Kerrigan brought her wet hand up to her eyes and swiped away the treacherous tears. All of her hope had been put into this ritual. The Star Release hadn’t done anything. It had been false hope. Or they had done it wrong, and all the reasons it shouldn’t work were the ones they had been ignoring. They needed thirteen. They needed a star alignment. They needed … something else.
“We’ll try again,” Vera said confidently. “I have some ideas …”
But Kerrigan wasn’t listening to what anyone said. The ideas they all tossed back and forth, as if they would solve this problem. She had no magic. How could she save her people without her magic?
Her dad had sent her here to find her mother. Keres should have been able to fix this. And if not, then maybe she’d come to Alandria with her. Could she even leave Domara for long with the tether between her and Vulsan? So many questions. No answers.
Her mother hadn’t promised her anything. She hadn’t been able to even ask. Where did that leave her? A Fae-touched demi-Doma was nothing more than a half-Fae, half-human when she had no magic. No mating bond. No dragon bond. Nothing.
Kerrigan took a deep breath and dunked her head under the water, pushing her way down to the bottom of the pond. Maybe the waters would wash away the ache of disappointment. Leave her clean and whole once more instead of the broken shell of a girl she truly was.
She’d been under long enough, her lungs burning, her skin chilly again, when she pushed up from the bottom. Except when she reached the surface, her hand touched ice. Her eyes flew open, wide with panic, as she stared at a sheet of frozen water that now covered the pond. Kerrigan banged against the underside. Blood mingled with the water as she battered her hand, trying to force an opening in the underside of the ice. But there was nothing. Her air was almost gone. Little bubbles escaping her mouth like a ticking clock, ready to reach zero.
No, she mouthed as fury replaced sense.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening to her. She’d been in a pond, a warm pond in the countryside in Domara in the summer. It couldn’t have frozen over like that. Not that fast.
She placed her hands on the ice and sank down into that place that was now an empty crypt in the pit of her stomach. All the magic she had lost. But she still had something, didn’t she? Magic resistance. She could break spells. It had saved her more than once. She refused to believe that whatever had caused this ice was of the natural variety.
It was another spell to break.
As she channeled that feeling into the sheet above her head, she watched in desperation as ice thawed and thinned. Then, a hole appeared. She forced her head through the opening and gulped in great, heaving gusts of clean, fresh air. Her head was dizzy from the oxygen deprivation, and she had to hang on to the sides of the ice to keep her head above water.
Now that her immediate concern was mitigated, the cold hit her like a dragon to the chest. Her hands pushed against the ice to widen the hole big enough for her to crawl her way out of the water. Her hands and feet slipped against the snow-slicked surface. Still, she curled herself up onto the ice inch by painful inch, shaking with all of her might as the water threatened to drag her down.
It wasn’t until she was safely on the surface of the ice that the terror abated. Her teeth chattered noisily, and it took a solid minute before she could open her eyes again to survey the landscape.
Her friends were gone.
The clearing had been transformed into a winter wonderland. The waterfall frozen over like a series of giant icicles down the rock face. The surrounding land was coated in a full foot of snow as far as the eye could see. The boughs of the trees were heavy and drooping toward the ground. Not a single footprint in sight. Not a single bird chirping or animal rustling or person speaking. The space was oddly silent. Deadly silent, like a predator had set up shop and was staking out its prey. The silence was a warning.
Kerrigan pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. She didn’t know what predator would be in these woods. But she still didn’t have her magic, and now, she was freezing. She needed to get to Vera’s home and find a way to warm up. Otherwise, she would freeze to death before she figured out how any of this had happened.
She stumbled on shaky legs across the ice. The snow was deceptive, and each footfall felt precarious. Her shoes slipped on the wet surface. She threw her arms out to try to brace herself, but that redistributed her weight. She gasped as she heard the first distinctive noise in the strange, cold world—the cracking of ice.
“Scales!”
