The hum of the silver threads covering her body.
The scent of her hair is like sunlit roses, overcoming the coppery tang of death… Impossible life in a field of snow…
The whispering brush of her shallow breaths against my neck, her breathing a haunted melody filling my ears until it dominates my hearing.
A painful sound that squeezes my cold heart.
I have no way of knowing what happened to her while she was in the Iron King’s possession. I saw her only once during that time, drawn into a strange vision of her, our bodies connected by an icy-blue thread.
In that vision, she was backing away from the Iron King across a white rooftop, so determined to escape from him that she was in danger of plummeting off the edge.
I stopped her from falling by pulling on the thread that connected us. Then the vision ended. I came back to myself to find an assassin’s knife in my chest, and I had no choice but to abandon my pursuit of the Oracle while I recovered. Alone. Surrounded by ice.
I snarl softly into the rushing wind.
Well. The Oracle will escape the Iron King this time.
I’ll fucking see to it.
Even if I have to ignore the frozen cruelty that awaits her if I succeed in taking her with me.
My churning thoughts stop, brought to an abrupt halt as Nara leaps from the tunnel’s edge and out into the dark night.
I was ready for a swarm, but the sky around us is clear, the silence unnerving as we sail through the air toward the ridge.
Far behind us, faint shrieking echoes from the distance, the sounds of a fight I can’t risk looking back to see.
I don’t allow myself to breathe easily.
Safety is a fucking illusion. Always.
Just as Nara’s front paws touch rock and the mountain range stretches out before us—a path to safety—an immense gush of wind rushes across us.
A flying figure blurs at the corner of my eye, approaching too fast to evade.
Our downward momentum is against us.
As Nara’s legs bend to take the impact of her landing, the Iron King hits us from the side.
In that heartbeat, I catch the flash of black claws on his fingertips—ten of them, all extended—as he reaches for the Oracle, ready to rip her away from me.
My left arm was already free and ready. My palm connects with his shoulder in the nick of time, a torrent of ice pouring into him, knocking him back through the air before he can get a hold of her.
He quickly rights himself, coming to an abrupt halt mid-air and spearing back toward us.
I have mere seconds to call to Nara. “Go slow. Keep the Oracle safe.”
Quickly draping the Oracle across Nara’s back as best I can in the time I have, I wait another heartbeat for Nara to slow down and stop before I jump from her back.
Landing at a run, I extend my arms, one after the other, and pour ice across the mountain ridge and upward, creating frozen pillars in the Iron King’s path, forcing him to zigzag between them.
He’s quick, strong, and, unlike with me, gravity doesn’tdictate his movements. I have to be smart about how I approach this fight, or he’ll defeat me.
What’s more, I can’t assume that ordinarily mortal wounds will kill him. The only sure way to end him will be to take off his head.
The pinnacles slow him down for the seconds I need to calculate my next moves, a sequence of strikes and counterattacks, maneuvers that can use his rage and mindless need to reach the Oracle against him.
My intentions solidify like freezing dewdrops.
