The offer repeated in my mind, and something about it had me squinting at the mists’ shape—which wasn’t symmetrical. It came at us like a horseshoe, Kaelun’s side filling in faster, making it more of a deformedJ.
Whatever this magic did, they didn’t actually want it touching me.
“Come on,” I said to Kaelun, then bolted for the hole to our left without warning.
We cleared the mist as Lothar spewed curses our way. I glanced over my shoulder to check that Kaelun was right behind me before I put my head down and ran with everything I had despite how weak I felt.
A scream rang out behind me before a loudthudsounded, and my veins turned to ice as I came to a screeching halt. Whipping around, I saw Kaelun fall to the ground, his legs covered in barbed vines.
“No!” I cried.
I raced back to him, throwing fire at the vineswith him, but they grew faster than we could keep up. “You need to valen us, Kaelun,” I said, panicked. “I don’t care where, just get us out of here.”
“Grab my hand,” he said, looking down to where the vines held them at his sides.
I dropped to my knees, and just as I was leaning forward to reach for him, a wall of thick ice formed between us.
No. No. No. No.
I pressed my palms against it, calling upon my fire magic, but like the vines, I couldn’t get through it as faster than it reformed.
“You know…” Lothar’s voice taunted from my side as he stepped through the dark mist with a self-satisfied smile. “You could’ve avoided all of this.”
I wobbled as I pulled for the spark.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk,” he said, then threw his hands out, trapping me in a dome of ice.
The sharp cold threw me back to those panicked moments with Amos—only this dome was solid ice, at least a foot thick, and forced me into a crouched position so that I could barely move. My cage was remarkably clear, as if I were looking through a window, but with what came next I wished I’d been blind and deaf.
Kaelun lay on the ground helpless, the side of his face pressed against the hard slate as he struggled to breathe from the barbed vines wrapping around his entire body. He looked up at me, eyes full of fear and apology, and he couldn’t even see Njal slowly approaching him, a ball of blackness poised to kill.
“Valen!” I screamed at him. “Kaelun, you need to valen yourself away. Please!” I pleaded, banging my hands against the ice. “Please, Kaelun. Now!”
“I can’t leave you,” he choked out through a strangled breath.
Njal made to deal the killing blow.
“Noooooooooooo!”
Fear and grief flooded my veins, and I lost all sense as the world collapsed in on me.
Kaelun screamed and writhed in his prison of vines as Njal’s darkmagic burned through the back of his leathers. More pressure pressed against me as I screamed and cried and begged for the gods to save him.
One second I was banging against the ice; the next, a shadowed figure tackled Njal from the side.
Kaelun’s screaming ceased only to be replaced by mine as pressure—so intense I thought I’d collapse in on myself—crescendoed until it finally burst from me, shattering the ice dome into a massive, billowing cloud of mist.
Under the cover ice mist, I took out Eithan’s dagger and lunged toward Kaelun, cutting away the vines, only to find another set of hands helping.
“Tarrin!” I cried out, stopping myself from throwing my arms around him in favor of getting our fae friend free.
Tarrin winked at me. “Didn’t think we’d leave without you, did ya?”
“My brother?” Kaelun croaked, still too bound to move.
“He’s alive. Dealing with Njal as we speak.”
“Thank the Mother,” Kaelun breathed.
