Page 97 of Wings of Ice and Steel

Booted footsteps clattered down the stairs behind her.

‘Please!’ she begged. ‘Stand aside!’

But the young guard stood his ground. He raised his sword with a quivering hand. Ariadnne had no weapon, nothing to fight with. She considered barging past regardless in the belief that he wouldn’t strike to kill the Guild’s precious varanya.

Behind her, the first of the guards emerged from the stairwell, assuming a defensive position as his comrades fanned out beside him. There was no way she could escape back up the stairs now. She was trapped. She clutched at her head as her spiralling emotions threatened to overwhelm her.

A snarl escaped her lips.

She couldn’t hold on. Her fingers shifted into talons as her dragon muscled forward. If it won, it would probably bring this whole part of the castle down around their ears. She closed her eyes.

Her edges felt blurry.

A searing pain shot through her thigh. Crying out in shock, she opened her eyes. They widened at the gaping tear in her dress, a dark stain spreading across the fabric and dripping crimson onto the floor. She looked in shock at the guard before her, clutching his bloody sword. He’d stabbed her.

Her surprise turned to dread as a heavy, numb feeling sank into her muscles from her leg outwards. Her shifting features stuttered to a halt, the scales that had been spreading up her arms dissipating as she fell to her knees.

Ariadnne lifted her eyes to the fearful face of the guard who had wounded her, to the sword that must have been laced with poison. Her vision fogged as it spread throughout her body. She barely had enough time to register that the guard looked horrified at what he’d done before darkness overtook her, and she knew no more.

Forty-three

Nieve

The cell walls pressed close. Six steps by eight. Six by eight. Always the same. A shuddered breath rasped past Nieve’s teeth, anxiety swirling and tangling in her throat. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

Rancid air mingled with the sheen of perspiration clinging to Nieve’s forehead, sweat dripping in slow procession down the back of her neck. Grime and filth adorned every inch of her body, the only break in the dirty sheen the scrapes of clean flesh inflicted by her own nails as she fumed at her impotence.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing. She had no idea what was happening outside of the prison walls and the silence was deafening.

A pile of damp straw and a leaky bucket for waste; these were the comforts she was permitted. They barely registered as an onslaught of emotions threatened to rip Nieve’s legs from under her; an overwhelming cacophony of grief and fiery rage that built and built until, just now, it had been snuffed out.

Flashes of Rosa’s bloodied, broken body broke through Nieve’s terror.

She couldn’t lose someone else.

Her hands clawed at her chest, trying to reach the dull point of pain that their bond had reduced to. She had nothing but the faintest sense that Ariadnne was alive—a quiet, lingering pulse.

Six by eight. Still six by eight.

Ariadnne couldn’t be hurt; she was a force of nature, the guiding star to her night sky. Nieve needed her.

Crystals of ice formed at her fingertips, a spiderweb of cold that zig-zagged across her palms, spreading like frozen vines up her arms. Power shimmered in the air, brimming with promise, yet futile against the wards lining her cell. To think she was heiress of Miradael—more powerful that even her father. What was the point of such power, now? With a scream of frustration, Nieve fired a sheet of ice at the door.

The wards merely flashed as the magic sizzled out.

Another blast, and another; the magic leaving a tang in her nostrils as she poured her soul into the release. It came so easily, too easily, the cell becoming a deadly storm of ice and snow—her mounting fury incarnate.

The flagstones cracked as the temperature dropped, ice forming on Nieve’s eyelashes and dusting her skin until it gleamed. It felt horribly good to burn so much power, as though the world should bend to her will, but the wards held, even if they glowed with the strain of containing her power. Nieve’s anger flared white-hot, her magic sparking and becoming something else for part of a heartbeat: a blinding, burning flame, hot enough that it burnt her fingers. With a gasp she relinquished her magic, cradling her hand with a frown.

That was new.

‘Going all renegade magic user hasn’t worked for me yet, either.’ A low and heavily accented voice chuckled, its syllables creaky and stiff with disuse. ‘It was an impressive attempt, nonetheless. I can smell your magic from here.’

Nieve stiffened, her ears pricking. There was a soft sound as the other prisoner moved in his cell.

‘I can’t see you bothering to try and escape,’ she rasped, her voice as icy as her magic.

‘I’ve too much of a headache from all your screaming and pounding to even think about escape.’ The prisoner sounded amused. ‘You shook the walls well enough to catch my attention.’