Ezryn snatches the chains around Perth’s wrists and yanks hard. “How are you conjuring this wickedness?”
But Rosalina answers, her voice a panicked cry. “It’s not him! Farron, look out!”
Farron blinks rapidly, standing alone now on the crest of a small hill, scroll in hand. “What’s happening—”
But he doesn’t finish his words. Dark ice crawls up his legs, over his torso, and quickly devours him—like it did to Koop and Flicker.
Farron!My heart constricts.We’ll get him out, we’ll get him out.
A cloaked figure emerges from behind Farron, a deep green crystal crown glowing on his head. “Ah, the first monster that tried to end me. It will besoeasy to shatter him this way.”
That voice. I fucking know that voice.
He throws off his cloak, and I see the twisted features of Lucas. But he’s changed, now one of those wraiths. His skull appears fractured, frozen back together by frost. A sickly greenish-blue glow courses over his frozen body. Huge icy mounds grow over his shoulders and arms, and jagged spikes stick out of his chest. What sort of monster has Perth turned him into? And he has one of those crowns…
It’s as if I can sense Ezryn and Kel’s thoughts as my own. He will die.Again.
Keldarion drops Perth in a heap, draws his blade, and storms toward Lucas. “One death wasn’t enough for you?”
“Wait, Kel don’t—” Rosalina yells.
But he doesn’t listen. Kel leaps, sword raised. It connects with Lucas’s neck. There’s a shimmering clang, like steel meeting stone. Keldarion pauses, blue eyes wide as ice skitters from Lucas’s neck onto the sword. It crawls up the blade, then onto Kel’s hands, over his arms. He tries to pull away, but he can’t break free. He casts one horrified look at us before the ice encases him.
Rosalina lets out a terrible cry.
This monster just took down the most powerful fae in the Enchanted Vale. And he didn’t even swing a sword.
Ezryn lets out a furious growl, then nods his helm at me. “Take her and run. I’ll destroy the crown.”
I stumble back almost instinctively at his command. The battle is in chaos as soldiers are swept away by the hailstorm or flee from the deadly ice shards.
“We can’tleavethem,” Rosalina shrieks.
I feel her desperation. Fare, Kel, Ez—I can’t abandon them.
Ezryn charges, but he’s sheathed his sword, not willing to touch Lucas like Kel did. A powerful blast of fire erupts from his palms. It wavers around his body, then falls away.
“Fire isn’t enough. The crown must be destroyed first!” Rosalina calls.
But it’s too late. Lucas throws his hand out, fingers extending into terrifying icy claws. They rake down Ezryn’s chest plate. An icy shell devours Ezryn before he can scream.
Lucas turns, that crystal blazing a sickening bright green. Rosalina clutches her wrist. Ezryn may have healed the skin, but the scar remains, visible or not. “It’s time to shatter your prince,” he says.
I stand in front of Farron’s frozen body, drawing my double blades. “You will not touch him.”
“If you want to be near him so much,” Lucas growls, “then be with him in death.”
A line of ice, quick and slithery, weaves across the ground then strikes at my legs. I don’t even have time to yell before it starts to crawl up my body.
The last thought I have is to swing out my arm, pushing Rosalina away. “Run! Run, Rosie.”
She backs away, looking down at her wrists covered in thorns. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Nothing happens.
The ice reaches my torso, a cold cutting deep within me.
Rosalina looks from us to the battlefield, but she doesn’t move.
