“Oh my Gods! I feel an outburst of lightning coming on!”
Carver grins. “Do your worst, fuzz top.”
Griffin chuckles at that, earning his own dose of my evil eye. He appears unrepentant, even when my well-practiced glower lands solely on him. He winks.
“Gah!” I toss up my hands. “You’re all insane!”
“Really?” Flynn glances around, looking confused. “No, no. We’re fine,” he tells the horses. “Thanks for asking.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. We all laugh, and it feels like lifetimes have passed since the last time we did.
Griffin curves his warm, strong hands around my shoulders, turning me toward him. “I have faith in you. Our greatest weapons on the Ice Plains are here”—he lightly taps a finger against my forehead—“and here.” He taps over my heart.
I make a face, torn between enjoying his compliment and knowing his faith in me is egregiously misplaced. “Then we’re sure to die because neither of those functions quite right.”
“They function well enough,” he says, a small, lopsided smile lifting his mouth and making my heart skip a beat.
“Such high praise,” I mumble, ignoring the flutter in my chest.
“I’m learning from you.”
“Good Gods, don’t,” I say. “I’m hopeless.”
“You’re never hopeless.” Griffin gazes down at me, deliberately changing the intent of my words. “When something matters to you, no fight ends until you’ve won. That’s why we can go onto the Ice Plains and live—maybe even come back with what we went there for. We’ll change the world, Cat, and we’ll do it without the war you fear. I swear to the Gods, we’ll do it with as little bloodshed as possible.”
My heart drops like a stone.Harbinger of the end. Destroyer of realms.
“Now let’s go talk to a wizard,” Griffin says, drawing me in close first.
I lay my cheek against his chest and wrap my arms around his waist. His body shields me from the brisk, buffeting wind, and I inhale a familiar mix of citrus, sunshine, outdoors, leather, and man.
We’ll do it without the war you fear…
I wish that were true. But it’s not, andmy Gods, is he in for a disappointment.
CHAPTER 11
WE FREE THE HORSES TO GRAZE AND APPROACH THEhovel on foot, stopping a few paces from the ramshackle porch. The Chaos Wizard doesn’t move a muscle for more than an hour. He just stares straight at me with those all-seeing eyes. His timeless gaze is disconcerting, to say the least.
The last time I saw Thanos, I asked if he knew anything about the wizard’s swirling eyes. My childhood protector dropped his voice to a reverent whisper and leaned his battle-scarred face close to mine.“His knowledge is Chaos, infinite but without form. The dark pupils hold all the Gods’ worlds combined. The golden irises reflect the whirling of the stars and the passage of time.”
I don’t know how Thanos knew about the wizard’s mesmerizing eyes. When I asked, he just looked at me in that inscrutable way of his. I was the princess, and he was my guard, and yet I knew better than to question him. If Thanos saidjump, I jumped because it meant someone was swiping at my feet.
The Chaos Wizard finally speaks, his deeply resonating voice at complete odds with his fragile appearance. “Catalia Andromeda Eileithyia Fisa.”
He greets me by my full name, which doesn’t bode well for my whole keeping-the-prophecy-a-secret-at-least-for-now ambition. I’ll tell Griffin. I will. It’s just that acknowledging it to another person makes it that much more real.
Guess what? You want to make a better world? Good luck with that, because I’m going to destroy it.
That conversation is bound to go well.
I lift my hand in a small wave. “Hello.” I don’t know his name, I don’t think anyone does, but I figure it’s polite to at least respond. My own name still echoes in my ears, and my pulse picks up—walk, trot, canter—until my heart is galloping under my ribs.
But nothing else happens. Eventually, the Chaos Wizard’s eyes glaze over again, although his strange stare stays fixed in my direction. I sit down facing the wizard’s porch. I tell the others I think we’re in for a long wait—he stared at me for hours the last time I was here, too—but they stay standing, the Frozen Lake on our left and the grassy field swaying around us.
After a while, Kato slides me a sidelong look. “Andromeda? Fantastic second name.”
A dry smile lifts my lips. “She stamped me from the day I was born, as if that would somehow make it easier to bend me to her will.” I pick a blade of hellipses grass and start peeling the tough layers apart. “Where Mother’s concerned, I do love to disappoint.”
