As I step out, the snow opens like a door, two large, white hands reaching through. The magic is on the opposite side of Neve from her mother, the Dowager Queen’s eyes turning shiny as she closes both hands into fists.
I’mjusta little too slow.
The large, snowy white hands grab Neve. One holds her shoulder for an instant, and the other digs into her back, the strange hands glowing.
She screams, arching against the touch. I leap out of the darkness and drag the staff through the snowy hands, but it’s too late. As they disappear, a ripping noise fills the air, and Neve slams into the floor.
The hands fall away, her body sagging into nothing as her spinal cord rips out of her back, the severed bones pulling away from her torso as she falls.
I don’t look for her spirit, because it’s not what I want to see. Queens be damned, I jump forward, grabbing her body before she hits the ground.
For a moment, our eyes meet, and on instinct, twisted with panic, I reach out and slam my hand over the top of her spine, the vertebrae cold and sticky with blood when my hand crashes onto it.
The ground, where her magic broke through the ice of the palace, is stained red as we hit the ground together. I thrust my hand towards her skull, for all the good that will fucking do, her breath coming in short bursts.
Using my ice, I freeze the severed spine in my hand, nevermind the fact that the magic tore her back open and there’s blood everywhere. I can’t look at that, and her spine is still attached toward the bottom, so even though I hold part of it, it’s still dangling from her skin.
Around us, the shadows rise. Her spirit isn’t here yet, but I can feel it immediately, the soul screaming at mine. When I look into her eyes, at her life fading, I see my failure reflected in her eyes.
I brought her back from her frozen sleep to invite her to her final death.
“No!”
The words rip out of me, the shadows rising without my command around us. I hold her tightly to me, the winter magicinside me screaming as flurries erupt out of my body, joining the darkness swirling around us.
In the light of her death, I can’t see any glimpse of life.
From somewhere beyond my circle of despair, I hear the Mad Queen’s voice, cutting through me like a knife as Neve’s breath stutters against me. She’s fading so, so fast.
I don’t know how to fix this. I’m not made to save souls.
“Go on, Reaper, show me what the moon gave you,” Davina screams, and from beyond our circle of grief, I can’t imagine standing against her.
Once I let go, once Neve stops taking a breath and joins the dead, I won’t be able to change her fate.
Chapter 20 Zarev
“What are we supposed to do?” Odette hisses.
After Ban gave me nothing earlier, we tried Raymundo. It was against my better judgment, but with a giant present, we had to address it at one point or another.
He had no recommendations, just grief. Tom is hanging, on thanks to Rapunzel, but she’s running out of ideas. Her magic has limits. The dead are one of them. Once he crosses, Ray is the only one there who can help him.
I resist the urge to groan as I eye the square building. Speaking with Ban was supposed to clear things up, not make them more complicated.
Jumping back to the home isn’t exactly a good idea, but it beats sitting around for no reason. Odette is as antsy as I am to return, and the sooner we figure out what to do with a giant, the better.
“Fucked if I know.” I sigh, blowing out a breath. “Ban was supposed to say something useful.”
“He seems a little distracted right now,” Odette points out.
Don’t I know it? He mentioned queens, plural, and barely let us talk for a few minutes. I need a lot more time than that to work out what to do, but Ban isn’t going to answer his stone again. I know if he’s decided whatever he’s doing is more important, then he’s already thrown the stone back to the shadows.
“I’ve seen a lot of skeletons,” she continues unhelpfully. “Maybe one of them can offer some hints?”
“Sure,” I grumble, nodding to the first body. She winces but doesn’t turn away, wandering to the corpse. “Let’s go looting.”
“It’s not looting,” she hisses. “We’re looking for clues to what this… this monster wants.”
