She grunted her dissent and trotted ever upward.
The men would never find me—not in this storm. Part of me was relieved. If Gladys was to be believed, Grandmother and the girls were safe, which meant I didn’t have to stay with the men who’d allowed Drake to whip me yet still called themselves heroes.
The cold didn’t nip. Instead, it took sharp bites, leaving my exposed skin raw. The bitter wind howled into my lungs, freezing me from the inside out.
“So cold,” I muttered, teeth chattering.
Bianca chortled.
“I’d like to see you survive Grimswood on a hot afternoon.”
She grunted, and we fell silent.
We traveled for hours and hours and hours.
“I need to stop.” The thought of lowering my pants to pee made my whole body tighten with anticipated chill, but my bladder was filled to bursting.
Bianca put me down, and I ducked behind a tree.
When I emerged, a gallon lighter, I was alone.
“Bianca?”
Snow-wrapped silence answered me.
“I thought we were friends!”
I got more silence as a response.
Great. I kicked a snowbank. Just great. She’d left me alone on the trail.
I waited five minutes, then another five, but Bianca was gone. She’d left me to freeze.
Cold and annoyed, I tilted my face toward the heavens. “Really, Gladys?”
She didn’t respond either.
With no other option, I followed the path. Snow over a foot deep made walking slow; I fell often and swore loudly. “Destiny’s champion, my ass. My frozen ass. Let someone else save the world.” I’d gripe about saving the world all day long, but I refused to waste a single brain cell thinking about what else the pool had revealed. “Save the world? Me? Find a different woman. One who can lead an army.”
That thought brought me dangerously close to thinking about the other visions. Me atop a horse with a sword in my hand, legions spread behind me.
I tripped again and was almost grateful for the resulting face full of snow. “Gladys, you suck. And Bianca, I’m not happy with you either.”
I pushed myself up, pausing as a tingle of pine-scented magic kissed my cold nose. Turning in a slow circle, I spotted a larger break in the trees. The magic was stronger there. I walked until I bounced off a barrier.
“Ouch!” I rubbed my cold, flattened nose. “What now, Gladys?”
Was that laughter in the wind?
I touched the barrier, using just enough wyvern venom to eat away the magic. Then I paused. Gladys had said I needed to leave Legacia. This far north, a border crossing meant I’d beentering Rymar. Legacia and Rymar had been at war my entire life. What would happen when someone spotted a woman wearing a Legacian shield’s uniform?
Gathering the frayed strands of my courage, I ducked through the passageway.
Electricity zipped through my veins, and every nerve ending in my body burned with strange magic. It felt … good. Better than good. It felt freeing, as if crossing the border had unwound a tangled enchantment, as if my lungs were fully inflated for the first time.
I stopped, overwhelmed by the sensation. Had Legacia somehow suppressed my magic? The implications made my head spin. If this was what I felt like in Rymar, what had I been missing my entire life?
The world seemed sharper; my eyes were able to pick up details I’d missed on the Legacia side—the deep green of pine needles, the vibrant red of a holly bush. And the air—I sniffed, discovering smoke and cold—was crisper. I pinched the fabric of my cloak and felt each thread.
