, and two of the mercenaries moved forward. Not attacking. Just flanking. Positioning themselves to grab me if the opportunity arose.
“I don’t need fixing,” I said. “I’m not broken anymore.”
“You’re dead.” Her voice cracked on the word, and for the first time I saw real emotion on her face. Not grief. Fear.
“You should be dead,” she hissed. “I put enough poison in that tea to drop a horse. Watched you convulse until you stopped breathing.” Her voice rose, cracking. “Buried you in the woods where no one would ever find you. You should have stayed in the ground.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No.” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You found this place, this monster, and you became something worse than dead. Something wrong.”
She took a step toward me. The mercenaries moved with her, hands on sword hilts, ready.
“You should have stayed dead.” Mabyn’s voice cracked, and I saw it then: the wild look in her eyes, the tremor in her hands. Desperation had eaten away whatever cunning she’d once possessed. “Everything was supposed to be mine.”
Another step. The mercenaries were close now, within grabbing distance.
“So I’ll finish what I started,” she said. Her voice rose, cracking at the edges. “I’ll kill you properly this time. I’ll drag your frozen corpse back to the city, I’ll show them the body, and I’ll take what’s mine.”
She took another step forward. Close enough now that I could see the desperation in her eyes. The fear.
“You’re already dead,” she hissed. “You just won’t stay in the ground where you belong.”
Something in me went very still. Very cold.
“You’re right,” I said softly. “Iamdead. But I didn’t stay dead. And that terrifies you, doesn’t it? Because if death rejected me...” I tilted my head. “Maybe death will come collecting from you instead.”
Her face went white.
“Take her!” she screamed at the mercenaries. “Now!”
They lunged.
I raised my hand.
The cold poured out of me.
It wasn’t touch-based anymore, like the desperate drain I’d used before in the courtyard. This was power. Deliberate, controlled, absolute.
The temperature plummeted. Frost spread across the ground in a wave, crackling outward from where I stood. The air itself turned to ice crystals, glittering in the weak morning light.
The mercenaries stopped mid-step.
Their breath fogged white. Their fingers locked on sword hilts, joints freezing, blood slowing in their veins. They couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. Just stood there, trapped in hypothermia, their bodies shutting down degree by degree.
I hadn’t touched them.
Hadn’t done anything except will the heat out of their bodies and into the Realm where it belonged.
“You wanted me dead,” I said. “You got your wish. I am dead. Death-blessed. Death-claimed. Death-made.”
I took a step forward, and the ravens moved with me, wings spreading, voices rising. “And now I’m taking what’s mine.”
Behind me, I felt Cador shift.
He stood at the threshold of the gates, and he was magnificent.
The Raven King in his true form.
