Frostblood (Frostblood Saga #1)(60)

“You can’t win,” he rumbled, his voice roughly accented and cruel. “You think because you killed that frost beast that you can kill me? I am Gravnach.” He pounded his chest with his fist. “I do not succumb to frost or fire.” He threw his arms forward, and a hundred pointed ice arrows shot at me. My arm came up automatically, making a shield of fire.

He ice-wrapped my arms and threw more arrows at me. This time they slashed into my face before melting like tears on my cheeks. One of them cut my eyelid, making blood pool in my eye.

He laughed and did it again and again, until my face was stinging and slick with blood.

“And now for your precious fingers,” he crowed. “They won’t make fire anymore.”

He raised his sword and brought it down with careful precision. I screamed as the steel cut into the flesh of my little finger. He laughed and pulled the blade out.

“Better yet,” he said, “I will freeze your hands and break your fingers off one by one like icicles.”

Piercing cold touched my fingertips, numbing them. Fear gripped my mind, the helpless, blank terror of caught prey. The crowd was howling for my blood. I was weak, beaten, at the mercy of this monster, and still they wanted more. I hated them in that moment. If I could have, I would have burned them all.

As hatred raged through me, something dark and sinuous curled and snaked into my heart, pulling my attention from the crowd and to my inner self. It was like a stranger had entered my skin. It wasn’t heat. It wasn’t cold. It was nothing. Blackness. A tangible absence. It grew from inside me and spread to every inch of my skin.

I opened my eyes, disoriented. My vision had changed. The world was black and white and gray, bled of color, and flat. The only thing that stood out was my opponent, his head thrown back in ecstasy at my suffering. He looked down at me.

“Do you feel it, Fireblood? The pain?” He leaned in close. “Your pain is my pleasure.”

I hardly heard him. My mind had entered an altered state, not peaceful exactly but devoid of care. It wasn’t anything like the state of mind that Brother Thistle had taught me. Something else had oozed into that quiet space and was, if not controlling, then wiping away the thoughts and worries and questions that usually buzzed in my consciousness.

Things were so much simpler here. Black and white. Me or other. Live or die.

“No, your death will be mine,” I whispered, the words distant, as if they’d come from someone else.

Time slowed.

Somehow, I sensed his heart in his chest, pulsing with blood and life with every contraction. One beat lasted an eternity. An incredible feeling of power surged through my veins, overwhelming me.

“Burn him,” said a voice, and I knew I must obey. The voice was me and I was the voice, and I could not question it.

I threw out flame. It was stronger and more focused than any fire I’d ever created. It burned through his leather breastplate and into his chest.

Gravnach’s eyes went wide. A sound gurgled from his mouth. His body shuddered and jolted, falling facedown with a resonant crash. He twitched a few times and went still.

I stared at the body, so quiet and empty. A pool of dark blue blood was pooling around his face where it rested on the dusty ground.

There was no sense of triumph. No remorse. Only interest. This thing that had been hurting me was now still.

I looked up at the silent crowd. A thought surfaced. I could do the same to all of them. Burn their hearts. Should I?

My hand came out to extend the blackness to the crowd, and something inside snapped, like a thread stretched too far.

In a thunderous rush, feeling and color returned to my world, hitting me like a body blow. I gasped. My chest seized with the shock of all my sensations returning at once. It took long seconds to realize where I was and what was happening.

No. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Get up. Get away.

Most of the ice around me had thawed. I levered myself up, dripping and shaking.

I looked down at my hand. One finger dangled off at a strange angle. Numb horror filled me as I watched bright red blood dripping onto the snowy ground, like the berries that had spilled on the floor of my hut the night the soldiers came. Dizziness hit me and I stumbled.

A figure was moving toward me from a few yards away. Another opponent? But it was inhumanly large, a black shape with pointed shoulders, its edges wavering like sheets of overheated air in the dead of summer. It gained shape as I watched, its arms becoming more defined, long-fingered hands stretching out.

I raised my uninjured hand to blast it.

But when I blinked, it was only the white-haired announcer, his indigo robe looking out of place among the blood and sweat of the arena. He stopped in the center and addressed the crowd.

“Good people of Tempesia, I present to you the first Fireblood ever to defeat a Frostblood in this arena. A cheer for the Fireblood champion!”

They did not cheer. A few shrieked and cursed. Arms wheeled back and threw pieces of food and refuse into the ring. Some spectators ran to the edge and spit on the ground.

I cradled my injured hand in my good one and limped toward the alcove I had emerged from, still dazed. I had not defeated Gravnach with my fire alone. Something else had pulled at my mind and heart. A darkness I had never known before, though I’d embraced it like an old friend. A stranger in my skin.

I found the king’s box, my eyes trapped by his. As I watched, his gaze took on a look of calculated interest that made my insides squirm. Marella fairly radiated satisfaction, perhaps even triumph.