Guilt and shame and regret warred within me, making it hard to breathe. I couldn’t focus on this now. There were more important tasks at hand.
Voices echoed from the open window of the house, startling me from my thoughts. There would be a time for introspection later—assuming we survived this at all.
The odds were slim.
With a deep breath, I entered the house, following the sounds of excited whispers and murmurs. When I reached the living room, I found Eira embracing a woman with pale blonde hair I’d seen once before—in Knockspur, when the humans had ganged up on me. She had been the one with the stellar knife skills.
Stella withdrew from the embrace and fixed a cold stare on me, her chin lifting in defiance. “So, the fearsome assassin is still with you, is he?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. But she didn’t draw a weapon on me, so I saw that as an improvement.
“Stella, you shouldn’t even be here,” Eira chided, ignoring my presence completely.
Stella gripped Eira’s hands in both of hers. “I heard whispers that the Snow Princess had been captured. I had to come and see for myself. I knew you wouldn’t have been caught so easily.”
Eira’s shoulders deflated, the motion so subtle I almost missed it. “Iwascaught. Stabbed, actually.”
Stella’s pale eyes grew wide. “Blood and ice, Snow! What happened?” She scanned Eira’s body as if searching for a wound.
Finally, Eira turned to face me, though she wouldn’t look me directly in the eye, for some reason. “Theron brought me to a healer. He saved my life.”
My heart tumbled from the fervor of her words. I swallowed hard, wanting to deflect her praise because it hadn’t been courageous at all. It had been the cowardice of a desperate man.
And in the end, the healer I’d trusted to save Eira had betrayed us. So perhaps it hadn’t been a wise choice after all.
Stella blinked and glanced between us in confusion. “The… assassin? Saved you?”
“Yes.” Eira still refused to look directly at me. Was she angry with me? “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“Eira saved me, too,” I chimed in, feeling completely awkward throughout this whole exchange. “She had plenty of opportunities to let me die. But she fought to keep me alive.”
Stella sniffed. “Well. That’s more than I would have done.”
Eira elbowed her friend. “If you thought I was captured, you should have left. That was the plan.”
“To hell with the plan,” said a gruff voice.
A blade was in my hand as I whirled at the newcomer. From the next room emerged another human, this one also familiar—the burly fellow who’d held an iron blade to my throat in Knockspur.
Denton. The farm boy clearly still enamored with Eira. His dark, intense gaze was fixed on her as if he owned her. Anger simmered in my veins.
Eira straightened. “Denton? Shivering bones!” She raced toward him, throwing herself into his chest. His arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace.
The anger within me boiled over, my teeth clenched so hard my head was throbbing.
“Who else is here?” Eira asked, eagerly looking around as if expecting more of her friends to appear.
But Stella shook her head. “It’s just us. The others are rallying forces and will meet us at the palace.”
“We figured if the two of us died here, the others could still continue with the plan,” Denton explained.
“Didn’t you just sayto hell with the plan?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
Denton’s gaze shifted to me, and his stance went rigid. “I see you haven’t rid yourself of this nuisance yet.”
“You were there when we struck the bargain,” Eira said. “I had no choice.”
“That’s not true. You could have refused to bargain with himat all.”
