Vera’s tongue ghosted over her lips as she crouched before the girl, trailing slender fingers through the cold powder of the snow. ‘It is nothing personal,’ she said, her voice soft and venomous. ‘Merely misfortune… and you, little one, are cursed with it.’ Straightening, she turned her attention upon the nearest witch. ‘The wolves?’
‘We couldn’t find them,’ came the uncertain reply.
Vera’s mouth tightened in displeasure. ‘Then find them. Drag them here.’ She motioned for the king to be hauled closer. His body crumpled to his knees, eyes fluttering weakly until Vera snapped her fingers, forcing them wide open with a cruel shimmer of magic.
‘Shall we begin?’ she purred, seizing the unnamed twin by her silver-white hair and dragging her into the open. The girl shrieked, panic shining in every frantic twist of her limbs.
‘Please!’ Gwyneira screamed, desperation cracking her voice. ‘I’ll do anything! Let me sista go!’
‘There is nothing to be done, child,’ Vera whispered, her attention now fixed upon the king, his breathing shallow, yet his stare feral with impotent terror.
Then, with no further word, she laid her hand upon the girl’s head.
The wolverian princess’s scream ripped the air, her back arching in agony as her hands clawed at the snow. Vera’s blood magic wove through her like venom, contorting her body into unnatural angles, each twist accompanied by a choked cry of pain. The snow drank the sound, yet it seemed to echo for miles.
From the shadows of the nearby forest, a colossal wolf emerged, its silvered pelt ghostly beneath the pale light, and behind it surged a pack of its kin. One leapt with silent, predatory grace, crashing into the warlockwho held the king, its fangs tearing the man’s head clean from his shoulders in a single, savage rip.
Vera snarled, fury twisting her features as she flung her hands skyward, unleashing a surge of blood-red magic.
Gwyneira scrambled to her sister’s side, clutching her close as the wolves formed a living shield, circling the princesses with bared teeth and low, rumbling growls.
Vera’s lips curled into a cruel smile.
She twisted her fingers, delicate yet deadly, and her blood magic seeped into the wolves’ veins like poison. The beasts screamed an eerie, unnatural sound as their own bodies betrayed them. Two fell instantly, crumpling into the snow, lifeless marionettes with their strings severed. The third remained upright, trembling as its muscles spasmed against its will, and then, obedient to Vera’s cruel whim, it turned its head towards the girls.
‘No, please!’ Gwyneira cried, her voice raw with terror as the wolf’s jaws snapped dangerously close to them. ‘Please, stop!’
Her wide eyes locked onto something behind Vera.
‘Eirwen, run!’ she screamed.
Vera glanced over her shoulder. The young boy stood frozen, tears cutting silver trails down his trembling face as he shook his head in mute refusal.
‘Eirwen, run!’
And in that same heartbeat, the king surged upright, his strength summoned from some dying ember within. His hand whipped from his pocket, ax gleaming, and in one motion he slashed the throat of the warlock who still stood, sending him collapsing in a spray of crimson. Another witch lunged, only to have the blade buried deep in her chest. With a desperate twist, he wrenched it free and hurled it across the space, embedding itsquarely into another’s skull.
Vera watched in quiet amusement as her witches crumpled, one after another, painting the snow with their blood.
The king, pale and trembling, stood swaying but unbroken, his breath ragged as he levelled the ax at her heart.
‘Let… me children go,’ he growled, voice raw with grief and rage. ‘Why are ya…doing this?’
‘You know how mortals never hesitate to crush an ant beneath their heel?’ Vera asked, her tone airy, almost disinterested, as her shoulder lifted in a languid shrug. ‘Why do you suppose that is? You never pause to mourn its life, never weigh its worth… and why? Is it because you are larger? Cleverer? Because you believe yourselves the superior species, ordained to tread where you will?
‘You slaughter animals daily, and not a flicker of guilt stirs your conscience. You crafted a hierarchy, your lives poised loftily at the top, while a bird, a fox, an ant…’ she waved a hand dismissively, ‘are but trivial nothings. Who cares, after all, if a sparrow dies beneath your boots?’ Her lips curled into a cold smile, a chuckle slipping free like the hiss of a blade leaving its sheath. ‘Let us simply say… gods feel precisely the same aboutyou. To them, you are nothing but ants, crushed without thought, without mercy, without regret.’
One of the girls began to pray, soft words breaking against the silence.
Vera cackled at the sound, her laughter slicing through the cold air like a blade.
‘Pray all you wish,’ she muttered, her focus sharpening on the final wolf still chained to her will. Her fingers curled cruelly. ‘As I just said, the gods will not save you.’
Vera curled her fingers inward, and the wolf obeyed with a grotesque swiftness, its jaws yawning wide before tearingmercilessly into the wolverian princess.
‘NO!’ Gwyneira’s scream fractured the air, her body collapsing sideways in despair.
The king lurched forward, a broken roar tearing from his chest as he flung himself at the beast, clawing and straining to prise it away from his daughter’s limp form. Vera released her hold on the creature, and it slunk back at once, its blood-slicked muzzle lowering in submission. The king crumpled to his knees, trembling hands clutching at what little remained of his child, his sobs raw and ragged.
