“Hello, Sebastian.” Her voice carries across the distance as if she’s standing right beside me. “I have been looking forward to seeing you again. I missed you so very much.”
Like hell she did.
I can’t respond. It’s taking everything in me not to fall to the ground.
I grit my teeth and growl from the pain of trying to stop her. Of trying to pull back. It doesn’t work.
I drop to one knee.
The mud soaks through my trews; cold against my skin. My hands shake. I think I might be dying. My life force is being taken now.
I’m sure I hear Isla screaming. I want to turn to look, but I can’t. I can’t so much as move a muscle.
My other knee hits the mud.
The last thing I see clearly, before my vision fades to gray, is the smile on Snow’s face. She’s completely insane. There is no humanity left in her. She’s nothing like the beautiful young lady I remember.
Nothing.
28
Isla
Sebastian is swaying. He looks like he might fall at any moment, and the scream that tears from me is raw and desperate. My voice is swallowed whole by the roar of the battle around me.
Snow stands with her arms open and her head tilted back, drinking him in. His shadows flow into her, dark ribbons pulled from his body and absorbed beneath her skin. A golden light starts to bleed from him as well; it’s faint but unmistakable.
I’m sure it is his life force.
He drops to one knee.
I choke in horror as he sags. His hands drop to the churned earth, and his head bows. He looks like a man praying, only none of the gods are coming to save him.
I have to do something soon, or she will kill him. She will drain every last drop of magic and life from his body, and she will win. Everything we fought for, everything we bled for, will be gone.
My magic is nothing compared to his. I know that, but Sebastian did say that I was powerful.
That I’m more powerful than I think.
I have to try.
Right now, I don’t have a single thing to lose. I swing my leg over the thornback’s spine and jump, using my magic to help me land more softly.
Thankfully, it’s not so cold that my firefae magic won’t work. I just have to be sure to stay away from the queen because all around her is ice, snow, and frost.
I start running for open ground.
Bodies litter the field. I leap over a fallen soldier, dodge the swipe of a blade that wasn’t aimed at me, and keep going.
“Isla!”
The voice comes from behind me, and every hair on my body stands on end. I come to a halt, the hair on my body standing on end.
No!
It can’t be.
I know that voice. Even though I haven’t heard it in many summers, it’s as if it were yesterday.
