“Yes, Lord.” She pauses. Her heart speeds up. “Am I to personally return these men?”
I consider the heightened anxiety in her voice.
The cruelest punishment I could bestow on her would be to force her to visit her former master.
But that’s an interaction I’ve ensured doesn’t happen. And won’t happen. I need her focused. Clear-headed. Not consumed by the past.
“You are not,” I say.
Her slow exhalation screams of her relief.
I lean toward her. “But this is not the end of it, Lilis. Cleaning up this field is only the beginning of your punishment. There will be more to come.”
I register the hitch in her breathing as I sweep past her. “Find your wolf. Retrieve your blades. I expect you to ride ahead of us to the palace.”
I’m already past her when she responds faintly. “Y-Yes?—”
Athumpsounds behind me.
My shoulders tense. I half-turn.
She has crashed into the snow, landing on allfours. Blood drips from the cut on her face, and her palms leave crimson smears across the ice as she struggles to push herself upright.
But it’s the wound across thebackof her head that draws my attention now, a wound she concealed from me until this moment and which, even with my power, I did not detect.
Damn.It was a bad blow to her skull. Miraculous she survived. And now it’s apparent that her injuries are worse than I thought.
I can’t take her to a healer for the same reasonIcan’t go to a healer.
A wounded leader is a weakened leader, and a weakened leader is vulnerable. Likewise, the general of my army cannot be vulnerable.
I didn’t lie to Thyra about the harsh realities of my kingdom.
Across the way, Thyra has half-risen, as if she would lurch forward to help us.
I give her a sharp shake of my head.
Even here, where it is just the three of us—four, if I count Nara—our merciless reality prevails.
The corners of Thyra’s mouth turn down as she sinks back to the snow.
To Lilis, I say, “Get up.”
Her heart is pounding, but her next inhalation becomes a near sob.
Gratitude. Not pain.
If I thought her weak, I would leave her huddled in the snow. I would simply walk away and abandon her right here and now. I would not have commanded her as I just did.
With a whimper, she throws herself upright, her hand fluttering to the back of her head, a cry leaving her lips that cuts off abruptly as she clamps her teeth together.
Her chest heaves as she struggles to remain standing.
Taking a slow step to my left, I circle her, allowing my frost power to rise and strengthen, to flow through my body and radiate a chill into the air around me.
Lilis may fear my touch, as all of my people do. I’ve made it clear that my touch means death. But my ice may be of benefit to her now. Just as I used it to cauterize Thyra’s bite wounds…
With a casual sweep of my palm across the air behind Lilis’s head, I coagulate the blood still flowing from that wound. Then, as I round her, I sweep icy air across the bloodied cut on her face.
