Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(75)

He twitched again. “Lies.” And in one smooth motion, he flipped me over his shoulder. “We are leaving, now.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheeks, hard, and then on my tongue. My mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood.

“You’re lucky you didn’t trigger one of my traps like your clown,” he said. “I’ve spent a lifetime coming up with the best ways to maim.”

I said nothing, keeping my mouth closed, slowly filling with blood.

“They are everywhere, as your friend Martin knows.”

The glee in his tone filled me with fury. Angoulême hurt people – hurt my friends – not just to accomplish what he wanted, but because he enjoyed it. He was sick and twisted, and he needed to be stopped.

Fury running hot through my veins, and I twisted my body, biting down hard on his neck, my blood flowing into the wound as I tore out a chunk of flesh. He howled and flung me, my body rolling and bouncing across the floor. I cried out in pain, but before he could attack, I shouted, “You kill me, you bleed to death, Angoulême.”

He froze, hand clapped to the wound on his neck, blood flowing between his fingers. My aim had been good. Lethal.

“Just like Pénélope,” I said, ignoring the screaming pain of my body as I pushed onto my knees. “You’re afflicted. Even the tiniest of wounds is a labor to heal, and that is no tiny injury. Especially given it is full of my nasty, iron-filled human blood.” I grinned, feeling the crimson droplets running down my chin. “You. Need. Me.”

He hissed and reached for me, and I recoiled, falling backwards. I heard him shout just before my elbow impacted and something burst hot beneath it. Magic coated my skin as the air filled with fire. It was only for a second, then it was gone, and I could not see.

And I could not breathe.

There was no air. My chest heaved as my lungs dragged in mouthful after mouthful of nothingness. Hands snatched me up, and I was moving, but I didn’t care.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t…





Chapter Forty-Two





Cécile





I opened my eyes, blinking away the bits of frost on my lashes, droplets running in cold little rivulets down my cheeks. The night sky loomed above me, vast, unending, and empty. I frowned as I considered the last, the notion of it troubling me with its wrongness. “Where are the stars?”

“We see other worlds in a different way.”

The voice startled me, and I rolled onto my hands and knees, sinking deep into powdery snow that sucked the heat from my hands. I lifted my face. “Where am I?”

Tristan’s many times great-uncle, the King of Summer, smiled at me, but the radiance he’d exuded the first time we met was nowhere to be seen. “You know.”

I did. A blast of wind, icier than was ever felt in my world, raked at my hair. “Winter.”

He nodded once, gesturing outwards. There was no source of illumination that I could see, but everything around glowed with an unearthly and pearlescent light. Massive peaks encircled the barren plain on which we stood, their tips capped with white like a frosted crown. Snowflakes rose instead of fell, dancing upward into the void above, and as I turned my head, my stomach clenched.

Dizziness swept through me as I stared at the palace in the distance, identical to that the Queen had built in Trianon in everything but size. A river of ice flowed through its center, massive burgs rolling and smashing against each other as they traveled. It was the only sign of motion. The only sign of life.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“Because I once gave you a name.”

I flinched; and, because I was afraid of what he might demand of me, I asked instead, “Why now?”

“The opportunity presented itself.”

No answer. I licked my lips. They were smooth and unchapped beneath my tongue, and my hair hung in a long braid over my shoulder. I tugged at its tip, choosing to focus on this insignificant detail rather than the impossible setting surrounding me.

“You are as you imagine yourself to be,” he said, answering my unspoken question.

“Because it’s a dream,” I mused. “Or am I really here?”

“Much can happen in the space between two heartbeats.” Clasping my arm, he pulled me to my feet. An orb appeared in his hand, and he held it out to me. “Look.”

The orb was warm and moist against my palm, and I cringed as a lid peeled back to reveal an eye. It blinked again, and ignoring my disgust, he guided my hand closer to my face. “Look.”

I stared into the elongated pupil, and suddenly, I was far above the ground. Soaring. Swooping. Flying. Beneath me raged a battle unlike anything I’d ever seen. A wave of gold and green crashed against a wall of frosted blackness, a chaos of creatures that defied description: man and beast, and everything in between. Fighting, warring, as far as the eye could see. It was dawn and dusk; the ebb and flow of the seasons. But as I circled above, there was no mistaking that the battle line was moving. That the dawn was being pushed back.

“Your world lured my people from me,” he said into my ear. “The iron bound them, and the witch locked them away, whole bloodlines lost. I would have them back.”

I lowered my hand, swaying as my vision was once again my own. “That’s impossible. The trolls are mortal – they cannot pass between worlds. And if there was a way to change that, they’d have found it.”