Page 50 of Season Warriors & Wolves

I couldn’t see her emotion, but I’d learn to read it in her features.

And what I saw terrified me.

She stood, the chains tied to her wrists and neck dangling as she wiped her blood-stained hands on her coat and picked up something from the ground next to her.

Fuck.

She fisted the long brown hair of the severed head, lifting it up before nailing it on a pyre. Nesrin's features were pulled aghast, as if she had met the God of Death himself right before dying. Or perhaps something worse than death himself.

Dozens of my men faded right before me, swords drawn in my direction. “Stay back, my king. It was an order from the queen.”

Shadows began crawling around my limbs, a poor attempt to hold me still.

“What makes one wish for death this badly as to lie to me?” I asked and the darkness slipped out of me, breaking all shadows apart.

I’d only taken a step further when hands wrapped around my arm, pulling me back. “It’s a trap. They are right. She is right,” Eren said, though I could tell from the way he breathed and the dark clouds of despair around him that he wanted to run toward her, too. “Elias reported Silas still has control over her. Think, Kilian. Who is the one other person who can stop my father? Who is the one other person this realm fears more than him? Who is one person who can still ruin his plans? This is a trap. Don’t. Let's just see.”

Snow stood there for a while, staring at Nesrin’s head before grinning to herself, turning round and disappearing into a portal.

Gone.

Like that.

She was gone.

Again.

I faded Eren and I at the top several moments after she’d left. Soldiers flocked together around Nesrin’s head perched on the spear.

When the crowd parted, I realised it was something else that had caught their attention.

She was Silas’s spy. The words were written on the grey stone floor in blood—Nesrin’s blood.

A portal cracked open behind me and we all turned to Visha and Oryn slipping from it. “We have news from Solarya,” she said. “Snow paid a visit and killed prince Otis earlier today. Caspian Vayr sends word from her; she’s told him that Silas is visiting Vrammethen himself in two days to meet with the princes while they retrieve the last sceptre piece. She doubts an agreement between them without their king’s approval.”

Two days. We finally knew. “Our last window.”

“If it is a window at all,” Eren said and then turned to Visha. “Silas is going?”

“Yes.”

Eren’s brows rose. “My father is leaving Isjord at this time?”

“He must be scared of an alliance or desperate for the metal,” Oryn argued. “Could bet the new princes are giving him a hard time considering they already have an agreement with you, my king. If they have agreed to meet him, it would mean he has found something else to offer them. Considering no one wishes to best the Night King, it must be something much worse than offering them beasts.”

No matter how much we had tried to keep Nia away, she’d found a way to the Highwall. For the past hour, she had not said a single word to anyone, only stared at her sister’s severed head still bleeding out on the wooden pike. Something worse than betrayal had filled the colour of her air. Something more painful. It was enough to wilt her hope.

While the rest of us had passed the initial shock of the murder, we had not processed the message painted in Nesrin’s blood on the floor of the Highwall roof.

She was Silas’s spy.

“She’s died a traitor’s death,” Larg sighed, shaking his head. “Stregor’s child a traitor. Word will spread fast,” he added. “Let’s hope it does because she had her followers, and they might not take what your wife has done very lightly. To think they might be aiding Silas, too, concerns me. Our queen might have wanted this to be known widely.”

“I don’t think that was my sister’s main aim,” Eren said, and we all turned to Nia.

“Considering what she’s done,” Cai spat. “She died an easy death. Did her a favour.” He laughed bitterly. “And believe me when I say her favours are spare. She used this to warn us about Vrammethen and the Adriatian spies working for Silas knowing we might be planning something and word would have leaked, otherwise your councillor would have lived to feel and taste her death.”

Thora hummed from the corner of the rooftop where she had sat, petting a crow’s feathers. “They are beautiful,” she said, still intently observing the bird. “Do you know why they are called soul thieves in the old Eldmoorian folklore?”