Page 4 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

Her badly dressed soldiers all spun their heads towards the skies when I broke between clouds and then landed just merely feet away from them. The dragons roared once, causing the ships around the port city to sway and groan in their berths, and then turned into thousands of small frost serpents. They climbed and pierced through Isline bodies until a field of blood laid ahead. Not one of the soldier's attacks made it near a mile of me.

“This was upsettingly swift,” I muttered to myself as the same serpents turned into wolves and began dragging and dumping the bodies into the angry half frozen sea.

The blood soon was covered by the heavy snow that was suddenly blistering furiously, and in barely a matter of minutes, the scene ahead laid as if no one had ever stepped on it. If Iskyla was going to inconvenience me, I expected her to actually put some effort in it. She was a lousy opponent. A lousy opponent my people were beginning to think was better than me—a better Krigborn. One that wouldn’t smother their greed like I had for the past ten years.

An arrow whizzed past me, missing me by a foot. I’d never been so offended when I spun to the shooter. Were these the type of soldiers Iskyla sent to hunt and kill me? “This must be a joke.”

Iskyla’s new general who had been taunting me the same since I killed her old general three months ago, sneered and nocked back another arrow, aiming it at me.

My hand wrapped around it before the tip landed on my forehead. About a hundred ice arrows materialised and shot in the air towards him, landing in a circle around his body. When he stopped writhing like a little squirrel, I said, “Tell your queen that there are plenty of fish in the sea, Andre. She can try to kill all the men, I’ll just marry a woman. She tries to kill the women, too, I’ll marry a God.”

“Give her what she wants.”

Give—because she couldn’t take. Not without making herself a queen killer, an Usurper. No, she wanted a finer title. True Queen. True Krigborn. True daughter of Winters. She wanted those. “But what she wants is mine. You can’t take what belongs to others.”

“It does not belong to you.”

“Iskyla wants war. War she shall not have.”

He scoffed. “That is the Krigborn way. Are you truly one?”

“I wasn’t updated on this family tradition I supposedly have to uphold. But, nevertheless, I really don’t care.”

“You’re a usurper. That seat is not for you.”

“My carpenter would beg to differ. He made it comfortably so it fit me best.”

“Hold tightly to it if you wish to keep it.”

“That is very sweet of you to worry.”

He jerked back when a white ghastly figure appeared right before him. Veiled entirely in a white cloak that floated as if the ground held no gravity, the creature wrapped a hand around his neck, lifting Iskyla’s general up from the ground, sputtering and turning entirely too red for his own good. A frost vortex wrapped around them, cutting and tearing into the general until he was just tiny little snack pieces for seagulls.

The White Veil turned and simply bowed its head to me before vanishing into thin air. My newest mysterious ally. Perhaps my biggest at the moment. There was no one better than a godly cautionary tale. There was no one better than a vengeful spirit blessed by our Winter God to join my side. No one knew why it had returned now after centuries, or why it was on my side, but they knew to fear it.

After the guardian war, Isjordians feared nothing more than godly tales. So much so that I’d been left with no choice but to reopen and invest into building new temples everywhere.

Guards were on a strange edge when I returned back to the castle, probably meaning that whoever had just composed that attack had been amongst their ranks and they had either been taken by surprise, or known and just ignored it.

Kilian had kneeled beside Erik, studying the arrow still etched in his skull. He cast me a glance when I stood beside him and looked down at the man who’d been a sentence away from becoming my husband.

“Perhaps it was the best option for him,” I said. “He would have eventually wanted out of the marriage. Erik was too proud to be my toy.”

Lightning struck nearby. Snow was angry. Very angry. “Lucky bastards,” my sister gritted out, dropping and sprawling on a chair. “They had gotten the kiss of death before I could give them some affection of my own kind.”

“A what?” Nia asked, sending me a concerned look as she pulled her daughter, Karin, behind her.

“Kiss?” his familiar deep voice called, and my spine steeled up straight. “I wasn’t that gentle, was I now, sister-in-law?”

Had my ingenuine grief made me hallucinate?

When the air fried and then thawed from the presence of his magic, I startled to my senses, my eyes slowly lifting to where he stood, leaning against the white flower archway at the start of the altar with his arms crossed over his chest.

No, he was really here.

Different, but it was him.

The scars on his right eye had grown slightly fainter, but there was a new one over his lips, and another thick one just over his brow. His hair was longer. His body had grown harder, bigger, almost taller, too. Perhaps older as well, there was a hint of grey on his temples despite his young appearance. His fingers and neck were now covered in dark tattoos. And his smile, just as dark and twisted, just as taunting, the only thing that had remained the same. I wish it had not. I had once loved that smile. Don’t know if I could extend that sentiment to the rest of him.