She made a break for it. Her footfalls were hard and uneven. She could hardly care to be safe about it as a giant crack was chasing her across the pond and back to Keres’s original position at the point of the star. Her foot nearly fell through a hole as she reached the edge, and she dived forward, as she had so often in dragon training. Her back protested the roll, but the other option was plunging back into the freezing water. By her estimation, she only had about an hour before her limbs were going to succumb to hypothermia … if she was lucky.
Kerrigan came back to her feet, stretching her fingers and toes against the cold. She was soaked from the pond, and she’d only been in dark pants and a loose shirt before that. Thankfully, she hadn’t taken off her sturdy boots. At least she had a modicum of protection against the elements.
Whatever was out there was still hunting though. Now that she was out of the water, she could sense a stalking presence through the snow. Something much more suited to this climate than her. Even though it had only been summer moments earlier, it made no difference now.
She trekked through the downy snow and onto the trail they had followed not long ago. She was thankful to see that it still existed even if obscured by the snow. She had an excellent sense of direction, and finding her way, even in this new white landscape, wasn’t a problem. It was the cold that was the problem.
And the thing at her back.
A shiver raced down her spine, and she whipped around, wondering if she would have enough energy to even fight the thing. But nothing was there.
The same deadly silence remained. Ever present and terrifying.
She gulped and then continued the way she had been going. She couldn’t feel her toes any longer. The boots weren’t doing much but keeping extra snow from her already-frozen feet. Her fingers would be next. And then it would crawl up her body until it stopped her heart and she died. She’d read about it with her friends back in Alandria. Cold was much deadlier than heat.
Another dozen paces, and the cottage came into view. Somehow, it seemed farther away than when they had come through not long ago. Still, she picked up her pace, ignoring the numbness creeping up her feet. Smoke billowed from a fire, and fire meant heat and safety. And hopefully someone who would help her and keep the cold from claiming her limbs.
Her shaking was uncontrollable as she tumbled down a hill. One minute, her feet had been underneath her, and the next, she was crashing through the snow. If she hadn’t already been loud enough for the predator to find her, she certainly was now. She winced when she finally landed only a dozen paces from the edge of the cottage. Her arms and legs were ripped up from the roots and rocks under the snow. Blood dotted the snow red. One particular cut on her arm flowed freely enough to leave a trail under her battered body.
“Gods,” she groaned. She gripped her arm to try to stanch the blood and rose unsteadily to her feet.
She was nearly to the cottage, dragging one leg behind her, when she glanced back. Then, she saw it.
A beast.
A wolf three times the size of normal with golden eyes and fangs down to its chin. She cried out in horror. She had never seen such a creature before. And now, it had seen her.
She couldn’t fight it. If she succumbed to this thing, it would be as the defenseless, vulnerable, magicless creature she was currently. Not the person she had been, the person she had always believed herself to be. The strong, fierce, talented magical protector who had fought for the oppressed and stood up to evil in all forms.
It was just her.
Just her against all of that evil in the world.
And she had been found lacking.
Her mother had left her. Her father had left her. Everyone in her life who had ever gotten close had seen that she wasn’t worth the hassle.
This was who she was.
Just a girl. Up against a beast.
Was this surrender?
The beast stalked forward, and Kerrigan didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She was so close to escaping, and she could do nothing. There was no outrunning it.
The beast stopped in front of her, dropping its snout to her arm and scenting the air. Drool slobbered down from its fangs. It dripped onto the snow at her feet. Then, it met her gaze. There was something intelligent behind those golden eyes. A deep knowledge that she could hardly fathom.
She shook violently from the cold. But she had released her fear. This beast could have her if that was what it came down to. She was done fighting. Just done.
A door creaked open behind her, and still, she refused to move. Not when it was within distance of ripping her throat out.
“Ahlvie, that’s enough,” a voice called. “I told you to find her. Not terrify her.”
The beast growled softly in the back of its throat before sitting back on its haunches and regarding her with a disinterested look.
“Kerrigan,” the voice said.
And Kerrigan recognized the voice. Even though it made no sense. None at all.
She slowly turned in place and burst into tears. “Cyrene?”