Tears flow down my cheeks, and jagged, black rocks bite my hands as I try to crawl across the dark earth.
Such a small distance. So impossible to cross when my body won’t stop shaking and everything around me keeps blurring, and I can barely breathe.
I don’t have the strength to stop the Frost King from killing Antony. All I have is my voice, and so far, it’s done nothing to move Stellen.
I woke to find myself draped over the back of a giant, white wolf, its fur tickling my face and neck as I lie parallel to its spine. Despite the wolf’s careful attempts to stop me, I stepped into the snowstorm raging a mere two paces away from us, only to land on my hands and knees, unable to stop Antony’s death playing out in front of me.
“I am heartless,” the Frost King says to me, the softest whisper carrying across the distance between us, his voice a beautiful hum that defies the cruelty in his icy gaze. “The sooner I prove that to you, the better.”
His focus lingers on me for another moment, so devoid ofemotion, so absent of regret that the weight of darkness threatens to claim me once more.
I fight my blurring vision, the pull of unconsciousness, and the increasing hollow where hope used to live.
The Frost King rips his other sword from the ice wall, the wind plucking his gray robes, swirling his white hair, every angle of his body breathtakingly relentless as he cleaves that blade toward Antony’s neck, ready to strike his head from his shoulders.
A heartbeat. A lifetime.
Antony’s eyes don’t leave mine, and never have I seen so much truth in them as he whispers, “Forgive me.”
Yes.
Just as the Frost King’s sword would connect, a shadow rushes over them.
The top of the ice wall at Antony’s back shatters.
I jolt as chunks of frozen water scatter across the ground, one of them narrowly missing me, another crashing past the white wolf.
A new barrage of frost and snow fills the air as my hazy mind tries to catch up with what happened, focusing on the monstrous blue eagle now shrieking across the top of the ice wall, ripping at it with his talons.
The Frost King leaps backward, landing at a crouch, somehow now holding both of his swords. He must have torn the other one from Antony’s chest when he jumped away.
But… No… That can’t be a good thing…
No longer pinned in place, Antony’s body slides down the ice, his head bowed, his jagged hair falling across his face.
I can’t tell if he’s breathing.
I don’t know if he’s alive.
A choked cry leaves my lips as Azul lands on top of the partially demolished ice wall, his wings spread, hishead lowered toward the Frost King, screeching at him while his talons rip at the ice. Challenging. Threatening. Protecting.
Then, far more softly, Azul calls to me. The briefest call, his focus quickly flashing back to the Frost King.
Stellen rises to his feet, standing tall between us, both swords raised and ready.
For a long moment, they remain like that, the dank wind plucking at Azul’s feathers, tugging at the Frost King’s robes and wafting through Antony’s hair as he remains, slumped and unmoving, red blood smearing the remains of the ice wall behind him.
Slowly, the Frost King lowers his swords.
Then, with a firm nod to the eagle, he says, “I will leave you with your dead.”
No.
He continues. “But the living will come with me.”
Azul’s gaze swings to me, but the bird remains where he is, his wings now closing in a little as if he would cocoon them down and around Antony.
The eagle sends me another soft call.
