The iron spikes shoot from the wall—both those connected to the chains at his wrists and those at his ankles—and he collapses forward.
Rhonin catches him with a smile. “You get yourself into the worst trouble, old man.”
A weak grin tugs Alexus’s mouth. “Yeah, well, it’s about to get worse if we don’t get out of here.”
I don’t hesitate. Rhonin and Hel already know what to do. Hel drops her sword, and we buckle our daggers into our sheaths. They each wrap an arm around my waist as I step close to Alexus and clasp his face in my hands.
“Oh, fuck. Not again,” is all he gets a chance to say before I think of the inn and carry us into the abyss.
52
NEPHELE
The moment they’re gone, I feel their absence.
I stop my pacing near the mausoleum and lift my eyes to the flames dancing in the sky to the west. Jolted by the knowing inside me, I spin around.
“Now, Joran! Water magick, now!”
He’s sitting on a tombstone, leaned back as though there aren’t innocent people less than three hundred strides away fighting a fire with all they have.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as he gets up and walks toward me, his steps longer, his gait different. More like a prowl.
“You know,” he says, his voice so composed, “sometimes all the best plans get demolished by one simple mistake.” He stops beside me, a strange look on his face as he watches the flames. “Like a suggestion made but not thought through.”
I have no idea what he’s rambling on about, and I do not care. “Just do the magick, Joran,” I spit, slicing my hand through the air toward the Malorian Sea.
“Are you sure?” he says.
“Yes! We’ve had this conversation. This is your part in the game. Now help them!” When he doesn’t move, I step close and get in his face. “I swear to the gods, Joran, if you fail these people out of sheer spite or whatever bastard behavior this is, I will create a construct and cage you inside it, and I might never let you out.”
He laughs and stares me in the eyes. “If only a cage held any fear for me, witch.”
Suddenly, a rolling fog creeps across the cemetery, and the tepid night air turns cold. Not cool, but frigid, icy as midnight in the dead of winter in the North.
Something moves in his silver eyes, a tiny fleck of swirling gold in the center of his black irises. But before I can think too much of it, he points over my shoulder. “Watch.”
I turn around, expecting a storm, perhaps. A hard, pounding rain conjured from the sea.
But no. It’s…
It’s snowing.
Snowing. In the Summerlands.
As though propelled by panic, I hurry forward, but I stop, panting in disbelief once I can truly see what’s ahead of me.
It is snow. Thick as the greatest blizzard, a deluge of so many snowflakes, the sky over the fire is a curtain of white against the night sky.
“Snow?” I shout, balling my hands into fists. It will work—only because he’s sending down so much of it—but… “Is this some sort of mockery directed at me?” I ask, spinning again to face him.
My blood ices, and I draw my dagger, because Joran isn’t standing behind me anymore. He’s on the ground, splayed face first over a grave like he fell from the sky.
Looming over him is a creature I’ve only ever seen once, from a distance. A tall, naked being with crystalline skin and white hair down to his narrow waist.
I skim a measuring glance over him, from his amber eyes to his pointed ears, to his claw-tipped fingers, to his sinewy torso, and the muscled hind legs of a beast.
Neri.
