Page 3 of Winter Gods & Serpents

I shook my head. “Not him. And I owe these lands, Alaric. We cannot run and hide forever. What I can do is chase him down and what better way to do it then inside his castle as his daughter and right so close to Adriata too.”

His expression soured. “Isjord is filled with worse than your father, you kill him and leave that throne open to them. Do you really even think you can kill him?”

“No, but there are worst things than death, old man. I will not kill my father, I will kill Isjord. What is a king without a crown but breakable?”

“Isjord—”

“Is powerful,” I interrupted. “And I am very keen in learning all about that power, every nook of every battalion, fleet, exit, entry, and passage and then, gift it all to those who wish to be more powerful. Solarya, Hanai, Eldmoor, perhaps even Vrammethen. Aren’t I generous?” Twelve long years I had to simmer, sift, and stew my rage, hidden my vengeance, planning my move. I had no place in his game of chess, and a princess was not a piece in that play, but it was a start.

“Some will not appreciate that generosity.” He was right. Not many had the courage to face Isjord, but they had the spite.

“I only need one. With a fleet, an army and courage to take my father and I already know more than one.” I’d spend those years studying every kingdom and every ounce of their resentment to Isjord. Solarya craved status that Isjord occupied with their power over the continent. Hanai longed for unagitated peace that Isjord denied with their hunger for more power. Eldmoor coveted the vast lands of Isjord with desire to unfurl and feed their magic. And Vrammethen, the unblessed lands, those barren from like and touch of gods, demanded recognition, if not from the heavenly, from their blessed.

“And Adriata?” he asked knowing whom rested first on those that had wronged me.

“For them something sweeter.” For them I had patience. With them I’d waltz.

He sighed. “You are no longer a child to be lectured but as someone who has raised you, I have the right to say that this vendetta will not heal your wounds, Snow. Even the mightiest wielder of a sword has bruises and calluses from the weight of steel.” Nice words old man, falling onto bouncing eardrums. Different from him, leaving the past behind was not something I was able, and forgetting didn’t come easy even if I wished it.

“You could be right, but I will find that answer myself, if it only mends parts of what they broke I am willing to bear new scars. And those wounds don't hurt nearly as much as the ones they gave me,” I said pointing to my chest. “Not to mention my pride when they gave me this,” I added pointing to the slash on the middle of my cheek.

He held a moment of silence before letting out a laugh that surely didn’t meet his eyes. “Your beauty is uninjured, though it might soon be. Nia has been growling around looking for you, that girl is vicious.”

Shit. Nia. “Bollocks,” I blurted, closing my eyes at what I had forgotten.

“I didn’t teach you that.”

I scowled at his scolding. “I am twenty-three you old man, I am allowed to say bollocks.”

“You never grow in my eyes.”

I cringed. Sentimentalists, the epitome of ‘I might make myself sick’ thoughts. I planted a kiss in his stubbly cheek. “With Nubil’s blessing, to Caelum heavens,” I greeted, two fingers in my forehead, two in my heart. Mind and soul, the holy greet.

“With Nubil’s blessings, might it welcome us. Be careful,” he warned as I sprinted down the forest to Fernfoss village to find Nia.

Tonight was the autumn festival, the blessed celebration and its outdated traditions annoyed the life out of me, but Nia enjoyed them severely and as a fool I had given her my promise over a very drunken state. For someone as righteous as Nia, I was surprised she held onto that semi-unconscious promise very tightly.

The village was buzzing in excitement and preparations for the celebration. I barely managed to dive through the crowd of people that had gathered but made out Nia’s figure from afar, along with the drawn in angry expression.

“You promised, I even convinced that idiot to come just so you would,” she said in a pursed expression.

“I am here, aren’t I? And Cai will be very disappointed you called him an idiot.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled me inside the seamstress house “He knows what he is.”

Chapter 2

Pins and Needles

A noise like a hive of bees or a silent tempest of thunder. My hearing gurgled with it as I stared through the large pane of the seamstress shop overseeing the heights of the Volants dressed in fog. Words, sounds, screams and noise. Maybe all of them together, but I could never make out what it meant or said, I only knew my skin prickled and all my senses vibrated in warning. It had never happened before, the call to my sense, to be called by it. Two years now, endlessly, it drew me.

“Does it still call to you?” Nia asked and I dragged my attention from the Volants to the floor before the mirror I’d been propped afront.

“Sometimes,” I said taking a deep breath. A lot of times, it felt like part of me—part of my thoughts. Sometimes it brought me out of sleep, out of nightmares even.

I yelped. A pin pierced my skin. “Do not speak of spirits and mist girl, one might hear.” The elderly seamstress warned in a tight expression.

“One does not care if one might hear.”