I understood what she meant. Sever the bonds that held me to my family. Cut out the festering wounds of my humanity.
Light caught on one of the jewels in Rylynn’s hair, reflecting through the window and catching me in the face. For one second, I was frozen. Unable to move, to think, to be. And then the ice broke free.
It shattered the window, sliced through the wall of ivy my coven sister had created as if it had not been there at all. But it did not stop there. Icy power exploded out of me in shards. The frost had claimed my life. Now I claimed my power.
The candles in the guildhall extinguished at once, their flames suffocated by a frozen wind. People jumped out of the way of the glass from the window that shattered inward, avoiding the worst of it.
But not my sister’s betrothed. He jumped in front of her, protected her. The way no one had ever protected me. My power responded to the rage I felt for the girl I’d been, who died alone in the woods. My frost slid not just into his skin, but into his veins and then his very bones. I crushed them, twisted them, held them immutably in place. He crashed to the ground, his knees unable to catch him, the bones in a state of permanent frozen fracture.
Aurienna’s hand closed around my wrist. “We must go.”
The torrent of ice stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I had only seconds to blink, to take in the damage I’d wrought. But even though the power no longer flowed from me, the frost and ice remained.
Aurienna pulled harder. She muttered a spell beneath her breath, and suddenly my feet began to move without my permission. But she could not stop my head from turning, from looking back over my shoulder, or hearing Rylynn’s scream as terror unfolded behind us.
I did not know how to pull it back. I would not master that skill for decades. So, his spine remained permanently frozen in place. His legs remained unmoving. I stole the happiness my sister had found. But instead of keeping it for myself, I drowned us both in misery.
CHAPTER 26
“Dispense justice.The majority will determine her fate.”
The crowd jeered, though the pitch was distinctly female. The men were persuaded by the woman’s beauty, convinced by the show of remorse.
I looked at her again, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Maybe the prisoners were all illusions, created by Edravos, the God of Justice, just like the crowd. If that was true, there was no risk in assigning every one of the five to death.
But I’d felt the old man’s life force flee his body.
Or was that another clever bit of work from Edravos?
“Just kill her and be done with it,” Nash said, waving his hand over his still-crossed feet. He looked like he ought to be drinking a glass of wine or a pint of ale. Snacking on grapes. Casual, where Nimra’s posture was tense, Alize’s carefully upright, and Garrick… I avoided looking his way at all.
“Isn’t that excessive? She hurt someone. She did not murder them,” Nimra argued.
My eyes went back to the woman who’d been charged with my crime. Whether she’d actually committed it or not, we would have to judge her. That was what the Justice Gate required.
But if she’d been charged with my crime… who had committed the rape we’d just punished the old man for?
Nash.
Every muscle in my body tensed, ready to spring forward—when a hand landed on my arm.
“Do not move.”
The effort I’d made to avoid looking at Garrick evaporated. I swung back around, tried to rip my arm free from his grasp, and failed utterly. My power immediately flared in response, my skin turning cold enough to burn. But he did not even flinch.
“You do not command me.”
His hand was burning. I knew it was. It would start off pink, then deepen to red. If he was stubborn enough, the skin would turn black and start to flake away and die. He could lose his entire hand to his effort to keep me in that damn chair.
“If you want to survive the Justice Gate, you will stay in that chair.”
He wasn’t afraid of Nash, I realized. He worried about the wrath of the gods if I tried to walk away.A gate is always near. A god is always watching. Especially now.
Nimra raised her voice behind us. “I will not sentence her to death.”
“Hang her,” Alize’s cold voice said from Nash’s other side. All three of them turned their eyes to Garrick and me.
He made no rush to take back his hand. He let the others see how he held on to me, see that I did not push him away. Then he leaned back in his own seat and crossed his arms over his chest. He may as well have stamped the word ‘mine’ across my wrist along with that damn Lifebind.
