“I am first lieutenant. You will do as I say, or I’ll be forced to believe you’re sympathetic with our enemy.” She shot me a challenging look, then vaulted over the barricade.
After spitting out a curse, I followed.
We jogged toward the caravan in silence. Unlike Ghoa, the ground didn’t harden beneath my feet, so my boots sunk with every step, making crunching prints in the snow. I fell back a length, then two.
“Wait,” I rasped.
But another blinding flash erupted from the wagons followed by what could have been cheers or screams. It was impossible to tell which. Ghoa, of course, assumed the worst.
“Hurry,” she said, breaking into a full sprint.
I ducked my head and urged my legs faster, imagining the field was a frozen pond and I was skidding across it—smooth and fast and effortless. To my surprise, it worked. The snow beneath me grew firmer. My boots didn’t make any sort of print. I was almost as fast as Ghoa.
The realization made my head snap up. Ghoa was still several lengths ahead, and a wake of pale-blue ice stretched behind her like the train of a wedding gown. The air spinning off her hit my lungs like a blowtorch. Her chestnut hair was completely white with frost.
“Ghoa, stop!” I cried, but the words froze on my tongue. Blinding pain doubled me in half. It felt like daggers of ice had been rammed down my throat, freezing me from the inside out. Before I could reach her, she flung out her arms and pointed her palms at the caravan.
For a second, nothing happened and I nearly crumpled with relief. But then the ground groaned and the air crackled and every flake of powdery snow sprang into the air. They gathered into a wall of twinkling mist that crashed forward like a wave—even faster than the dust storms that ravaged the deserts of Verdenet. It swept past gnarled larch trees, entombing their branches in ice. A grazing deer lifted its head and, as the cold raged past, froze with its ears pricked and its tail flicking.
Horror dropped me to my knees. Since I was behind her, I wasn’t caught in the path of the deadly cold, but I might as well have been. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Ghoa had summoned Standing Death.
It hurtled toward the caravan that could be Zemyan scouts … or merchants traveling to the market at Nariin.
Quick, Enebish. Do something.
Threads of darkness buzzed around my face, but that would only blind the poor souls as the lethal cold washed over them. So I lifted my palm and reached for the fiery stars nestled in the fabric of the universe. Gripping a handful of scorching tails, I slashed them downward, praying the heat would offset Ghoa’s cold. Or at least hinder it. Perhaps it would spare a portion of the camp.
But my arm never completed the arc.
Ghoa spun on me, her saber drawn. “You will not take this from me!” she roared as steel sliced through my arm, carving through muscle and tendon and bone. My eyes widened. I crashed to the snow. Pain erupted from every nerve, sparking up my shoulder and flashing through my fingertips. The starfire slipped away, leaving only blood in my palm—hot and thick and pooling fast. Ghoa’s saber rose and fell again, this time biting into my thigh. I howled through chattering teeth and sank deeper into the snow, deeper into the blackness sweeping across my vision.
I ground my teeth. Fought to keep my eyes open. Through a misty veil of shadows, I watched Ghoa sprint the final few lengths to the now decimated wagons. She threw her head back, her frost-tipped hair swinging behind her as she laughed and whooped, reveling in her extraordinary accomplishment. She had called Standing Death. She was numbered among the Ice Heralds of legend. If that weren’t enough to ensure the Sky King’s endorsement, rooting out these Zemyan spies would be.
But Ghoa’s cheers faded abruptly when she stumbled over something small and limp—a tiny dark bundle that she hurled away the moment she picked it up. A child’s doll, I realized as it skidded across the snow. Ghoa tripped over a gnarled walking stick. Then a cooking pot. A necklace of coral and jade snagged on the heel of her boot. Woodenly, she crept forward to inspect the nearest body, then the next. There were dozens of frozen corpses sprawled at her feet, and even from where I lay, I could tell they weren’t the pale-eyed, armor-clad Zemyans she had expected.
“No,” she said quietly—a strangled, dying sound. “No, no, no!”
She shoved her fingers into her frost-crusted hair and staggered back, tripping over her blundering feet. The Sky King would never forgive her for this. She would be ruined and punished, stripped of everything.
I expected her to scream, to fall to her knees and cry, but she started pacing and muttering instead. The wrongness of it crept across my skin like frostbite. Using all of my strength, I pushed up on one elbow. “What have you done?”
Ghoa stopped abruptly and whipped around. “You’re awake?” She jogged toward me, slowing when she neared the deep crimson stains seeping through the snow around me.
“I told you to stop. I tried to make you stop, but you …” I glanced down at my arm and leg, and my voice caught with pain. Ghoa looked straight through the gore, as if it weren’t real. Her voice was firm, yet calm. Coaxing almost.
“Ihadto counteract the threat, En. We couldn’t take any chances. It was a necessary risk, but we needn’t ever speak of it again. We’ll tell the Sky King a band of Zemyans attacked the nomads. And you were injured fighting them off. He will never know the truth.No onewill ever know.”
“Iwill know!” I thundered. The effort left me gasping. “Innocent people are dead, Ghoa! You killed them. And attacked me.”
“So you plan to turn me in?” Tears seeped from her eyes and left icy trails on her cheeks. “I’ll be stripped ofeverything.Warriors have been put to death for lesser offenses. And I didn’tmeanfor this to happen.”
“That’s precisely what makes you so dangerous,” I said before I could stop myself.
Ghoa’s beautiful face went slack—pale and white and emotionless, like the doll she had pitched to the snow. Then her features slowly pinched into something sharp. She dropped to her knees and bunched my coat in her fists. Pain crashed through my limbs as she shook me. “I saved you from that burning hut. I gave you everything. We arefamily,Enebish.”
“I know, but I can’t just forget what you did.”
