A Queen of Ice (A Trial of Sorcerers #5)

Chapter 13

13

T hey approached the small city in groups of two before the sun was up, staggering. Eira and Cullen were first. After them would be Alyss and Yonlin. Olivin would be last, Ducot on his shoulder.

Eira’s hand rested in the crook of Cullen’s elbow as they passed underneath the entry that hung over the road at the edge of the town. Just like the hamlet they’d seen on their way to the mines months ago, it was two upright columns, a beam across the top. Unlike the town, this didn’t have anyone strung up and gutted. Hopefully it still didn’t by the time they left.

There were no knights guarding the entry, but Eira knew that didn’t mean there weren’t any already watching. She scanned the rooftops and windows, looking for any signs of someone who was paying a little too close attention. But most of the buildings had been shuttered for the night. Only a few had the flickering of an early riser’s candlelight behind them.

The buildings were constructed from solid slabs of stone, tiny lichen speckling them like age spots on the cheeks of an old man. Weathered carvings at the corners bore witness to everything that happened on the streets beneath. The construction was mildly similar to the buildings in Qwint—magic playing an obvious hand with how some stones were set at angles impossible to achieve through traditional means of construction. But, unlike in Qwint, Eira noticed the copious amounts of runes carved into the walls and doors. Etched like protective talismans…or symbols of death.

Overhead, pennons of red and gold fluttered. Each one bore the symbol of Carsovia upon them: a serpent coiled in on itself, almost like a figure eight, never-ending. Their shining threads glinted in the first traces of a pale dawn, like a thousand eyes winking down at them—watching them.

“It’s…a lot,” Cullen murmured, noting the oppressive atmosphere without having to outright say as much.

“Do you imagine Solaris would feel like this to others?” Eira whispered, shifting closer to him so her words would be as quiet as possible. “We have our share of pennons flying with the Blazing Sun of the Empire.”

Cullen hummed. “Perhaps it would.”

Eira wondered if it would feel like this to her when— if she returned. She’d been an outsider to begin with. The woman she was now was certain to fit in even less. She’d told her parents that she would go back when she was able, and would visit them when she did. But even only a few days after that conversation, it felt like a lie.

“But I think there is a different feeling to willing patriotism versus…whatever this is,” Cullen murmured.

What was “willing” when it came to patriotism? Could you tell if it was engrained in you from your first breath? She wanted to ask, but didn’t. This wasn’t the time nor place for that debate. The line between pride and mindless following blurred so quickly, especially when the truth was kept under lock and key and sword-point.

Nestled at the heart of the city was a large, official-looking building. Rows of knights were positioned before it along the raised walkway that encircled it. A single stairway was the only entry or exit. Its towering walls were even more fortified than any of the other buildings.

A market had been set up in the square before it, offering Eira and Cullen the opportunity to covertly watch the comings and goings of the knights for nearly an hour as they milled about. Most of the knights looked on at the citizenry with dull, detached gazes.

“I don’t see an opening,” Eira whispered, fearing that they were now just wasting time. “We’re going to have to find another way.”

“I could create a distraction,” he offered. “Lure the knights away. You illusion us, we slip through.”

It was a bit of a haphazard plan, but better than the alternative of continuing to meander.

“This way.” Eira guided them through the markets and into a sheltered alcove. Looking around, she made sure no one’s attention was turned their way and drew an illusion over them. A thin layer of magic coated them like frost glistening on their shoulders. Eira wove the power tightly into place, keeping it close. “Ready.”

Cullen closed his eyes and Eira could feel the surge in his power. In response, a gale swept across the city. It turned tents in the market into sailcloths, flipping them. Wares were sent scattering. Dust from the fields and streets was blown into people’s eyes. Shouts and commotion rose as people scrambled to collect their things.

Another burst of power. One man was sent toppling into another. Cullen repeated the process, sending one, two more off-balance.

The third had the desired effect.

The man who’d been nearly fallen on rose with a shout. Things escalated quickly. Chaos broke free.

Eira took their chance, moving at the same time the knights did. Her hand clutched tight with Cullen’s, they darted along the fronts of the buildings that lined the square. Glancing over her shoulder, Eira met Cullen’s eyes. A shimmering haze surrounded the edges of his face, the only tell of the illusion that she wove around him.

“Wind under our feet,” Eira said, not worrying too much for who might hear. There was enough noise in the market as it was. The likelihood of someone hearing and placing the sound was slim.

Cullen’s reply was a nod, his attention shifting to the building before them. Eira had gone for the far corner instead of the main stair at the front. The knights in the middle were the first to respond to the fighting that had broken out, the others shifting down.

At the wall, Eira leapt and a surge of wind propelled her upward. Her stomach shot into her throat as weightlessness made her head spin. She inhaled sharply and the rogue thought of what it might be like to soar as free as a bird crossed her mind. A question for Cullen, someday in the future.

They landed gently on the stone walkway, the closest knight a few paces ahead.

Eira kept moving, slower now, ensuring their footfalls didn’t give them away. Her lungs burned as she fought her hasty breaths, forcing them to be slow and shallow, even when it caused lightheadedness.

Open the doors , her heart begged, open the doors , she wanted to scream. There were no windows that they had seen. This was the only entrance in and out and they’d yet to catch a knight rotation. For all she knew, the knights didn’t even come from this central building whenever they did change out.

Without warning, the doors burst open. Eira skidded to a halt, slamming herself, and Cullen, against the wall. A group of knights rushed out around a central figure that held a flashfire aloft.

An explosion rung out over the city as he flicked his finger over the triggering mechanism.

“We will have order,” he boomed across the square.

