I see… Trees?
Red branches in a dark sky. The veins in the backs of his eyelids. There was a light.
There could be no light.
His heart slowed again, too numb with cold and time to even feel heavy at what should have disappointed him.
He let the fog take him, the not-sleep came again.
But after some years, or perhaps moments – time was strange in the Cold Black–something licked his hand. No, not licked. Trickled. Water? His thoughts did gather this time, slowly.
If there is water trickling down my hand, and light behind my eyes…
He tried to lower his arm from where it was held outstretched above his head. It did not move. The muscles flexed belatedly, as though forgetting how to move at his will – yet still his arm lay trapped above him.
But – his fingers.
In the dark, his fingertips slipped against something solid and wet, no longer pressed on all sides by the ice. There was a whisper of space around his hand.
Kai’s heart gave an almighty, painful thump and his pulse kicked up ever so slightly. He allowed himself a sliver of foreign hope, and another when his wrist was free enough to rotate. Another sliver of hope when he felt a trickle of ice water run down his forehead. When he blinked slush from his eyelashes and a dim grey light filtered through the ice before him. The bundle of hope was kindling for the aching, cold hollow of his chest.
Distantly, he knew it would become a raging, fuelling fire once he was freed. He would see Eisalaan crumble to nothing but cinders and smoke.
But for now, he could only wait.
And hope.
Chapter 7
Adeline
They went to Edward at once.
One of the few nobles blessed with ice magic, Edward had been Commander of the Palace Wielders since before Mareda’s birth. He led a small team of talented Wielders who pledged their gifts in service of Eisalaan; a position that saw him held in high esteem as one of the most powerful men in Eisalaan. And really, given the scarcity of magic outside the Silver Kingdom, one of the most powerful men in the world. If there was anyone who could repair the damage to the Laune, it was the Commander and his team.
If they could rouse him from his heartache, or his hangover.
Adeline was quite sure Edward would have stayed in bed for anyone but Mareda, but as it was he staggered out of his rooms at the sound of her cries, still sodden from a night of drowning his sorrows. Bleary-eyed and ruffled, he wrenched the door open beneath his daughter’s frantic fist, and scowled at the pitch of her voice.
“Goddess above, what do youwant?”
They spoke hurriedly over one another, babbling like frightened children, and Edward pressed a hand over his eyes, groaning. It took several attempts to get through to him.
The Laune has cracked.
Quick father, please, the ice has broken.
The fucking lake has split in two, Edward!
They could read almost the exact moment it sank in, by the way Edward’s hazed eyes widened and cleared. Sobered, all at once.
He pushed past them and ran without a backward glance, still in a bed robe that fluttered dramatically around his hairy ankles in a way that might have been comical at any less harrowing a time.
Without a word to one another, the sisters rushed down the spiraling stairway of Edward’s tower and raced to the South gallery, an open-air corridor with an unobstructed view of the courtyard.
Before long, Edward emerged from the stables on horseback, having found pants and a cloak from the Goddess knows where. Behind him, a small procession of Wielders followed. Adeline could not hear what it was he shouted to them over his shoulder, but the foreboding scowl on his thick brow said enough. As did the hand he shot at the gates, before the procession filed out onto the Capital road beyond.
Adeline and Mareda watched until their cloaks were just a dark smudge on the blank white landscape.
