Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(41)

“You have to. Deluce needs you.” He lowers her onto a pile of blankets on the floor. “I need you,” she says, both hating the words and knowing they are true; they cut through her. She arches her back.

He holds on to her, shudders against her. His hands are at her lower back, then one on her leg, one on her hip. He moves over her, leaning in to her, kissing her neck again, even as he repeats that she shouldn’t be here. She gasps. A sound comes out of her like a whimper, and she’s not sure if it’s one of pleasure or pain. She doesn’t want to let go of him, imagines yet again that he will explode into dust just like the cannons, will disappear into thin air.

He cries into her hair.

They stay that way, striving for breath, kissing, moaning, gasping.

When it is over, she cries too.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it, he tells her later, in and out of sleep.

Malfleur’s Vultures are using magic against them. A kind of fire that eats right through iron in a breath, dissolving swords and shields and burning off their soldiers’ skin, leaving screaming skeletons.

The image sends terror through Isbe, and she fears she will be sick.

“Retreat,” she whispers, surprised at the word. “Come back with me.” She kisses his jaw, right near the scar. Then his eyebrow. “We’ll return to the palace together, where it’s safe, come up with a strategy from there.”

“Isabelle . . .”

“You need rest. You need a break. Come back with me.” I can’t have you die on me, she wants to say.

“I can’t just leave, not now.” And then, after a beat, “There’s still a way. We’ll find a way. You must return. I must think. The army needs me. Deluce needs me, like you said.”

“But I want to help. I want to be needed.”

“You are needed.” He pauses, and she feels his chest rise with breath. “I need you,” he says, an echo of what she whispered to him before. His hands find her tangled hair, and he’s kissing her again, his mouth warm and hungry against hers. He pulls back. “I need you alive. You must go.”

“No. I’m not leaving you.” The promise feels uncertain on her tongue, a branch trembling under the weight of snow.

They sleep at last, but fitfully, the ground hard beneath them. She tosses and turns, her limbs entangled in his.

By morning, she knows how she can help Deluce. Despite what she promised him, she must leave him. And she must hurry, before it’s too late.

Deluce is losing the war. The reports have been flooding in, now that she’s back at the palace.

A string of towns have fallen, there is no border protection to speak of.

Hurriedly, Isabelle stuffs her fur-lined capes and hooded coats—ermine and fox and marten—into a giant chest.

The king consort’s cannon caused a blast that decimated some of his regiment’s strongest men.

Thick underlayers. Leather boots with sable trim. She will need to stay warm.

If another wave of Aubin’s reinforcements don’t arrive soon, they’ll have no hope of turning the tides.

In the midst of the frantic news, Isabelle is packing, preparing for a trip north, to the ?les de Glace, to seek conference with the Ice King. It’s a rash, wild plan, of course. The ?les de Glace are notoriously neutral and have been for centuries. And no one has heard from Verglas in ages. Many think he, like the North Faerie, may be dead.

But after hearing of the horrible magic William told her about—Malfleur’s deadly fire that can melt and destroy armor in seconds—she had felt helpless. Afraid. How could she possibly save her kingdom now? All she had were her words, and a useless symbol, a slipper made of winter glass. But then she thought of Binks, and how he’d wanted to trade men for the slipper—and then of Olivier, who’d expressed such a grave interest in it too. If the viscount is right, and the slipper is indeed made not of glass but of enchanted ice, then the person who must know more about it would be King Verglas. Malfleur’s father. And possibly the only faerie whose power could match hers.

What Deluce’s army needs, after all, is a kind of magical weapon that cannot break and cannot melt.

What their army needs is winter glass.

It’s time to speak to Verglas. He may be the answer to how to win this war.





18


Aurora


Malfleur’s magic fills Aurora like a heady wine; she imagines it rising up from her toes and knees to her hips and then her heart, then up her throat and into her head. She can call upon it but still cannot control it, cannot control when it will come or what it will do. But she feels it swirling inside her now, burning and bubbling in her ears as the sounds of the crowd through the closed doors greet her.

They are somewhere at the center of Blackthorn Castle, and Aurora can hear the murmuring and shuffling of spectators through the double doors ahead. She tenses her body, flexing her arms and legs, before releasing and shaking them out. She clenches and unclenches her fists, stretching her fingers. Her trainer pushes the doors open, and she follows him through, into the rush of wind and sound.

This is, she sees now, the same sky-lit stadium in which she had her initiation. Only now the cage is gone, and she can see in the shadows at the edges of the arena that there are risers and risers packed full with Vultures. Her muscles tremble with the reminder of the crows she was forced to fight off, but she shakes away the memory. The Vultures are just here to watch. The thought doesn’t bring much relief. She doesn’t know what they want—for her to live or die. It doesn’t matter; suffering is their sport. They’re in the middle of a war, and yet they find time to entertain themselves at her expense. It’s brazen of Malfleur—and suggests that she has army to spare.