Page 27 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Oh, but you can. Could. At least in my time. I summoned fire. And fire I got. A whole piece of land from Ustrina. The seventh hell of fire.”

My feet halted and I looked at her. “You did this?”

“A little bit of prime blood, some knowledge and the hair of a vengeful spirit.” She laughed again, more bits of flesh dangled around, and I held back a gag. “Come, come, we are here.”

I cocked a brow at her and at where she was pointing. A fire pit burned to the roof of the narrow corridor, blocking the small path entirely. “You cannot mean through the fire.”

She put a hand on my back and pushed me toward the fire a little. “You cannot burn, child of Nubil and Krig.”

Before I could ask, she turned round and headed back where we came from, murmuring more words to herself, “We burn. All burns. You will burn, too.”

Tentatively, I reached my hand to the flame and pulled back almost immediately, cradling a burned palm to my stomach. “Fuck!” Only when I felt my dormant magic slowly coat my skin with ice did I realise what she meant. Melanthe had freed some of my magic.

Coating all my skin in hoar frost, I reached toward the fire again and jumped through it. Ice hissed at the touch of flames and mist coated my vision for a short second, but I did not burn.

I had stepped right into hells from the look of it. Standing on top of a floating piece of rock, surrounded by three tall cliffs that cradled a crater sputtering and spilling a ruby red lava down the edges and onto the never-ending ocean of fire below it.

“What a pleasant surprise,” a strong voice called, and I spun round to face a man clad in the purest and deepest colour of black I’d ever seen. His eyes were a shade of red that turned a deep burgundy when they focused on me, hollowing, and spinning, almost seeming to envelope all that they saw. He ran a gloved hand through the dark locks covering his brow and gave me a calculated grin. “You are another type of Skygard. An interesting type.”

“Who are you?”

“No pleasantries? I thought you humans enjoyed that.” He laughed and pointed a finger at me. “But you’re far from being a human, aren’t you?”

“Should have started with a compliment.”

He pushed from where he was leaning against rock and walked toward me, only stopping when I unsheathed a dagger and then another, holding them to my side.

“You can’t hurt me,” he said, severely entertained by the challenge.

I almost burst a vein attempting to call upon a fraction of lightning, but it was worth the headache because he raised both hands and retreated a step. “Caught me in a lie.” He flicked a hand forward and the sceptre piece floated right between us, tempting me. “Have it. I presume that is what you came down here for.”

The hells? “Give it.”

He smiled and waved his hand forward, making the sceptre piece float and land right in my palm.

I raised a brow at him. “What’s the catch? Want me to fight a fire sprite, let you riddle me to death?”

He leaned against the rock again. “By right and order of Fader, I can hand the descendant of Zephyr the sceptre. If it had been anyone else, I would have been less pragmatic, Snowlin.”

“You know who I am?”

“You’ve been donating magic to my realm for years, we ought to get familiar with one another at some point.”

“Your realm?”

“One of them. One of the hells I reign over.”

Impossible. “You’re a Prince of Hells?”

“You can call me Ezekiel.”

I froze. He was Visha’s betrothed? “The Prince of Ustrina?”

“In the flesh,” he said, bowing his head to me. “Yet not entirely. A projection if you might call it so since it is not possible for me to step in Numen anymore.”

“And this is a hobby of yours?”

He laughed darkly. “Word spread that you bested the God of Waters. I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about.”