Page 54 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Her skin was cold when I rested my lips on her cheek. My brave sister. “Rora,” I called after she would not let me see her. “My little Rora.”

She pulled back slowly, her face all hard and grown all of the sudden, no longer the barely adult I’d left behind months ago. “I did well, didn’t I?”

“You did so well. So, so well. But you’re grounded. So grounded. Never to do that again,” I whispered harshly, holding her tightly to me again. It was not possible to breathe her in as much as I wanted to—hold her as tightly as I wanted to. “You hear me, never. I can’t…I can’t lose you too.”

“A bit too early to mourn my loss,” a hoarse, small voice called from behind me, and I froze.

Too afraid to turn. Too afraid that I had started imagining this day from the start of it. Too afraid that somewhere amongst the scheming, the grief, the loss and the small wins I had lost the last bit of sanity I’d clung to.

When a hand rested on my shoulder and willed me to turn round, I squeezed my eyes shut to shield me from the breaking reality crashing against my fantasy.

I would not allow it.

I would hold onto my mind a little bit longer.

I would not be tempted to make it reality.

I would not—

“Snow,” she called again. “Snowlin Skygard, you maniac, open your eyes.”

A cry left my mouth before any words could form to ward this tempting spirit away before it claimed whatever was left of my mind.

She hugged me. And it felt too real. So real.

“I hold no promise but this one I give you,” she spoke in my ear words I had once before spoken to her years ago when she and I had been young and afraid. “You will be safe and you will be loved. That’s what you told me. But I’m not feeling very loved right now.”

It was only then that tears skid down my eyes and past my smile when I hugged her to me. “How? Please, how?”

“Alastair,” was all she said. She pulled back, taking my wrist in her hands and taking apart the cuffs still rubbing against my sore skin. And then the other. Until the only last reminder of my time in Isjord was round my neck. Gently, as if she could even hurt me anymore, she pulled the cuff apart, staring at the red mark it had left there. “Did you show them hells?”

I smiled. “That is a pretty offensive question, Helenia.”

Chapter sixteen

Black Pawn to D5

Malik

Something was happening outside the prison quarters, but I could not figure out exactly what. Soldiers had been rattling about the king’s trip to Vrammethen for days now and considering what Snow had told me the last time she’d come down here, the eighth sceptre piece was there. Silas had succeeded. He had collected all of Octa Virga and in no time, he would be moulding it in one.

She still hadn’t told me what she’d done in exchange for the healer who had mended my eye. But from the fearful glances of soldiers and murmurs of servants, I assumed it had not been an exchange at all—Silas had been made to.

The main entrance gates groaned open, sparing a bit of corridor light inside my gloomy residence. It was not meal hours and soldiers were usually not brave enough to come down here unless they were forced to check I hadn’t somehow broken through five-inch-thick metallic bars. Isjordians really knew how to stroke one's ego.

Someone flashed a torch right between the metal bars of my confinement home and my eyeballs almost lit on fire from the sudden brightness.

“Don’t you look like shit.”

That was a new voice. I don’t know who was frowning more at whom, but Elias’s blonde brows had stooped to a new low.

“Come to pay me a visit?” I asked, sitting up from my royal bed of prime hay to greet my unusual visitor. The new position made the figure hiding behind him visible and I sneered. “What’s the bitch doing here?”

Melanthe popped her head over Elias’s shoulder, her expression rather flaccid compared to the usual stamped pride and perfumed grace. “She might be a horrible person, but does she merit that noun?”

I grinned at the sound of her voice. “Let’s swap places, Visha, maybe you will know after.”

She rolled her eyes and flicked a hand right in front of the metallic, unlocking the door. “Let’s hurry now. My disguise won’t last long.”