Colden glares at the god as if he could slaughter him. “You son of a bitch. What did you do to Alexus?”
The mist that formed Neri crystallizes, rendering him corporeal yet still white as snow, his skin glimmering like it’s made of stars. He tilts his head, and his amber eyes flare. When he speaks, his voice is so deep and resonating that the forest shudders.
“What didIdo tohim?” The God of the North takes long, stalking steps toward us and looms over Colden. He lowers his head, his neck longer than it has any right to be, and catches Colden’s face in his clawed grip. “I granted him mercy,” he snarls. “Which is far less than he granted me and nothing like what I will grant you.” He fists the crossed chains at Colden’s chest and heaves him into the air until the Frost King’s feet are no longer on the ground. “After three centuries, your time to die at my hand has finally come, Colden Moeshka. And there are no other gods here to stop me this time.”
Colden snarls back at the god. “There are worse fates than death. Be creative, at least, you mongrel.”
Neri growls, a low rumbling noise, and slams the king to the ground. Colden’s body bounces, the wind leaving his lungs in a gust of frosted breath.
Neri waves a hand, and Colden’s chains fall away as though unlocked by ghosts. Colden grabs Neri’s wrist, sending pale blue lines branching and webbing across the god’s pawed hand, ice forming and spreading in chilled vines along the god’s forearm.
But Neri laughs, and before the ice can reach his elbow, he flexes his fingers, and the frozen rivulets shatter and fall away.
“I gave you that power, you pathetic human. And I can take it away. This ismyland,” he says through clenched fangs. “I don’t seat kings. The only crown in the Northlands belongs to me.”
“And yet you’ll stand here while the people ofyour landsuffer a miserable eastern prince who means to raise your enemies from the dead.”
Neri’s face tightens.
“That’s what he wants,” Colden goes on. “To thrive off their power. And yours, too, if he can find a way. Then what will you do? Do you really think he will leave your grave intact for you to return to? If hecan’t take from you, he will make certain you are no more than this”—he gives Neri a belittling once-over—“mist-madething,for eternity.You can forget being a true god ever again.”
A growl leaves Neri, a sound that reverberates across the wood. Fury lights the god’s amber eyes, and he presses a massive hand to Colden’s chest, just over his heart, digging his blackened claws in too deep.
Heart pounding against my ribs, I bring the dagger up, certain that an attack would be a foolish attempt, but I can’t let Neri kill Colden.
Neri turns his beast-like eyes on me, and I can’t move. Not from terror, though there’s plenty of that roiling through my blood. But because he’s stopping me, as though all he had to do wasthinkabout stilling my hand—and the rest of me—and it was done.
The wolf beside me growls and stalks closer, snaps its teeth.
“Just do it!” Colden shouts in Neri’s face. “Just end me if that’s what you mean to do!”
The god slides his amber gaze back to Colden. The dark and vicious look on Neri’s face rattles my soul. It’s the savage expression of someone who enjoys torture and means to dole it out.
“There are far worse fates than death,” Neri replies, face contorting into a sneer. “Isn’t that what you just said? Perhaps I shall let you discover how very true that statement is.”
Neri pulls his hand away, and with it come threads. They’re so luminescent that I squint, astonished and trapped in Neri’s invisible vise as Colden’s long body bows off the ground.
He lets out a hair-raising shriek of misery, and the world around us grows colder than ever before. Colder than the frozen lake. Colder than the bitter wood. Colder than death. Cold, everywhere, chasing a painful chill across my skin, brittling my clothes, glinting on shards of splintered wood, even coating my dagger in a glaze of ice.
With a wrathful howl, Neri closes his fist and jerks his arm back, ripping the threads from Colden’s soul with so much force his blue velvet coat tears open, golden buttons scattering in the snow. Those threads, ice blue and snow white, coil around Neri and melt into his skin, as though they belong inside him.
But…wait. They do.
Neri made Asha a deal. If she gave him her heart once again, thistime for eternity, he would do the thing she could not. He would make Fia Drumera immortal as well, but worse, he would cast within her the element of fire, and in Colden Moeshka the element of frost, that they may never—for all their infinite days—come together again.
Fuck.Neri just removed the curse he placed three hundred years ago.
And stole the Frost King’s power.
Neri cuts his eyes to me again. It’s impossible to look away from his snarling, wolfish face.
“Tell him that Ididsave you.” He growls behind the words. “Tell him that if not for the great God of the North, he would have lost you on the road south. Tell him that if not for Neri’s mercy, you would be nothing more than a bloody stain in the snow. Tell him I will not save you forever. You can both rot in earthen graves for all I care. The White Wolf’s debt is paid. Donotsummon me.”
His eyes shift, lifting to stare intently over my shoulder, the expression on his face one of torturous indecision. Then there’s a shrill, tinkling sound—like glass shattering on glass—and just like that, Neri is gone, leaving behind nothing but a fading, cloudy vapor and a bitter, metallic taste on the back of my tongue. His wolves even retreat, vanishing into the wood, and the white mist he rode in on dissipates through the forest.
His power lets go of me, and I exhale in a rush. Quivering, I shake the blade from my hand, the icy metal sticking to my skin.
I try to puzzle together Neri’s words. He meant for me to tell the Frost King all those things? Why?
