Her use of my former name makes me even more wary.
“Asha?” My tension increases as I wait for her to explain.
She speaks slowly. “Torva’s heart is so pure and good that she would have willingly caused herself pain if I asked her to. To help me, I’m certain she would have let me take Milena’s body to the fae.”
Asha meets my eyes. “Even though it would have meant that Torva, and any humans who love Milena, would have had to endure whatever cruelty Queen Karasi planned for Milena’s body.” Asha’s voice hardens, a snarl once more, but now there are tears in her eyes. Angry tears. “The fae have no right to the body of a Blacksmith!”
“No, they don’t,” I murmur, casting my gaze up into the night sky, where Torva flew. “So you gave Torva a reason to run.”
Just as I gave Asha a reason to hate me enough to leave me to my fate.
Asha nods. “From you, I learned an important lesson: Sometimes, I must be a villain to achieve what’s right.”
Chapter 52
Many times I played the villain, making moves and countermoves to keep Asha safe, no matter how much she hated me.
But always I wondered if there was another way.
There should have been another way.
Graviter’s voice breaks through the silence between Asha and me.
“That little forge will do,” he says with a slight incline of his head at the structures behind him. “You should both seek shelter and warmth before the temperature plummets.”
To Asha, he says, “If I am to help you make a hammer, there are things I must collect. I will leave now, but I will return by midnight.”
Doubt floods Asha’s expression. “But how?” she asks. “How will you help me make a hammer?”
He gives her a smile, all sharp teeth. Without explaining himself, he turns toward the cabin’s entrance.
I’m alarmed when heat waves glimmer around his lips and he breathes out softly across the air. A wash of water runs to the side of the cabin, but it doesn’t catch fire like I thought it might.
“There,” Graviter Rex says. “I’ve removed the built-up snow from around this side of the entrance. You should be able to enter now.”
Then he casts another smile at Asha. “By morning, you will have your hammer, Asha Silverspun. I’m certain of it.”
Her brow is furrowed. So is mine. More so when his focus flicks briefly to me.
All the moves and countermoves I carried out while I ruled the human city—all the plans I set in motion—may as well be nothing now that I’m out here in the wilderness with dragons.
It feels as if I can only control my next breath.
Graviter eases to the side a little, away from the cabin, and I’m not certain how he’s going to take flight from within the cramped space, but like Torva, he bunches his hind legs and uses them to leap higher than the cabin’s rooftop.
His wings snap out and he deftly beats them twice to gain air before he’s far above us.
Asha and I are alone outside my family’s home.
She reaches for me, slipping her arms around my waist, dropping her head to my chest and murmuring, “Don’t stay away from me, Erik.”
I pull her close, feeling how cold her face is when she presses her forehead to my chin.
“We need to go inside,” I say. “And hope it isn’t built up with snow.”
Yet I can’t make myself move.
“Coming here was painful for you,” she says. “We don’t have to stay in this spot. We can trek through the forest and make camp a short distance away. We have enough furs to stay warm.”