Eira’s heart thundered with the echo of the flashfire. A cold sweat drenched her from head to toe, every muscle in her body tense. With every blink, she was on the walkway one second, back at the mines the next. The sulfuric smell of the flash bead combining with the sizzle of magic across her flesh made her nauseous.

End him. Have your vengeance , a voice whispered. Eira didn’t know who it belonged to. Ulvarth? Noelle? Herself?

A squeeze on her fingers ripped Eira back to the present. She turned to Cullen, who gave her a pointed stare. They shared a thousand unspoken words. He’d seen her struggle. He knew. Just as well as they both knew this wasn’t the moment to give in to her ghosts, or her most murderous impulses.

Get in. Get out. Keep everyone safe. Accomplish your mission and be stronger for it . Eira reminded herself that those things were all that mattered.

Side-stepping around the group of knights that surrounded the man in charge, they slipped through the entry and emerged into a marble-clad, empty hall. Four doors were on either side of them, two in the back. At the center of the ostentatious room was a sculpture of the eternal serpent of Carsovia, cast entirely in gold, gleaming ominously in the sunlight that streamed through a skylight above.

The room was, otherwise, empty of all else—people included. But she doubted it would be for long. The commotion in the market was going to be quelled in only a few minutes.

“Where to?” Cullen breathed. He must be thinking the same thing she was.

“Can you feel anything in the currents of air? Dampness that might be from dungeons?” Eira replied hastily, pulling them along.

Cullen dug in his heels at the center of the room, eyes closing. Eira waited, her attention on the doors. She couldn’t hear what was being said to the people in the market. But the noises had quieted.

“That way.” Cullen pointed to one of the side doors in the back corner.

Wasting no time, she pulled him over and pressed her hand to the lock. As ice filled it, pushing against the interior tumblers, forming a key ring that extended out beneath her waiting palm. The door swung open and they slipped through, easing it closed behind them. Judging from the voices and footsteps they shut out, it wasn’t a moment too soon.

A labyrinth of corridors awaited them, connecting various rooms that were packed so tightly together that the walls could hardly be more than a stone thick. Cullen shifted to lead. Without needing to communicate, or ask, he knew the direction in which she wanted to go. He knew what she needed from him.

Without warning, he pulled her into an alcove created by a door. Eira crashed into him from the momentum. It wasn’t enough for her magic to waver, but it was enough to steal her focus, especially as his hands landed on her hips, clutching her closer—protective.

They inhaled and exhaled together, eyes locked, bodies flush.

A pair of knights walked through a cross hall, oblivious to the two of them. Thanks, in part, to Eira’s illusion and Cullen’s quick thinking. But all she was focused on was him. For a second that seemed to stretch on forever, they didn’t move. They didn’t pull apart. It was only them.

The slightest smirk tugged on the corner of his lips, as if he also couldn’t believe the thought that was crossing his mind before he said it.

“Do you remember the trials?” Cullen whispered so softly that Eira could’ve sworn she had heard his thoughts. “When I pulled you aside like this? The first time I kissed you?”

“I’d never forget.” She couldn’t, even if she tried. No matter what, he was a part of her. He was etched onto her lips, her heart, her body. A stain—a gilding. Shame over all she should’ve done better and pride in what they had accomplished. “I…”

“You?” he breathed.

She was aware of the time that was being wasted. Of the precious seconds they didn’t have to spare. Yet… Eira leaned forward.

“I enjoyed it,” she confessed to herself more than him.

“I would’ve never said I did, if you’d asked then,” he agreed. His thumb dragged across her lower lip. When had he started holding her face? “But when I kissed you…I knew I?—”

Eira interrupted him by pressing her mouth firmly against his. Cullen’s hand was in her hair, nails scraping against her scalp. It was seconds long. Nothing much. Brief enough that it could’ve been forgotten in a breath.

Yet, if it was nothing more than a breath, it was the first breath of spring. The first breath of air after being under too long. When her eyes fluttered open, she met his gaze and a thousand questions ripped across her mind.

“I knew, from the first time I kissed you, it’d be easier to cut off a limb than cut the other from our lives,” he finished his earlier statement, causing her heart to skip a beat. Then, Cullen was the one to say the obvious. “We need to keep on. I don’t sense anyone else around.”

Eira wondered if he had been stalling for that reason, or just to savor those moments as she had. Either way, their brief reprieve had ended. With a nod, they carried on. Their window of opportunity was fleeting, and every second counted. There wasn’t time here and now to waste on kisses, as much as she might have otherwise wanted.

He came to a stop at the bottom of a stairwell. “I think this is the lowest point; the air is the most still here. But that means I can’t find a path forward for us anymore.”

“I’ll take it from here.” Eira closed her eyes and shifted her focus with her magic without releasing any of the other feats she was simultaneously performing. She strained her ears magically, sifting through the benign to the horrifying to find the mention of a single name: Allun . Eira opened her eyes and strode off with purpose. “This way.”

After two other instances of narrowly avoiding confrontation with patrolling knights, they reached a row of cells. It wasn’t hard to find Allun thanks to the echoes. She was positioned far in the back, the lock surrounded by an extra thick chain, covered in runes, as though they fully expected her to attempt escape even though her hands were bound.

The flickering torchlight danced upon the iron bars, barely reaching back to the woman hunched in the far corner of the cells. She was little more than a faint outline. Long shadows clung to her.

Yet, despite their deft silence from their honed movements, despite Eira’s skilled magic in crafting an illusion, and the shackles that surrounded Allun’s wrists…her head rose. Hazel eyes pierced the darkness to meet Eira’s and a familiar sensation of being watched overcame her. Eira knew this woman. She’d seen her before, but only for a moment that had been overshadowed by the flames of that day.

“Why, hello there,” Allun whispered, low, slow, ominous. A serpentine smile sneaked across her lips. “It’s been some time, incarnation of Adela.”