Every droplet has frozen over.
Snowflakes gather between him and me, each one sparkling and…
Mymind drifts.
His lips glide to my ear, and this time, the note he sings floats through my hearing. Softly strumming. Softer than the whisper of a white rose petal falling in a blade vision.
The harmony pulls my focus from the ring of steel and thewhoosh-whooshof air as he draws one of his swords and slices the weapon back and forth.
Whatever he’s cutting, I can’t see it.
Again comes the soft ring of steel as he returns his blade to its scabbard and hurries forward, this time turning side-on.
Finally, I can discern what we’re headed toward—or, rather, now movingthrough.
The breath stops in my chest.
A line of amethyst trees, unnatural and unsettling in their color, rises up on either side of us, but instead of leaves, their intertwining branches are covered in white spiderwebs.
Intricate threads create a thick lattice between tree trunks and branches, forming an opaque wall that stretches as far as I can see, obscuring whatever lies behind it.
Except where the king has cut them.
The loose ends of the web trail in the breeze, the nearest strands unraveling, each thread slipping away from the others so that the curtain opens further.
Through the widening gap, I make out a thick forest, and while he remains turned to the side, I glimpse a narrow path curving into the distance ahead of us.
The Frost King hurries through the opening, hunching his shoulders, making himself small and, as far as I can tell, avoiding touching any part of the web.
Mere paces in the other direction, outside the forest, the storm continues to rage, a freezing blizzard in which the white wolf strides back and forth, edging toward us and then back again, thrashing her head as she moves.
She’s clearly agitated, but she doesn’t come after us.
What could possibly make her feel safer in that frozen landscape than the unnervingly quiet forest we’re stepping into?
Three steps past the webbed barrier, darkness drops across us again, as deep as the perpetual night in the bloodlands.
Now that I’m facing backward again, I have a full view of the web rapidly healing itself, the loose ends catching against each other.
A shiver radiates down my spine. The Frost King’s arms tighten at my back, but he doesn’t sing to me this time.
His footfalls and breathing become so quiet that my head spins. It’s as if I were being carried by a ghost.
Outside, the wolf howls into the storm, a sudden, piercing sound abruptly cut off when the web closes behind us.
Sealing us inside the eerie dark.
Chapter Thirteen
Stellen
Icreep along the shadowy path through the Alak-Teah, fighting the need to move fast in a forest where a single wrong choice could get us killed.
Thyra’s need for warmth drives me onward, a yearning my frozen heart can’t deny.
As quickly and as quietly as I can, I steal along the path between the purple trees, choosing where to place my feet, keeping my footfalls stealthy.
The lightness of a snowflake is in my bones, an icy precision I’ve honed for decades.
