Furyfire erupted from her palm, bright and wild, engulfing the soldier. His scream was brief. When the fire died, only blackened armor and smoking bone remained.
The Frostwight did not scream.
Flames licked across its armor and guttered. Frost crawled over the fire, devouring it, leaving scorched ice in its wake. The thing kept coming.
“What in the—” Aurelia began.
“Frostwight,” I snapped. “It’s made of bone, which won’t burn. Don’t let it touch you?—”
It lunged.
Cold like a god’s last breath slammed into me. I twisted, throwing myself sideways with Lesha clutched tight to my chest. The blast hit the thick brush behind us. Thorny branches froze solid, then shattered into a rain of frozen shards.
Aurelia didn’t flinch away.
She moved through it.
Flame roared out of her, the heat singeing the hairs on my hands. The Frostwight met it head-on. Ice and fire collided, power shrieking, throwing sparks and shards across the frozen ground.
Her rune flared, bright as a brand at the hollow of her throat. I felt the pulse of it from where I stood—old, deep, dangerous.
The Frostwight’s armor began to melt.
Not from heat.
From a draining of whatever magic held it together.
Furyfire climbed its body, but beneath the snapping bone and cracking ice, something else was happening. I felt it like a current in the air. A pull. A siphon.
Life force—whatever Heliconia had tethered inside that corpse of bones—ripped free.
The Frostwight staggered, knees buckling. Frosted smoke poured out from the seams in its leather armor, racing toward Aurelia, drawn like breath to her mark. Her eyes widened. For a second, she looked like she might push it away.
Instead, she took it in.
The last of the light in the Frostwight’s body went out. Its armor crumpled in on itself, collapsing like an empty shell. Aurelia’s breath caught, shoulders jerking as warmth flooded her skin. The exhaustion in her gaze cleared like fog burned away at dawn.
She hadn’t just burned it.
She’ddrainedit.
Drank it in and let it strengthen her.
Makarios.
The word thudded through me like a warning. Suddenly, I wondered if it wasn’t such a good thing after all. If she took too much, like the gates to the Midnight Court?—
“Aurelia.”
Her head snapped toward me. For a terrifying heartbeat, her eyes were wrong—the blue too bright, pupils blown wide, something ancient and hungry looking out through her face.
Then she blinked, and the woman I knew was back.
“I’m fine,” she said, voice rough. “Get Lesha to the cave. Now.”
We ran.
Lesha’s body was a dead weight against my chest, but I held her like she was made of glass. Aurelia kept pace, flames low now but ready, a barely-contained inferno under her skin.
