Once they got close, all that weight meant we’d go through the ice together, and being trapped in the icy water while a bunch of Grimbeasts thrashed around me…no, that was not the way I wanted to die.
We sped up, covering another twenty feet, maybe, close enough to make out the stacked stone of the castle’s walls—barely darker than the mist swirling around them—a phantom architecture so fragile it looked like it might shatter, much like the ice beneath our feet.
“We have to get closer to the island. I can only carry one of you at a time, and my magic is almost depleted,” Varianpanted. “Just a little bit further, though, and I can make this work.”
“All we have to do is reach that shore,” Ryland added encouragingly. “They never go that far.”
“You’ve been here before,” I snapped, not able to keep the accusation from my voice.
“Oh, perhaps a time or two,” Ryland said noncommittally, and I rolled my eyes as I slid my feet across the splintering ice, every tensed muscle in my body hurting from the strain.
“I know that bullshit answer.” I’d heard Ryland give those same words to royal guards, to shopkeepers, to anyone he was about to cheat. “You don’t get to give that answer to me. Not when I’ve earned the truth.”
His hand tightened around mine. “We’ve been here so often, I’ve lost track of how many times. But the ice has never cracked before, and the hounds have never followed us this far. Something is different this time, so I need you to trust me, Lyrae.”
I twisted away, but he held firm, the ice groaning all around us, every crack shivering up through the soles of my boots, soaking into my bones as I wondered if this was the last sound I would ever hear.
“Since trusting you only turns out one way, I’ll never make that mistake again.” I sneered. “I should have known you were playing me this entire time. I should have seen what was right in front of my face,” I finished bitterly.
“Trust me until we get to the shore, then you can go right back to hating my guts. But now I need you to work with me and Varian. I need you to…” His gaze lifted over my head, and whatever Ryland saw had his pupils dilating and his grip nearly crushing my hand. “Hold on tight and don’t turn around. We’re going to run now.”
With a hard jerk, we were moving. My feet slipped, my stiff knees popping, the pack slapping hard against my spine.
We made it ten steps.
Ten.
On that final step, my boot hit the ice…and went straight through.
The rest of me followed, Ryland roaring my name, my fingers ripped free from his.
For one horrifying second I was suspended midair, gravity yanking me down, nothing to hold onto, no way to stop myself from falling.
Then even Ryland’s scream disappeared as water closed over my head. I was sinking, down, down, down, darkness and smothering cold stealing my breath, my logic, every bit of training until I was nothing but a flailing, panicked animal, clawing at the bubbling water like I could somehow rip myself from its frozen grasp.
I hadn’t been this helpless since I’d been strapped to a table in the Keep’s dungeons.
Since I’d had my heart ripped out by the male—and the best friend—I’d loved.
Since the world had taken my sister and left me alone.
I wasn’t Lyrae Antares, the feared general of the Dreadwatch—I was an orphan from the streets of Southwell, eating rotten food in an alley. I was a collection of blinding fear and lungs that were about to explode, of heavy, water-soaked clothes and a backpack filled with steel, dragging me straight to the muddy bottom.
One more time I reached toward the light glinting through the darkness, toward the gaping hole that sent me to this watery prison, and something reached back—strong fingers deftly catching my wrist with punishing force, nearlywrenching my arm out of its socket as I was dragged up and up, toward the light.
Toward life.
And when Varian hauled me out of the water, the edge of the ice catching my stomach like a sword’s crushing bite, I sobbed out his name, arms wrapping around his shoulders like I couldn’t let go.
“We have to move, Lyrae.” Varian yanked me closer, his skin as white as the ice around us. “I need you to hang on tight.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I was clinging to him, frozen tears mixing with the water streaming from my hair, the chill air frosting my skin.
I caught one glance of a white-faced Ryland pulling out his sword.
Then the world tipped, blurred, my stomach tipping with it, all the water I’d inhaled on my way down coming right back up. We got tangled together when we landed—me, heaving my guts up; Varian, holding my hair out of my face and trying to keep me out of the worst of the filth.
I would have kissed the ground, if it hadn’t been so muddy.
