The ice shattered beneath the impact. Bodies crushed flat. Others were thrown outward, limbs snapping as the force of it tore through the dead like they were nothing at all. Claws followed, fast and precise, ripping through bone and spine in a series of violent, efficient strikes that left the swarm collapsing in pieces.
For a moment, the pressure around him broke. The dead shifted, turning toward it, their movement faltering just enough to leave a gap where there had been none.
Colsar lifted his head, vision blurring as he tried to focus. He caught only pieces of it through the snow. Red. Black wings. A flash of something like eyes, bright and wrong against the storm.
It moved again, fast, precise, cutting through another cluster of corpses before rising in a powerful sweep that sent snowspiraling in every direction. For a brief, disorienting moment, it seemed to circle, as though searching the chaos below?—
—and then it was gone.
The sky closed, then the dead surged back in.
Colsar blinked hard, his breath dragging unevenly through his chest. For a moment he wondered if he had imagined it, some last trick of an exhausted mind on the edge of collapse.
Then another corpse lunged for his throat, and the thought vanished with everything else. They swarmed across the final stretch of ice in such numbers that the ground itself seemed to writhe, their bodies pressing together until it looked as though the entire path had begun to move.
Colsar staggered as another bite tore into his side.
Blood flooded his mouth when he coughed, hot against the bitter cold. The world tilted, and for one dangerous moment he considered stopping. Considered letting the cold close over him and end the long, grinding exhaustion of the past six months.
Instead he lifted his head. Beyond the shimmering wards lay Alarna. And somewhere within those distant walls waited Asharin.
He saw her as clearly as if she stood before him, the bright flash of her smile cutting through the gloom of memory, the fierce spark in her eyes whenever she believed he was being particularly insufferable.
Another corpse lunged toward him. He tore it apart without even looking. The wards loomed only strides away now, their pale surface blazing brighter as he approached. Even from thisdistance he could feel the power in them, ancient and absolute, a barrier that had stood against the world for centuries.
Once, perhaps, he might have been strong enough to challenge such a thing. Now he could barely remain standing. Colsar slowed only for a moment. The world had offered him very little worth keeping.
Except her.
He drew a ragged breath that burned all the way down his lungs. “I’m coming, Asha Bear,” he whispered hoarsely, though he knew she could not hear him. Then Colsar lowered his head and hurled himself straight toward the light.
CHAPTER 30
Dice and Diplomacy
"You do realize that half this country wants to kill you, right?" Nyara said lightly as she tossed the dice across the table.
They struck the wood with a loud clatter before tumbling to a stop between us.
"At least they feed me here," I replied, leaning back in my chair with what I hoped looked like composure and not the slow, gnawing frustration that had begun to define my days in Alarna.
Nyara arched an eyebrow. "That is an impressively low standard for survival."
"Well," I said, reaching for my cup, "I also have you to bring me all the gossip. That helps considerably. Although I do wish I lived in the East Quarter instead of this palace. From what you've described, it sounds like all the good gambling happens there."
"The gambling and wine in the East Quarter are impeccable," Nyara said with a grin that made it very clear she had tested both extensively.
Over the past months she had become my most reliable source of information. Singing now at Alarna's Aurelin Theater, she drifted easily through the currents of the city, collecting rumors the way other people collected coins.
All I truly wanted was my husband back.
Time has a way of inviting ridiculous thoughts. I told myself he could not be dead. I told myself he would never forget me. Yet sometimes darker possibilities crept in, unwelcome and persistent. Perhaps he had returned to Rathmor and found me gone. Perhaps he was furious. Perhaps he believed I had abandoned him.
In another version of events he was back in the mountains fighting the undead while Jessamy stood beside him. Sometimes woman, sometimes whatever four-legged creature she occasionally chose to become.
Maybe he decided he wanted her instead.
Maybe he married her.
