Moria’s voice pierced the air. “The Sinach will help to execute this traitor. Only when the demon lover lies dead, when his treason is burned from the earth, will spring return to our land.”
When the dragon landed on the stone dais by her side, I felt my gut tightening. The cold didn’t scare me, no, but fire was another matter altogether. My freezing body had started to make my thoughts slow, as though even my brain were encased in ice. Mentally sluggish, I couldn’t quite piece together what was happening. What was the point of the river water if she planned to use the Sinach?
The water was up to my waist now. Did she want to burn the top half of me?
When she barked out a sharp command, my heart skipped a beat.
On the stone platform, the Sinach reared, unleashing a stream of flames into the water. The arena seats erupted in screams. No one wanted to see this.
Slowly, through the fog of my freezing brain, I put the pieces together. She wasn’t going to drown me.
She was going to boil me alive.
38
AVA
The mirror dropped me east of the castle, and I immediately realized three things: one, the magical fragment had not come with me; two, wearing Shalini’s coat had been one of the best decisions I’d ever made because it must be negative twenty here; and three, this place had turned into an absolute hellscape.
And that suggested that Torin did not, in fact, have his magic back.
Dread whispered through me. On the east side of the castle, cages hung from the walls with prisoners trapped inside. A few of the cages hung open, but most of them contained people, frozen and half dead. Bile rose in my throat. If Torin’s throne were intact—if his magic had returned to him—he’d never allow this.
I scanned the cages desperately, searching for Shalini. No sign of her. A glimmer of good news.
In one of the cages, a woman crawled to the bars. Snow crusted her black hair and her pointed ears. “Help me,” she rasped. “We’re here because we were loyal to the king. Please help me.”
“Who rules here now?”
“Moria. She took the king. She took him to the amphitheater.” Hysteria barbed her voice. “Help me, please.”
Horror hit me in the gut. “To the amphitheater? Why?”
“I don’t know!” she shrieked. “Let me free, and I’ll be able to think more clearly.”
I breathed in a sharp, icy breath, feeling as if my thoughts were splitting in two. I could either race to the amphitheater now or I could try to fix his throne. If I returned to him the awe-inspiring power of a Seelie king, he might be able to save himself.
I stepped back in the snow, keeping Shalini’s hood over my horns.
When I glanced to my left, I glimpsed two soldiers marching in the distance. Their maroon uniforms gave them the appearance of drops of blood against a white landscape.
Wasn’t that Moria’s favorite color?
Distantly, I heard the mournful wail of a banshee twisting through the air. Cleena, maybe.
A shudder snaked up my spine. Someone was about to die.
I looked up at the cages once more and summoned life from the frozen earth. It was much harder to make things grow here than it had been in the Court of Sorrows. In Faerie, a thick crust of ice covered the land, trapping the living world beneath winter. In the hollows of my mind, I connected to the plants beneath the soil, feeling their struggle to break free of the ice.
I closed my eyes and thought of the flames of the ash goddess that danced atop the mountain in the Court of Sorrows and of the seductive heat of the Unseelie kingdom. I thought of Torin kissing me deeply in the abandoned temple of the ash goddess. Love is a forge…
I clenched my teeth, my fingers tightening into fists. Vines were hammering at the ice, struggling to break free.
I opened my eyes. Plants burst from the wintry earth, whipped upward, and wrapped themselves around the cage doors.
With a flick of my wrist, the vines pulled open the rusty iron doors. I dropped Shalini’s warm coat in the snow for one of the victims and freed my wings. They burst from my back, ripping Shalini’s shirt, and I soared into the air. Soldiers heard the noise of the cages opening and came running.
Swooping around to the northern side of the castle, I flew through the open portcullis, then beneath the towering ceilings.
Shouts rang out behind me, but I was moving quickly, and the throne room wasn’t far from the front gate. Behind me, a few archers unleashed arrows, but they flew harmlessly past.
My wings pounded the musty castle air, and I swooped into the throne room. A sheen of ice and frost gleamed off the stones, and a shiver chased down my spine .