She gives the tiny cabin a cautious look. Dust motes drift through the air, and she covers a cough.
Hold your breath for a moment, I send down the bond.
Once she complies, I summon my winter magic, calling forth a swirl of wind to throw open the windows and sweep the dust away. Sunlight streams inside, and when the air finally shines clear, with no hint of floating dust, I command the wind to settle.
Isabel lowers her hand from her mouth and slowly releases the breath she had been holding. Her gaze drifts around the cabin’s interior. There is not much here beyond a narrow bed pushed into a corner, a rough-hewn table with two stools, and a stack of wood next to a cold hearth.
“It will do,” I say.
For a moment, neither of us moves. The silence between us is thick, weighed down with the tragic scene we came across in the forest and the difficulties that lie ahead. I set all three bags I’m carrying on the table and search through my rucksack for fire-starting stones.
I add wood and kindling to the hearth, crouch beside it, and strike the stones together until a spark ignites into a proper fire. As the glow spreads through the cabin, I walk around the perimeter of the place, closing the windows with a touch of magic, a brief swirl of blue from my fingertips, that will prevent anyone from opening them from the outside. I do the same with the door.
Behind me, I feel Isabel’s grief brushing against mine through the bond. Not pity, but shared sorrow. She didn’t know the fae bodies strewn about the forest with arrows in their backs, but she shares my grief, nonetheless. Not just grief, but outrage. Until now, she would never have imagined her people could kill women and children so easily. There were more females than males in the clearing, and those six children…
Those little bodies.
My throat tightens.
Isabel comes to stand beside me, close enough that the warmth of her presence reaches through the coldness that has started to encase my heart.
“I’m so sorry about your people,” she says quietly. “Oh, Gideon. I’m just so very sorry.”
Her words and gentle presence wash over me, comforting and grounding. I place a hand over hers and turn to face her.
“I should have been there,” I say. “I am Lord of Frostfall. They are my people, my responsibility, and I failed them.”
“You could not have known. Your brother… he can’t send messenger birds like you. He had no way of warning you.”
“The situation must be dire in Frostfall if he sent his mate ahead without him. Gods, I cannot believe he sent her with a group and without a highborn fae escort.”
The only weapons I glimpsed among my fallen people were a few knives and swords, though faefolk who are not part of anarmy typically are not very skilled at fighting, especially when they are outnumbered by humans or orcs.
I cast a glance toward the nearest window, eyeing the position of the sun.
“It will be dusk soon,” I say. “Even if I fly, I do not believe I could reach Hollins to visit your father and then make it back to the cabin before nightfall. Protective wards or not, I do not want to leave you here in the dark. I will go tomorrow at first light.”
Even when I go off to battle, I will leave a few fae soldiers behind to watch over her, just to be safe. The mere thought of any harm coming to her makes me want to roar with rage.
“Youwill go?By yourself?” Her expression turns troubled. “Please, Gideon. Please take me with you.”
I study her face, taking in the worry darkening her eyes.
“You wish to see your father.”
She nods. “Yes. If battle is truly coming, I need to know he is safe. I know you plan to warn him, but I think he will be more inclined to listen to me.”
“If you truly wish to come, there is something you should know. Though I will warn him, I intend to glamour him as well. I will glamour him to remain at the inn during the battle, and also to keep his tongue from wagging. I will not risk him warning the townsfolk of the impending attack.”
Unease pulses through the bond, a rush of fear. Not fear for herself or for her father, since she trusts I will keep them both safe, but fear for the humans in Hollins. Fear for what the Winter Court army might do to them.
When we attacked Braemar, we didn’t just kill the soldiers. We killed anyone else who happened to be in the streets offering resistance, sparing only the children. Thousands died.
An image flashes through the bond.
It is the view from her bedroom window at her home in Braemar. The nighttime streets lie in terrible stillness, too manyhouses resting in total darkness, no lanterns burning in the windows because the occupants are dead.
It is an image that affected her deeply in the aftermath of the battle, one she still sometimes dreams about.
