He snarls at me like he wants to tear me apart.
“Try it,” I dare. “And I’ll change my mind about letting you both live.”
Malina presses her hand to his chest and murmurs something in his ear that seems to make him stand down.
My cool gaze casts back to her face. “You’re wrong, by the way.”
Her white brows furrow. “Wrong?”
“These people here aren’t the only survivors.” I jerk my head in the direction of the castle. “Some people are being held there.”
Shock pulls lines of stress around her eyes as she glances at Highbell. “What? Truly?”
I don’t answer her. Instead, I walk back to Argo. The survivors are watching him warily, giving a wide berth.
“Wait!” Malina starts to hurry after me, and the shadow man curses beneath his breath. The shattered ice queen shovesher way in front of me, seemingly not caring about the timberwing growling at her back. “What do you mean my people are in the castle? How do you know?”
“I flew overhead. There are golden sheets flung out the windows. The wordHELPsmeared across them in white paint.”
I step around her, but she does the unthinkable. Her hand lashes out, gripping my forearm, narrowly missing my spikes.
My head turns slowly, and a threatening growl rises from my throat, but she holds her ground. “Please take me to them. Help me save them.” Her words are a distressed bid uttered with guttural grief.
I’m heartless enough to refuse her. To walk away. I don’t owe this woman anything. She had no mercy for Auren. No mercy for her people or even Orea for that matter.
The shadows around the man flicker with fragments of coiling light, his body tensing like he’s a second away from trying to fight me. But Malina’s eyes go behind me. To the huddled Oreans against the broken buildings and rot-stained street. My gaze follows hers, and I see them. Mourning their dead, shivering in the cold and fear and grief, their bodies thin and weak and dirty.
“Release me,” I command.
Malina wrenches back her hand, letting it drop to her side. I can see the hope dropping too. She fears me, and yet, she has the courage to beg.
A moment of tense silence passes between us until I finally break it in half. “Fine,” I say, and I hear her breath catch. “I’ll help your people, Queen Malina. Only because Auren would want me to.”
She seems to nearly collapse in relief, her blue eyes filling. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thankher.”
She nods warily, like she knows I’m still fighting back my instinct to end her.
“Can you use your magic to get the fae out of the castle? Can you get all the survivors within its walls where they can be safe?” she asks.
My gaze casts toward the mountain. To the gleaming castle teeming with fae. “I can kill the fae and get you inside.”
She lets out a shaky breath, and I hear the people murmur and cry. Who knows what they’ve been through, what they’ve had to survive.
Turning, I go to Argo and mount his back, my hands gripping the reins. “I can clear out the castle, and I can even cut off their route up the mountain so no more of the fae army floods in. Butsafe?” I glance at the pillaged, burnt city. “Look around, Cold Queen. Orea isn’t safe for any of you.”
With a snap of the reins, Argo lifts me into the air, making Malina flinch back.
“I’ll come back when it’s done,” I tell her, and then Argo shoots upward with a powerful push of his wings.
As we lift higher, my eyes cast to the right, outside the city, where pristine snow spreads out like a sheet. To where the fae army horde marches toward Fifth Kingdom.
I was heading for them first when I saw the sprays of magic on this broken street and happened upon a few dozen Oreans about to be massacred.
I wasn’t expecting to find the bitch of a queen who somehow seems to have grown a heart.
The skies continue to pump full of smoke from the forest, mixing with the cloud coverage. My gaze scans the ground, following the direction the army is marching, the landmarks, the way the land pours into the horizon.
