“A choice that will sacrifice more than you can bear.” Her voice comes as if from far away, making the hairs on my arms rise as she holds up the Dragonstone Blade between us, so near to me I could easily grab it.
Despite the temptation, a distant part of my mind is warningme…
Something is very, very wrong here.
I don’t know why Antony or Maxim hasn’t attacked me. There’s no logic to the way they’ve stayed where they are.
What’s keeping them at bay?
Even as I question what’s happening around me, my misgivings quickly slip away.
The silk ribbon wrapped around the blade sways back and forth, humming quietly, the melody of a hundred harmonious Lethian voices filling my ears, the voices of its weavers.
I’m not sure why I was concerned. The silk is a comforting reminder of my mother’s long-ago songs and the narrow ribbon she wove for my sister, a delicate ribbon my sister wore around her wrist.
I miss them. Suddenly and powerfully. I miss them.
I fight the emptiness rising within me, the hungry cold that consumes my memories, giving myself a hard shake.
A distant part of my mind is roaring at me to block my ears to the hum of magic, thepulldrawing me closer and closer to the Oracle, the warning growing louder until I’m shouting at myself to resist her guile, to pull away from her flawless lips and the desire to breathe every breath she exhales until she consumes me.
Only moments ago, when I asked her what choice I would have to make, she responded with a promise that it would bring me pain, but she hasn’t told me about the choice itself.
“What choice?” I ask again, this time holding urgently onto the logical parts of my mind.
She pulls the blade close to her heart and steps right up to me, daring to press her chest to mine, close enough that if it weren’t for my armor, I would feel the tantalizing rub of her breasts.
She tips her head back, her breath coming faster, and…
Damn…
She smells like snow melting in the first sunlight of spring, a promise of warmth and pleasure.
“Come for me when the stars go out. Find me where the light hides,” she says, her pearly-gray eyes shining like the stars she says will disappear. “Stellen, King of Frost, you must earn what you desire.”
She takes a step back, and suddenly, I’m aware of a startling thread of power tugging at my heart, an icy-blue rope extending from my chest to hers.
Just as alarming, three other threads extend from her body.
An amber thread stretches all the way into the smoke, obscuring Maxim; a blood-red thread reaches across the distance to Antony’s still-concealed form; and a fourth thread, this one as dark as death, coils through the air near the dead man lying behind the Oracle.
At first, I think the fourth thread connects with him, but no, it passes over his shoulder and strikes through the wall of the building he’s leaning against, and I’m uncertain where it leads. I’m also not sure if she’s aware of it because it coils behind her, outside her field of view.
Her voice becomes harsh as she takes a step back from me, her outward beauty rapidly disappearing, her eyes fading back to blue, and her steps suddenly wobbling. “Until then, Stellen, King of Frost?—”
She stops to gasp for breath, beads of sweat abruptly rolling down the sides of her face and cutting through the dusted snow. Within seconds, her cheeks are flushed, and her breathing strained, and I can’t see why.
There’s no explanation for why she’s suddenly struggling to breathe or why her shoulders are slumping, and she’s dripping with sweat, and even though I know I should be concerned about that, a small part of me is filled with anticipation becauseshe is no longer an icy goddess, emotionless, but fierce once more.
“You must let me go,” she says.
Let her go?
A harsh laugh rises to my lips. There is no letting her go. I will not give up her complexity or her feeling or her heart, which she has so openly bared to me with her fury and indignation.
I would rather smash the sacred stone than walk away from her.
“I willnot.”
