He didn’t know—he had no inkling of the personal history, the secrets, that had opened my heart to the High Lord of the Night Court. They were not my stories to tell.

“One would think, Lucien, that you’d be glad I fell in love with my mate, given that you’re in the same situation Rhys was in six months ago.”

“You left us.”

Us. Not Tamlin. Us. The words echoed into the dark, toward the howling wind and lashing snow beyond the bend.

“I told you that day in the woods: you abandoned me long before I ever physically left.” I shivered again, hating every point of contact, that I so desperately needed his warmth. “You fit into the Spring Court as little as I did, Lucien. You enjoyed its pleasures and diversions. But don’t pretend you weren’t made for something more than that.”

His metal eye whirred. “And where, exactly, do you believe I will fit in? The Night Court?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have one, honestly. As High Lady, I could likely offer him a position, if we survived long enough to make it home. I’d do it mostly to keep Elain from ever going to the Spring Court, but I had little doubt Lucien would be able to hold his own against my friends. And some small, horrible part of me enjoyed the thought of taking one more thing away from Tamlin, something vital, something essential.

“We should leave at dawn,” was my only reply.

 

We lasted the night.

Every part of me was stiff and aching when we began our careful trek down the mountain. Not a whisper or trace of Lucien’s brothers—or any sort of life.

I didn’t care, not when we at last passed over the border and into Winter Court lands.

Beyond the mountain, a great ice-plain sparkled into the distance. It would take days to cross, but it didn’t matter: I’d awoken with enough power in my veins to warm us with a small fire. Slowly—so slowly, the effects of the faebane ebbed.

I was willing to wager that we’d be halfway across the ice by the time we could winnow out of here. If our luck held and no one else found us.

I ran through every lesson Rhys had taught me about the Winter Court and its High Lord, Kallias.

Towering, exquisite palaces, full of roaring hearths and bedecked in evergreens. Carved sleighs were the court’s preferred method of transportation, hauled by velvet-antlered reindeer whose splayed hooves were ideal for the ice and snow. Their forces were well trained, but they often relied on the great, white bears that stalked the realm for any unwanted visitors.

I prayed none of them waited on the ice, their coats perfectly blended into the terrain.

The Night Court’s relationship with Winter was fine enough, still tenuous, as all our bonds were, after Amarantha. After she’d butchered so many of them—including, I remembered with no small surge of nausea, dozens of Winter Court children.

I couldn’t imagine it—the loss, the rage and grief. I’d never had the nerve to ask Rhys, in those months of training, who the children had belonged to. What the consequences had been. If it was considered the worst of Amarantha’s crimes, or just one of countless others.

But despite any tentative bonds, Winter was one of the Seasonal Courts. It might side with Tamlin, with Tarquin. Our best allies remained the Solar Courts: Dawn and Day. But they lay far to the north—above the demarcation line between the Solar and Seasonal Courts. That slice of sacred, unclaimed land that held Under the Mountain. And the Weaver’s cottage.

We’d be gone before we ever had to set foot in that lethal, ancient forest.

It was another day and night before we cleared the mountains entirely and set foot on the thick ice. Nothing grew, and I could only tell when we were on solid land by the dense snow packed beneath. Otherwise, too frequently, the ice was clear as glass—revealing dark, depthless lakes beneath.

At least we didn’t encounter any of the white bears. But the real threat, we both quickly realized, was the utter lack of shelter: out on the ice, there was none to be found against the wind and cold. And if we lit a fire with our feeble magic, anyone nearby would spot it. No matter the practicality of lighting a fire atop a frozen lake.

The sun was just slipping above the horizon, staining the plain with gold, the shadows still a bruised blue, when Lucien said, “Tonight, we’ll melt some of the ice pack enough to soften it—and build a shelter.”

I considered. We were barely a hundred feet onto what seemed to be an endless lake. It was impossible to tell where it ended. “You think we’ll be out on the ice for that long?”

Lucien frowned toward the dawn-stained horizon. “Likely, but who knows how far it extends?” Indeed, the snowdrifts hid much of the ice beneath.

“Perhaps there’s some other way around …,” I mused, glancing back toward our abandoned little camp.

We looked at the same time. And both beheld the three figures now standing at the lake edge. Smiling.

Eris lifted a hand wreathed in flame.

Flame—to melt the ice on which we stood.

 

 

CHAPTER

13

“Run,” Lucien breathed.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off his brothers. Not as Eris lowered that hand to the frozen edge of the lake. “Run where, exactly?”

Flesh met ice and steam rippled. The ice went opaque, thawing in a line that shot for us—

We ran. The slick ice made for a treacherous sprint, my ankles roaring with the effort of keeping me upright.

Ahead, the lake stretched on forever. And with the sun barely awake, the dangers would be even harder to spot—

“Faster,” Lucien ordered. “Don’t look!” he barked as I began to turn my head to see if they’d followed. He lashed out a hand to grip my elbow, steadying me before I could even register that I’d stumbled.

Where would we go where would we go where would we go

Water splashed beneath my boots—thawed ice. Eris had to either be expending all his power to get through millennia of ice, or was just doing it slowly to torture us—

“Zag,” Lucien panted. “We need to—”

He shoved me aside, and I staggered, arms wheeling.

Just as an arrow ricocheted off the ice where I’d been standing.

“Faster,” Lucien snapped, and I didn’t hesitate.

I hurtled into a flat-out sprint, Lucien and I weaving in and out of each other’s paths as those arrows continued firing. Ice sprayed where they landed, and no matter how fast we ran, the ground beneath us melted and melted—

Ice. I had ice in my veins, and now that we were over the border of the Winter Court—

I didn’t care if they saw it—my power. Kallias’s power. Not when the alternatives were far worse.

I threw out a hand before us as a melting splotch began to spread, ice groaning.

A spray of ice shot from my palm, freezing the lake once more.

With each pump of my arms as I ran, I fired that ice from my palms, solidifying what Eris sought to melt ahead of us. Maybe—just maybe we could clear the lake, and if they were stupid enough to be atop it when we did … If I could form ice, I could certainly un-form it.

I crossed paths with Lucien again, meeting his wide eyes as we did, and opened my mouth to tell him my plan, when Eris appeared.

Not behind. Ahead.

But it was the other brother at his side, arrow aimed and already flying for me, who drew the shout from my throat.