With barely a flick of his wrist, the orb flies from his palm, shooting up into the air so quickly that I can’t follow it.
My breath catches in that moment of quiet.
Then the orb hits the spinning spears at the exact moment the spears collide.
The air explodes.
But not with deadly shards.
The orb and spears shatter, an epicenter of ice that bursts into snowflakes.
Dazzling, sparkling, they erupt across the sky with such force that the airbooms. Then the breeze fills with soft sighs as countless sparkles spread across the city.
It’s impossible to hold my tongue. “Beautiful.”
The snowflakes waft through the air, the gorgeous explosion becoming a gentle snowfall.
Lilis increases her pace, urging her wolf into an easy run, surging away from us for the moment it takes Nara to catch up.
I brace, instinctively leaning forward, my hands planting on the back of Nara’s neck. The white wolf is as attentive as Azul, seeming conscious of my reactions, her gait easing a little, becoming smooth.
At the thought of Azul, sadness rushes through me. I have to believe the giant eagle is alive. He was badly injured but still breathing when I last saw him. I imagine him soaring away from the bloodlands even now, escaping the darkness.
Sunlight glints across my eyes as we race toward the icy wall and the gate in the center of it. Steel bars make up the portcullis, which rises quickly as we approach, no doubt being lifted by soldiers within the ramparts, but from this angle, I can’t see them.
A moment later, we race through the opening, leaving the white expanse behind.
The snow gives way to a wide, stone path, which is completely clear, stretching beyond the entryway and into the city ahead.
We’re moving too fast for me to study the details, butthe quiet hits me. The absence of fae. The brief glimpses of stragglers hurrying off the street and into nearby buildings.
Suddenly, the beautiful display in the sky takes on a different tone.
Not a welcome but a warning:get off the streets.
It’s such a difference from the Starlit City in the Iron Kingdom, where highborn and lowborn alike converge to kneel to the king, even raising their voices when they thought his sister, Cassia, their beloved princess, was hurt.
Here, a fraught silence has fallen.
Whatever work was being carried out, whatever conversations were in progress, whatever lives were being lived, the silence is now punctuated by the snapping of shutters and the thumping of closing doors.
Is it by design?
Has Stellen taught his people to do this?
Or is this their chosen reaction to his presence?
Lilis continues at a faster pace ahead of us, the wide path taking us straight ahead for long minutes until we reach the second wall.
The portcullis is already open, a near-perfect timing to our approach and again, we race through.
Behind this wall, the buildings are low-lying and appear set out in a grid formation. Here, the soldiers stand out in the open, each of them bowing low as we pass by.
I catch a brief glimpse of what could be barracks as well as open spaces—possibly training grounds—before we approach the third and final wall.
The palace rises behind it, frost-blue structures slightly higher than the wall. There are no towers here, but that makes sense, since Frost Fae don’t ride eagles that need landing spaces.
A wide, paved path extends around the outside of the wall,forming an additional buffer between the palace wall and the soldiers’ barracks.
