Regret. Sadness. Maybe even reverence for Thyra’s passing power. All the emotions that should come with the tears escaping my eyes and falling down my cheeks, where they quickly freeze.
These tears are as empty as I am empty.
Lowering my forehead to Thyra’s, I murmur into her upturned ear, “It’s up to you now, Oracle. You must decide if you will live or die.”
She doesn’t respond. Her shallow breaths tickle my neck, her lips so white, their outline is barely perceptible. Her right arm is bent between us, the way I pulled her toward me, jamming her elbow into my ribs, but it’s hardly the worst discomfort.
Around us, the snowstorm intensifies, and visibility reduces to a mere foot in every direction. Whirling snowflakes pluck at my back and hair, tugging at Thyra’s upper arm, nearly lifting it, as if the wind would claim the Dragonstone Blade for its own.
At the same time, the faintest glow of golden light shimmers between us, and for a moment, I’m certain I can see,once again, the threads that extended from her body on the first day I met her.
Three trail around her chest, appearing at her side where she’s pressed against me, one amber, one blood red, and one icy blue.
When I first met her, the blood-red thread had connected her to Antony, the amber thread had connected her to Maxim, and the icy-blue thread had dragged at my heart.
Now, all three threads slide between her chest and mine, and it’s only as their ends appear that I realize they’re slipping away from her body, unanchored to her.
The icy-blue thread is untethered from me.
Abandoning both of us.
My instincts fire, and my left hand snaps out, grasping all three threads before they can float away.
Sharp energy burns my palms, coming from the threads, a powerful sensory mix of cold and heat and thirst. Energy that can only reflect the nature of each of us kings: Frost, Ember, and…fuck me…not Iron, but Vampyr.
But, even more startling, a fourth thread becomes visible at her back.
I saw this thread, too, on the day I met her, but it was unclear to whom it was attached. It’s still unclear.
The black thread pulls taut in the air, its dark light glowing sharply against the intensely white backdrop of swirling snow.
That thickening, darkening cord appears fully anchored to Thyra’s back, not severed like the ones I grip desperately in my hand, a line of inky energy that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Even Nara shrinks away from it, snarling savagely and gnashing her teeth, as if she wants to tear it apart but at the same time won’t dare touch it.
With a sudden jolt, the black thread tugs on Thyra’s body.
But I can’t let it take her.
My left arm clamps around her, gripping the three threads at the same time, and I only narrowly manage to avoid wrapping my arm across the black thread too. Its energy sizzles in my ears, sparking at the nearness of my arm, but I won’t let Thyra go.
The wind intensifies, billowing harder, thrashing around us, fighting my hold, plucking and wrenching at Thyra.
I take a sharp breath as her upper arm—her right arm—slips free of my hold and, before I can catch it, floats up and back, as if pulled to the black thread.
Before I can stop it, the back of her hand hits the dark thread.
Black light flares across the blood bind etched on her skin. The dark thread instantly whips toward her wrist, snaking around her arm like a chain.
A fearsome shriek fills the air, tearing through my sensitive hearing. I don’t know where the scream is coming from. All I can tell is that it’s from far away, but the sound is somehow traveling through the thread, making it hum and vibrate.
I’ve heard a scream like this before. It’s the shriek of wood when a living tree is being felled.
Every instinct in my body is on fire. A growl grows in my throat.
As quickly as I can, I snatch at her arm, pushing it toward her torso while I fight to hold on to the three threads at the same time. Thyra’s body is impossibly light and the black thread’s pull impossibly strong. Where that thread leads or who might be at the end of it, I don’t know and have no way to tell.
But if I let her go…
