Page 133 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Drystan’s Dark Crafter, Erna, led us further into the sparse village of Norodoh, where Vas was said to have been born. She cast us a careful glance over her shoulder from time to time, but remained quiet otherwise.

“He must pay you well,” Snow said, trying to buy her intentions. “I hope he treats you well, too.”

The Crafter slowed her step a little and nodded at Snow. “He does.”

“The marks on your skin say otherwise,” Snow grit out, her jaw tight when Erna pulled her sleeves to cover the scars.

“They are old, very old.”

“Didn’t ask when, but why.”

“Not from him, Your Majesty. They come from one of my own kind.” She pulled her hood back a little, revealing thick streaks of white over the blood red hair. “You know Vas, don’t you?”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

She came to a stop and faced us. “Because I know who Vas Hutlenn was and that it was his blood you made those vials with.”

“My,” Snow drawled. “Drystan might be the luckiest godless man to live in this realm. To find a Crafter who possesses such forbidden knowledge.”

“I served a man long before I came to serve him. An Elder Crafter, the same one who hid the sceptre piece here in Vrammethen.”

Snow took her in from head to toe. “You’re old.”

“Old as one can be. No longer a mother, daughter or a sister.”

“Eldmoor would have welcomed you back. They can make you their sister.”

“I cannot return to Eldmoor without being hunted by death.” She pulled her sleeve back to reveal the same mark Kilian had on his back, her hands shaking. “The Elder Crafter I served was also my husband. He beat me to death and then…then he brought me back because he was not done with hurting me. He was not as skilled as most despite his titles, a pitiful Potioner who kept stealing around recipes from his neophytes and talented youngling,” she said, her voice growing smaller. “He didn’t know how to hide the Octa Virga scent like the others, so he tied me here, for me to hide it. My magic has faltered through the ages from it, but I felt it return again when you got the sceptre piece.”

“You can leave this place. The sceptre is in my father’s hands, there is nothing to guard anymore.”

“I don’t want to. Drystan…he treats me well. I think I know why you wanted to come here, and I can help you get what you need to kill Vas. Consider it my contribution to the war that is coming.”

Snow went rigid at the word but nodded.

Chapter twenty-eight

Black bishop takes E7

Snowlin

War was the shortest word with the most difficult meaning. The why and how made it even more bizarre to understand. Before, the answers were at the tip of my tongue. For revenge. For my anger. For my justice. For the destruction of all that wanted to destroy me. I’d gone from planning to ruin, to planning to protect.

Except…protecting was not something I was good at.

Kilian straightened my jacket, buttoning it all the way through to my neck and then pulled my hair to rest on one side so he could tie the white cloth bearing the insignia of my kingdom over the other side. “There, my queen,” he said, leaving a kiss on my knuckles and then fading the two of us to the castle bridge leading towards Taren.

“We can do this together,” I said.

“You’re not only their queen, Snow, all those people have seen you grow up, fed you at least once in their homes. Their children serve in your armies not from duty, but because they adore you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve spent every moment I could those six months in this city. I know. They need to hear it from you alone. Not a document plastered on their walls, not a guard announcing it, not the two of us standing by one another like rulers. By you, the girl they knew, the woman they watched you become. The protector who they trust.” He kissed me and then backed away. “I will always be somewhere close to you, watching you. Always.”

As I backed inside into the city, rehearsing my words and those he’d told me, I realised I was always consumed with vengeance, but my people never have been though they suffered the most. I lost my mother. They lost their lands, families, their entire life, their hopes, futures and dreams. Not once had they felt anything more than just enmity and caution. Not even exactly hatred.

The city of Taren was alive and loud, my people rushed around, children laughed as they crawled between stools and over tables, some of the elderly shook their heads at the young ones and others simply laughed. So much life despite all that my father had taken.