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BY THE TIME DARKNESS descended, the cold had settled in, chilling me to the point I was almost numb. Reyfyre seemed to be oblivious of the frigid air. The only indication that he was impacted by the temperature was the brightness of his nose and cheeks, as if the wind had whipped them raw. I hadn’t realized just how protected our little camp had been from the weather. But then again, these were the Canadian Rockies, where the weather could turn on a dime.
“How far are we from Kos?” I thought of the few warm days and nights I spent with Hippocrates.
“Kos?”
I hadn’t spoken much of my time before I was locked up. Reyfyre just knew I had been sent to kill Hippocrates and didn’t. He knew of Hippocrates’s death and what happened in the cave, but the rest of my short stay had been off-limits to our general chatter. Because Hippocrates was no longer in the history books, Reyfyre hadn’t known exactly where all that had taken place. “Where they honor the goddess Aphrodite.”
“Greece?” He glanced at me and huffed a laugh. “That’s half a world away from where we are. Separated from this continent by vast oceans.” He scanned the snow-covered mountains surrounding us. “Is that where you were before?”
“Yes. My only experiences in this realm are Kos and the cave before you brought me to our camp.” I took a few more steps on my aching legs. I needed rest, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Reyfyre. “And your camp was much more advanced than the homes on Kos. They had no switches that could turn on lights or electronics like the television. Or even indoor plumbing.” I recalled the chamber pot in my room and Hippocrates’s meager explanation for what it was used for.
“This planet was in its infancy back then.” He paused and surveyed the barren landscape and pointed to a small copse of trees to our right. “We can make camp there tonight.”
“Outside?”
Reyfyre nodded. “It will be far more comfortable than being in that cave.”
He reminded me of my existence before he came any time I started whining. And he was usually right, but this time I wasn’t worried about comfort. “But out in the open, there’s no protection against predators.”
He waved toward the trees, as if that was supposed to ease my mind.
“Aren’t there grizzly bears and wolves in the wild here?” The last thing I wanted to do was hurt an animal. Humans I could fight, but a being only acting on instinct and not with malicious intent, I could not harm.
“They will steer clear of us.”
“Are you creating a magical barrier?” I pushed as we closed the distance to our intended resting spot.
“No. Fire usually is a deterrent.” The clip in his voice told me he had had enough of my questions. He sent me a hostile side-eye. “Magical signatures can be traced, so no magic until we are hidden in the city.”
I let it go but my nerves jumped at every motion in my peripheral vision. I had been protected from scavengers and threats in the cave, and I had seen enough to understand they didn’t care that we were intelligent living beings. To them, we were a food source.
Reyfyre guided us to the trees and found a naturally protected area under a large hemlock with a branch hanging down to the ground and earth beneath it instead of snow. It was high enough for us to almost be able to stand upright in and had a large enough circumference for us to lay on our sleeping bags on the hard earth without encroaching on each other’s space.
The outside of the branches was dusted with snow, so any heat from below wouldn’t cause an avalanche down on us either, which was a bonus. The entrance was also high enough so that fire wouldn’t burn the hemlock. Plus, the flames would create a nice barrier from wildlife and at the same time we wouldn’t be inundated with smoke.
It was perfect enough for me to question it. “Are you sure this isn’t a trap of some sort?”
The glare Reyfyre gave me was meant to wither, but I had developed an overly sensitive sense of self-preservation since he released me from captivity. But he took another look at the accommodation and glanced around at the surrounding trees. None of which had any branches bowed over and their limbs had a good six-inch coating of ice and snow.
He chewed his lip and shook his head. “I don’t sense magic, but I can’t be sure without casting a spell.” He wiped his face. “Fuck.” His glare was telling. He wasn’t happy with me or the situation.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Magical signature?” he said, as if I were daft.
