He shakes his head. He looks so beautiful, white hair blowing in the wind, a hero on a quest to strike down his shadowy foe.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and I know the words are for Caspian and not me.
He raises the sword above his head.
“Your wrist!” I scream. “Look at your wrist. Your bargain bracelet—it’s still there. Love remains between you.”
“It is only my love that is left, I fear,” he says and arcs the blade down.
“And isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough?”
The ice blade hurls toward Caspian before it strikes the snow with a flurry. Keldarion screams, raw and ragged.
The sound is soon replaced by a dark, mischievous laugh. “You’re correct, Keldarion, hero of Winter. And that love will be the death of you.”
My golden briars fall away in a flash of green flames, turning to ash near Caspian. Like venomous snakes, twin purple briars rise, lacing around Keldarion’s arms and dragging him down to the ground. The sharpened tips spear through his wrists, sending spatters of red along the snow. More briars rise and impale his legs, pinning him to the earth. A broken sound tears from Keldarion, his back arching.
“Kel!” I scream, feeling the pain shudder through him as if it were my own.
Up.I need to get up.
Caspian rises and dusts snow off his clothes before sinking down over Kel.
“Oh, don’t make such horrid noises.” He gently caresses Kel’s face, who grits his teeth and glares. “Did you know how badly I wanted to be your prince? To be saved by the glorious hero? I watched you stride the halls with your Spring consort and imagined what it would be like to hold your hand. I went to bed every night and dreamed of it.”
Keldarion snarls, blood seeping out between his lips.
Caspian tilts his head, long strands of black hair covering his brow. “Mother had commanded me to overtake Winter, but all I wanted wasyou. I think you were the first thing I ever wanted for myself.”
“Y-you had me, Cas,” Keldarion says weakly.
Another briar rises from the snow and drives into Keldarion’s upper arm. “Ineverhad you. You never trusted me. Never loved me. You let your people cast me out and only came down to the shadows to lie in my bed. Now you love yourmatein the sunlight. How perfect for you.”
“Cas,” I say, gripping a rock to pull myself to my feet. “We love you. We both love you.”
Caspian quirks his head toward mine, and a large, sinister smile spreads over his face. “What do you think we should do with him, my queen? Bleed him in the snow or take him to the Below? Oh, my mother’s minions know how to draw out a torture. We can watch from my throne while you worship my body. Your choice, Rosalina.”
83
Farron
Burning, burning, burning. How good it feels to be engulfedin such glorious heat. To hear the sizzle and crack of living things around me. To smell the bark char. For only from ashes can the world truly be reborn.
Nestled in my cocoon of fire and bark, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Soon, I will be free of this wooden prison. How stupid he is, to think any structure could contain me. That’s why he must die. My master commands it.
Kill the metal one.
A piece of tree falls away, and I peer through the flames to see Dayton encased in wood. How glorious he was, fighting beside me. A true warrior of the Green Flame. Though no flames flicker from his tree. He is new. Unused to these powers. I will teach him. He will learn.
First, I will break free and turn every rock and root in this place to ash. When it melts, Spring steel smells like how one might imagine starlight smells. Twinkling and shining on the tongue.
“Stop, Farron!” the metal man’s voice pleads. “Come back to yourself. This isn’t you!”
It is me. Reborn, as the world shall be. And his ashes will fertilize the new world.
But whose new world?
A voice cuts into my subconscious. A friend’s voice. Not Master Caspian’s.
