Page 103 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Not like I thought it would. Feels more like a bad hangover.”

There was a fraction of silence when I saw what we had caused to happen around us. Ash hovered in the wind above the land that had once been a vibrant green, now covered with black flamed burning embers and fully sprouted white flowers growing amidst. An eerie sight—a graveyard.

Life amongst death.

“The hells,” Thora murmured.

Kilian bent down, studying the flowers and then me. He rested a palm flat against the soil and shut his eyes for a few seconds.

“What is it?”

His eyes opened. “The land had died when my magic touched it. The soil would never grow anything, every life under it would have died, too.” He plucked a flower and stood. “Galanthus.” He extended it to Visha. “Have a look for me. See how they managed to sprout in dead soil.”

“It’s just a flower.”

“It works,” my Crafter said blankly, pocketing the flower in one of her pouches. “If you can contain her, then you can contain Aurora. At least until we can manage to pry the sceptre off Silas. We can work on a dream veil dome. Infuse my magic with yours to contain Aurora and her.”

Thora looked over her shoulder to us, still bent down and making a bouquet of the white flowers. “What about killing her?”

The words chilled the air.

Then the visions I’d seen in Seraphim flashed all over.

Dead. I’d see her dead.

Visha opened her palms, a red sceptre forming in the air, two spheres of light floating out of it. “The sceptre acts as a guard, she shares part of her life with it. If she dies under someone’s control, she will be brought back, continuously. The only way to stop her is to command her back inside the sceptre.” The witch swallowed. “Then freed again by Snow in order to be killed.” The sceptre illusion vanished, and she looked at me. “Have you asked him, my queen?”

Damn you, Visha.

My husband raised a brow. “Ask me what?”

“Kil,” I started carefully, “I want to meet Golgotha.”

He glanced at Visha and then at me. “And why would you, love of mine, want to meet the God of Demons? For tea or?”

Funny man my man was. “To find Urinthia.”

He narrowed a short look on Visha again and my witch winced a little. “And how can he help to find her?”

“He can locate the pocket realm she has opened to hide and assemble the Octa Virga in.”

Kilian measured my words for a moment and then heaved out a sigh. “I’ll see to it.”

“Will you really?”

“If we weren’t trying to prevent a war from breaking, I would have allowed it over my dead body.”

It was my time to flinch and he reached a hand to me, pulling me in his arms and kissing my brow. “You know what I mean.”

I buried my face in his chest and inhaled him. All it mattered now was that he was here. If I thought about it any longer, I would not be able to not stop thinking about it. “Yeah.”

One day I would ask again.

One day I would ask him to tell me all.

Kilian had gone to sleep soon after I’d started petting his hair, his face pressed to his favourite spot between my breasts. He’d spent all day assembling camp in Fernfoss after our little training and had returned to Amaris bone tired. There was no waking him, he was completely gone. Carefully, I slipped away towards the door, quietly tiptoeing outside without waking him at all.

Nia was with Thora in her room like we’d planned. My little sister threw a cover on Mal who had fallen asleep on her sofa, and then joined us in her bed.