I leaned down and formed some snow into a ball and tossed it at the opening. It sailed inside, but the moment it hit the ground, the earth started to move. The scuttling of the terrain had us both backing away. A spider nearly the size of the opening surfaced, with pinchers big enough to amputate an arm.
My throat convulsed as my swallow reflex stalled. I hated spiders. I had enough of them race across my skin in the cave to leave me shivering at the ghostly feel of their eight-legged trek.
We continued to back away slowly. Reyfyre pulled the swords from the back of his pack and handed me mine.
At least this time I could defend myself. I gripped the hilt of the sword tight through the mittens, hoping it wouldn’t slip.
The thing’s black eyes locked on us, and I shuddered. It made an awful clacking sound and the woods around us came alive. Reyfyre planted his backpack against mine, pressing into me. I equalized my weight and focused in the opposite direction, holding my sword at the ready. Dozens of hideous spiders surrounded us, none of which were quite the size of the one in the alcove, but they were big enough to draw my breath in a gasp.
“Just don’t slay me, okay?” Reyfyre said without any hint of fear.
“Ditto.” My voice shook with trepidation.
“Stab between their eyes and watch out for the barbs on their legs,” he added just before the pressure released.
I almost fell backward but didn’t dare look behind me. Instead, I held the sword at the ready, wishing I wasn’t so tired from walking most of the day into the evening. But I had no choice. It was fight or die. And I’d come too far to just give up now.
I closed my eyes and centered myself for a second. When my lids opened, the spiders had closed enough of the distance to send an adrenaline spike through me. My training from the days on end with Reyfyre, along with the years in the guard, came back to me, and I started to move as muscle memory took over. I spun away from a claw meant to rip my face open and slashed, cutting the appendage off before I stabbed forward, planting my blade between the beast’s eyes.
The closest spider fell, and the rest of them scrambled closer.
Reyfyre’s grunts came from behind me, along with the whistle of his blade. My mind kept track of where he was as I rolled into my forms, hitting and stabbing my way through the mass of black surrounding me.
When the last spider attacking me fell, I turned toward the covered sanctuary and launched my blade at the largest spider with a roar. My blade sailed true and buried in its face, splitting the thousands of beady eyes in two.
It teetered and then fell hard. I turned, witnessing the results of killing the queen spider. The rest of them fell in silent blobs, as if they were all of one mind. Still, Reyfyre stepped next to each one and slayed the fallen, making sure each one was indeed dead.
Reyfyre turned toward me. His coat over his arm was sliced clean through and the edges of the down inside registered red, as if he had been cut by one of the barbs. He didn’t even assess himself at all. His gaze moved to the mammoth dead beast blocking what looked like the only safe harbor for miles. Then he actually grinned at me. “Think you can move that thing out of there while I find some firewood?”
I pointed at my chest and shook my head. “I’m not touching that thing. I’ll go for firewood.”
His smile faded and his gaze narrowed. “Afraid of a little spider?”
I snorted a laugh. I had no idea why the gods created these eight-legged things, but they creeped me out to no end. “I’d rather find another place to sleep.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He stowed away his sword and marched toward the entrance where the head still held my blade. “Go find firewood,” he snarled at me as he gripped my blade and swung the beast sideways, dragging it out of the entrance enough to allow us to get in.
“Um. I think we will need another place to sleep.” The ground was a hole, and it was covered in pulsing black sacs. I pointed.
Reyfyre glanced beyond the beast and stopped moving it. “Shit.”
“Is that what I think it is?”
He nodded and yanked my blade free from the spider. “We can’t stay here.” He sheathed my blade and stalked off, backtracking out of the wooded glen and back into the snowy landscape.
The wind howled, pulling at our clothing as we walked.
“Do you need me to look at your arm?” I asked after a while. The copse of woods was now just a dot on the horizon. Before us lay a barren tundra that offered no place to rest.
“When we stop.” He scanned the nothingness as if he expected something to pop up from the snowy wasteland.
