ASTRID CREPT THROUGH THE underbrush, keeping to the tree line. The gleam of her eyes would give her away if she moved out into the open, but she knew well how to use the shadows to her advantage.
But when she reached the clifftop, Astrid stopped in disbelief. The tiellan army was gone. The camp that had once held over two thousand tiellan Rangers had been reduced to waste.
Had the Legion gotten the drop on the tiellans? Perhaps someone had done her job for her. But there was no sign of combat; if anything, it appeared like the tiellans had simply… left. No tents remained, no bedrolls, fires had been extinguished. They’d left the siege engines: the colossal trebuchet had been dismantled, but the others—a few smaller trebuchets and a ballista or two—remained intact. And, curiously, the tiellans had left weapons: swords, axes, shields, and spears littered the ground—hundreds of them.
Why would the tiellans depart—and leave so many of their weapons behind? They were winning the war, despite their small numbers. This must be a ruse, to lull Triah into a false sense of security before thrusting the knife deeper. But if that were the case, surely they had underestimated the Khalic Legion. And anyway, she could not imagine anything more devastating than their attack on the Eye. Why dismantle such a weapon?
Then she noticed a figure standing alone, near the cliff’s edge. A woman, with a single long, thick, loosely tied dark braid trembling in the wind. Astrid had not seen Winter since that day in Izet, but her form was unmistakable.
Astrid tensed. Whether the rest of the tiellans were here or not—and why they might have left—was beyond her, now. All that mattered was that Winter was alone. Unprotected.
Her claws extended to their full length. She had not brought any other weapons, but she did not need them. With any luck, this would only take a moment.
Astrid sprang into a sprint, but even as she did so, doubt clouded her mind. Knot had given her permission, but what did that really mean? Permission to do something she hated the idea of doing in the first place? What good did that do her?
And what did her good matter when so many lives were at stake? Winter had proven her unpredictability; she had proven her disdain for life. Whether it was frost or Winter’s own nature no longer mattered. Winter was a threat to the Sfaera itself.
Or she was a woman driven to the edge, fighting for what she believed was right. Funny how Knot actually giving her his permission was what made Astrid question the act all the more.
Hadn’t Astrid proved her own disdain for life, many times over? Who was she to pass judgment on someone else for that reason? She had gone for decades completely past feeling, not caring who she killed or why. But, at some point, that had changed. She had started to care. She had started to regret what she had done. She had begun to seek redemption.
What stopped Winter from experiencing the same change?
Something was not right, she knew it as she ran. Winter should have noticed her by now. But Astrid was committed now, flying too fast and powerfully to stop, all of the momentum of the past few days—of the past few years—behind her, propelling her, and she leapt at Winter, claws extended, ready to make the kill.
Everything stopped.
Or, at least, Astrid did: she hung frozen in midair, claws extended toward Winter’s neck. She struggled against the force that held her, but none of her muscles responded. Even her eyes refused to move, locked straight ahead on her prey.
“Hello, Astrid,” Winter said. Her voice was… small, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a very deep hole. “You may know that telesis is not able to move living things.” She turned slowly, observing the razor-sharp claw so close to her neck. She met Astrid’s frozen gaze. “But then, vampires are not living things, so we are told. And telesis seems to have some effect on you, wouldn’t you say?”
Astrid managed a low moan. She strained her muscles, but it was as if they were no longer her own; they refused her commands, and she remained there, stationary, levitating above the clifftop. Winter began pacing a slow circle around her.
Beyond her alarm and confusion, Astrid was not afraid. There was no animosity in Winter’s dark eyes. But, as Winter came to stand in front of her once more, she did see fear in the tiellan. Astrid had learned, over the years, decades, and centuries, to recognize fear. The quickening of the pulse, dilated pupils, the sheen on her skin—and a particular smell that accompanied fear-sweat, something sickly sweet, almost as intoxicating to her as the smell of blood. But beyond all of those things, there was something else altogether that she had learned to sense: a change in the air around someone who became afraid, dark and crackling and volatile. Astrid sensed it all around Winter.
Winter had Astrid at her mercy; what in Oblivion did she have to fear?
“I will not kill you,” Winter said. “I know how much you mean to him.”
Astrid dropped to the ground, her muscles suddenly back under her control. She fell in an undignified heap with a short squeal. She jumped up, dusting herself off. She didn’t pounce. Her appetite for murder had gone.
“Do what you came here to do, Astrid. I have to imagine Knot would condone it, given my last conversation with him.”
Astrid didn’t move.
“Do it,” Winter’s voice cracked. The fear that Astrid sensed around the woman grew.
