Page 232 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Meet you in hell, papa.” I clutched one dagger tight, and before he could utter a single word of plea or bargain or hate or whatever venom, I struck down on his chest, piercing his heart.

He gagged on blood, eyes shot wide almost astound at what I had done.

Ninety-eight.

The flare of unconsciousness and the saltiness of death lasted only for a split second because he turned to consciousness again. “Child!” he roared, ready to push me off.

So I struck again. And again. And again. Every time he came back to life.

Ninety.

Blood pooled beneath my feet and bile rose to my throat when it began sinking into my clothes and plastering against my skin.

“Seventy-four,” I counted, clasping my other hand on the wrist of the one I held the dagger with, forcing the shakes to stop as I drove it through his heart again and again.

“Thirty-five!” I screamed. “Fifteen. Nine.”

Tears blurred everything into red as I counted down to one. I didn’t know how many times I pierced my father’s heart after that, didn’t know how loud I was screaming, didn’t know how hard I was sobbing, didn’t know how little I was breathing, how fast the world was spinning.

“All I wanted,” I heaved. “All I wanted was to play in the snow like others. To hunt wild berries with ma. I wanted the first blood I saw to be mine, not the first person I killed,” I screamed between cries. “I wanted a sister, not a protector. I wanted a brother, not a mentor. You took from me. You only ever took from me!”

A pair of hands I could recognise everywhere pulled me away from my father’s mangled dead body.

My voice had grown beyond hoarse, but my chest wanted to let it all out. “I never wanted anything! I never got to want anything!”

“Hey,” Malik called, searching my eyes. “Come on, little bird. Come on, Rora.”

Fixed on the puzzling pattern of his irises, I lifted the dagger up, my hand still shaking. “I killed him.” Why did that make me so mad? Why did it make me so angry? “I killed him, Malik.”

He rested his forehead against mine and it was like the world suddenly breathed another air. My chest lightened and my cries turned to silent gasps of air. His fingers brushed my cheek, wiping away my father’s blood. “You did well, Rora. Did so well.”

“The sceptre,” I said, sense finally returning. I stood and reached his dais, pulling the Octa Virga out of the holder. “Why is it still glowing?”

Malik reached close to it, slivers of shadows slithering in the air toward it, hissing and shaking when they touched the sceptre. “Pull back the dome.”

The shield around us blasted and melted into soft pellets of snow that blew into the fast northern wind, revealing what I did not wish to see. In the distance, Kilian’s dome was still up, and inside, Snow was still fighting Aurora.

“Enough,” I commanded, gripping it tightly. “I command you to retreat!”

Nothing.

It did not budge at all no matter how much I shook it. I called it in every language I knew. Willed it however way I knew. But nothing.

Gods. Oh gods.

“Malik,” his name came out in a desperate call. “What is happening?”

The defeated look on his face sank my stomach. “She has taken control. The sceptre is useless.”

I shook my head. “Snow cannot kill her. No one can. This will not stop.”

“We will stop it, little bird. I’ll find Visha. This is not the last you will see of me,” he promised, ready to fade.

“What if it was the last you saw of me?” I asked, pulling him back. We didn’t have time to wait. But we might have no time at all after this.

There was a brief moment of hesitation.

His eyes begged and pleaded for me to take it back, for me to dismiss what I had said, to take back the question.