“Besides.” A heated breath tickled the back of my neck. Every hair stood on end. “You’re stuck here, and you know it. So, what have you actually got to lose?”
Fingers tucked in tight, knuckles white and veiny, I asked, “And what are these so-called magic words?”
Lips grazed my earlobe. My insides coiled, every inch of me screaming to run. “We have to whisper. Eyes everywhere, you know.”
It took everything in me to keep those fists at my sides, to latch my jaw tight, to fight the unsteady lurch of my pulse.
“Aelphicas leges advoco. Ad veniam proelium. Ad misericordiam certamem. Ad gratiam mors,” he said, before stepping away.
When I turned, the cavern was empty.
Chapter 30
Aelphicas leges advoco. Ad veniam proelium. Ad misericordiam certamem. Ad gratiam mors. I repeated those words over and over under my breath on my way back to my rooms: muttering them in the twilit atrium, where an elf was plucking the leaves off the icy tree; memorizing the inflections down the gilded halls; keeping them on the tip of my tongue in the frosted elevator.
Nervously twirling the ends of my hair, I threw open the door to my rooms. My heavy steps carried across the floor, the mirrored hutches shaking. “Aelphicas?—”
“River!” Flames billowed in the fireplace, a flash of smoky orange and red. Eldi’s words were pitched and quick. “I don’t mean to pry but I overheard Her Highness briefing you on the avalanche. Are you okay? Did the castle get hit? What about the elves?”
My stomach sank as if wrapped in steel chains. The poor fire nymph had been an anxious crackle of embers waiting for me to return. I fed her another log, letting the fire grow bright.
“I’m okay. They’re…” I flopped onto the couch and rested my neck on the velvet arm. “Mostly okay. There were a couple casualties.”
“Megi hvíla á himnum.” It was barely a whisper among the flames.
As the cushions enveloped me, the day caught up to me, and my entire body grew heavy. Mesmerized by the elemental dance, my lids slowly started to fall. The ogress’s cave, the chaos, the dungeon, the pool, all stolen by the swift cloak of sleep.
“I just…” I yawned. “Need to take a quick nap. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
“Of course.” She billowed gently. “Get some rest.”
“Can you tell me a story?” I asked sleepily.
A pop. “I—I’m not sure I remember how.”
“Sure you do.” I nuzzled my cheek into a fringed pillow. “Start with the truth. That’s where all stories come from.”
I’m not sure if Eldi ever told me that story—the low whine of the whistling flames was the last thing I heard before the room fell to a cozy blackness, and I drifted off.
The young woman stood at the edge of the black cliffs, overlooking the bubbling lake of fire. Pop, it went. Blurp, it bubbled. Agitated, restless.
It wasn’t like Mount Etna to erupt like this. Not so frequently, not so violently.
Ever since the elves had declared their alliance with the angels, the country had become a bloody warfront. And those things. They crawled out of her crater, dripping in her fire.
Grotesque, hungry. Fiendish.
Steam rose from the crags. The woman’s bare feet were used to the searing heat, her bronzed skin dappled with moisture. To most, it would be incinerating, but for her, it was invigorating.
She turned away from her beloved volcano, a tear so hot it sizzled streaking down her face. This would be the last time. She knew it deep in her core.
Their entire world had come undone, yet the containment spell hadn’t passed the boundaries of Lokahryggur. Why? Why were her people the only ones worth saving?
The woman’s bright red hair flapped in the mountain’s wind. In this light, it rippled like a flame.
The fire folk didn’t usually act out of desperation, but that was the only emotion burning through her as she tore through the highlands.
With nothing but sheer will, she’d kissed her children goodbye that morning. Another last. Another wrong to fuel her anger.