Do it. This was what she had come here to do, after all. Kill Winter Cordier, the Chaos Queen. End the conflict, hopefully save the Odenites and countless lives in the process.
And yet, she hesitated.
“Do it,” Winter said again, her voice wavering but louder.
Astrid took a step forward, one clawed hand flexing. “You… want this?”
“Kill me.” Winter raised her chin, baring her neck.
Astrid could sense the blood pumping beneath Winter’s skin, could almost smell the sickly sweetness of it… but it was hardly a temptation.
Her claws slowly contracted.
Winter noticed, and her fear and anger grew still more. “Do what you came here to do! Kill me!”
Slowly, Astrid shook her head. “I’m not going to do that,” she said quietly, not even sure if Winter heard her.
“You want to make me suffer? Fine. Torture me? Fine. Just do it, Astrid. End it.”
“I…” Astrid hesitated. “Winter, I know what you mean to Knot. I cannot do this to him. It doesn’t matter whether he agreed or not; if Knot won’t be selfish once in a while, someone has to do it for him.”
“I can’t live any longer,” Winter gasped. “I can’t be this. I don’t want to be what I am.”
Astrid, for all the anger she felt at the injustices to the Odenites, to the innocent lives lost, could understand that much, at least.
“And… what do you think you are?” Astrid asked.
“A murderer.”
“You’ve killed a lot of people,” Astrid said.
“And I deserve to die.”
Don’t we all?
“You have all this power,” Astrid said. “You’ve become a leader. You’ve caused all this pain, you’ve felt all this pain, and yet you don’t know the first thing about it.”
“What do you know about my pain?”
“I’ve felt pain, too. If you think you’re alone in that, you’re mad.”
“But—”
“Yes, just like you’ve felt it,” Astrid said, anticipating her protestation. “Believe it or not, Winter, there are a lot of people who have lost fathers, mothers, husbands, friends. A lot of people who’ve lost themselves to addiction, or felt trapped. A lot of people who felt helpless in the face of oppression. None of this is new. This is life. Some people take their entire lives to figure it out; others never get there at all.”
And it takes some people a few lifetimes, Astrid realized.
“But if you can,” Astrid said, “Then your life is worth saving. Even if you think it’s just a possibility, then you’re worth keeping around.”
Winter looked down at her hands, her face pale, eyes dark.
Oblivion take it, Astrid thought, and moved toward the woman. Perhaps she moved too quickly, because Winter started, her head snapping up to look at Astrid, perhaps thinking she had changed her mind, that she actually was going to kill her.
Surprise, bitch. Tentatively—Astrid was not about to throw her arms around the woman, this wasn’t exactly a family reunion—Astrid took Winter’s hand. Winter stared at their hands, her dark eyes wide, Astrid’s small fingers holding hers. Astrid squeezed once, and then Winter’s facade—the one Astrid had hqqqoped was there, had hoped she could penetrate— finally crumbled, and she began to cry.
“I understand,” Astrid said, and she meant it.
Winter pulled Astrid in toward her. Astrid felt the woman’s arms around her, and stood there uncomfortably for a moment before she made herself return Winter’s embrace.
They remained that way for a long time—Goddess, at least it felt like a long time to Astrid, but when she looked up, the hazy bright spot in the clouds where she knew the moon hung in the sky had hardly moved at all.
“So,” Astrid said, extricating herself from Winter’s arms, “now that we’ve decided neither of us is going to kill the other, I have to ask you something.”
Winter laughed, but the sound still seemed forced, sad, and she wiped some of the tears from her cheeks.
“Erm… what happened to the rest of the tiellans?” Astrid asked.
Winter looked back at the tiellan camp vaguely. For a moment Astrid wondered whether she’d noticed the other tiellans had left at all.
Winter pursed her lips. “I might have made a poor choice,” she said.
Astrid frowned. Don’t make me regret not killing you.
“I sent them away.”
“Away where?”
“I did not specify. I simply told them they could not be here.”
“And why did you send them away?”
But Winter was looking over Astrid’s shoulder.
“You need to leave, Astrid.”
Approaching from the forest was a tiellan man, perhaps a few years Winter’s senior, leading three humans: a noblewoman with a pink bow in her hair, a tall, sinewy elderly man with sunken eyes, and a very old woman with long wiry hair, who muttered to herself as she walked.
An odd assortment, indeed.
Winter’s aura of fear had grown even larger, spreading out from her like an ocean, flowing in every direction.
And, Astrid was surprised to find, she felt a twinge of fear, too.
There are daemons even daemons fear.
“Go, Astrid. I must handle this myself.”
Winter meant what she said. Without thinking of refusing, Astrid bolted east, along the cliff face, carefully avoiding the strange group.
She did not look back.