“We should make camp here.” We weren’t going to make the distant mountain range. Not tonight. And probably not tomorrow night. And now that my adrenaline had faded, the full force of exhaustion was making itself known in my sluggish step.
Reyfyre glanced at me. His eyes were rounded by puffy dark circles, making them nearly neon in the dark. All he did was nod, unclip his snowshoes, and drop to his knees. He used one of his shoes to dig in the snow. After a few strokes, he eyed me. “Care to help?”
I unclasped my shoes and knelt next to him. “What am I helping with?”
“Shelter.” He snorted. “As meager as it is, a hole is better than being exposed on the surface.” He sighed. “It also means we will need to share a sleeping bag to stay warm enough not to freeze. And even then, if a storm rolls in and covers us, it might not be enough.”
“I won’t freeze.”
He stared at me, and his lips thinned. “But I might.”
My chest stuttered at the thought. Without his magic, I’d have no hope of defeating Odin. “What about using your magic like you obviously did back at the cottage?” I waved around us. The weather there had not been this brutal, even in the depths of winter.
“I had the perimeter warded to hide the magic. It took months to set that up properly. And until we are ready to launch our attack, I cannot chance using it and exposing us. They are looking for magical signatures. They think a witch took you from that cave.”
He spoke to me as if I were addlebrained and it riled up my defenses, but I took a breath to calm the budding anger and focused my aggravation on digging a big enough space for both of us to fit in and be beyond the grueling wind.
“That’s enough, Kara.” His sharp tone burst through my focus.
I blinked down at the hole we had dug. It was at least seven feet in length and half as wide as it was long, and nearly three feet deep end to end. Deep enough so we could get out easily, and if the sides collapsed on us, it wasn’t deep enough to trap us. I was so irritated with Reyfyre that I had nearly dug the entire thing myself. He clipped off his backpack, pulled out his sleeping bag and positioned it in the middle of the cavity and then dropped his pack against the side of the hole. He lined the front with his snowshoes and the foot with mine and then put his hand out for my backpack.
I unclipped and handed my pack to him.
He put it on the side nearest us. “Keep your shoes on.” He hopped into the hole fully dressed in winter clothes and put his hand out to help me down.
I jumped down next to him, and he waved me to the side as he unzipped the sleeping bag. He slid in and situated himself on the outside and patted the spot next to him. I raised my eyebrow.
“You want to switch that around?” I pointed at where he stretched out.
He looked at the sleeping bag and then up at me with his forehead creased.
“I’ll take the outside. That way, you have me buffering your back and you can curl up to focus heat.”
For once, Reyfyre did not argue with me. He scooched over and flipped the covers back wider, leaving room for me to step in at the base.
I stretched out beside him while he worked the zipper up, leaving us with a small opening that only our eyes peered out of. We were sandwiched in with my front to his back, and I glanced over the hood of his parka at my bag lining the front wall of the hole. My blanket was tucked into the pack. I sighed. Reyfyre would just have to suffice in its absence. Still, that unnerved feeling gripped me, like without my safety blanket, Odin wouldn’t have an issue pinning down my whereabouts. I folded my arm under my head and slung my other arm over Reyfyre because there was nowhere else to put it.
He grunted at me and curled further into a ball. With my arm over him, I could feel his shivers.
I curled my knees under his, plastering myself against him. I wasn’t cold. Not in the way he was. “Rey, are you all right?”
“I’m just cold,” he muttered, curling tighter.
I curled with him and ran my hand up his arm. He hissed, and I remembered the cut. I rubbed his side and his thigh fast, trying to produce some heat for him. Even through the winter clothes, his defined muscles trembled. His chest rumbled as I kept going, and finally his tremors subsided.
His breathing evened out and soon his soft snore filled the sleeping bag. I turned my head to glance up at the bright stars dotting the dark canvas above us. The cold air caressed my eyes, and I closed them, curling into the back of Reyfyre’s jacket, praying nothing else would attack us in the dead of night.