Page 96 of Winter's Echo
He was quiet for a moment. “You hesitated,” he said. “Earlier. Before you chose the route east of the mountains.”
I kept my expression still. He'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed. “The snow was uncertain that way.”
“The snow is uncertain everywhere.”
“More uncertain there.”
He turned his head slightly, just enough to see me without actually looking at me. I felt his eyes on me and didn’t look back.
“You don't know this ground,” he said. It wasn't an accusation. Just a quiet, precise observation from a man who made quiet, precise observations about everything.
“I know snow,” I said.
“Okay.” He turned back to the horizon. “Tell me when you don't.”
I looked at him then, properly, because the instruction had been so straightforward and unexpectedly devoid of condescension that I needed to check it had actually come from him.
His face was unreadable. His eyes were focused ahead. He meant it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because in terrain you don't know,” he said, “you'll make decisions based on what you expect rather than what's there. I'd rather know when that's happening.”
I turned back to the horizon. The emptiness seemed to stretch endlessly, unfulfilled and pale, and I wondered how long he’d known I was struggling.
“I'll tell you,” I said.
“Good. I don’t like surprises.” He nodded once and moved back down the ridge.
Ugh, even when he was being nice, he was an asshole.
We walked farther, and all the while my magic bubbled inside me, eager to be let out. I’d never felt it like this before. Was it because there was nothing here? Was it my own anxiety about being unsure for the first time, since the first time, that I was subconsciously calling it forth?
I didn’t have the answers. In fact, I had no answers today.
We made camp behind a drift that could have been a stone or a solid lump of ice beneath. Either way, it provided some shelter.
I wished we’d had the sense to barter for one or three or five of Vorn’s tents. No watch was set, the soldiers huddled close around the two fires they built, and we lay down to rest.
I waited until the camp was quiet.
Not long after true dark fell, it didn’t take long for silence to settle. They were tired from walking and fighting their way through the snow. The fire was low, and the only sound was a soft murmur of snores.
I moved carefully, made no sound, and went farther than I strictly needed to before I stopped.
The cold here was the purest I had ever experienced. It wasn't windchill or storm-chill, it was just the cold of a place frozen since before anyone even considered naming it the Frozen Waste. The cold pressed in from all sides with no escape.
I crouched and pressed my bare hand flat against the snow.
The magic came immediately.
Not a trickle, not the careful controlled warmth I usually coaxed forward… it surged. The way it had been threatening to surge for days, and I bit down hard on the sound that wanted to come with it and forced it outward instead of letting it climb. Down into the ground, into the rock and frost beneath, it drained away through the earth rather than through the air where someone might see it.
The snow around my hand melted in a wide circle. Wider than I intended.
I pulled back, and the warmth flooded through my body as my magic retreated and the cold rushed in to fill the space it had left. But I was full of warmth, and I wasn’t left shivering like I sometimes was.
I sat back on my heels and breathed. My hands were shaking. Not from cold. This had never happened before. The magic had always been mine to command, mine to direct, a tool I reached for when I needed it and set aside when I didn't.
