Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers

10

“Clear your mind,” Sasha said, her voice a dull, droning hum. Sending a barb of that soothing energy through my palms, where she held my hands in hers. “Focus on this.”

Taking a breath, I let myself drift. Soothed by the sound of her voice. By her energy, weak though it was—smothered and enslaved by General Tilcot and the chains buried deep in her flesh. “What are you doing?” I asked, drowsy. Complacent and calm.

She pulled at the dark flames seething behind my ribs, wrapping them in a blanket. A shroud of comforting frost that tempered the fires and eased the ache gnawing on my sinew. “Protection,” she murmured. “I’m giving you a shield.”

“Like th’ ones the rebels made,” I slurred, remembering the electric blue shimmer that tasted like hope—until the Caledonians gobbled it up and swallowed it whole.

Sasha hummed, seeming not to understand. “I’m building something you can use to keep yourself separate from the hunger.”

“Mmm not hungry,” I returned, and my eyes drifted closed on a blink that grew long and heavy.

“Yes,” she murmured. “But feeding on nothing but Asher’s energy will only drive your thirst for more.”

My heart lurched. Eyes snapping open as a bubble of fury resurfaced in an instant, my ire provoked. Overwhelming the flimsy barrier of priestess energy before she could finish her task. “I don’t want more,” I hissed. “I want to see him on his knees. Made to crawl”—I shivered, fingers growing tight around those that were frail and dry—“to beg.”

A crease flickered between Sasha’s brows, her forehead misted with a fine layer of dew. “You have to let your anger go, Mila. Learn to bend before you break.”

Pressure pounded at my temples, lodged in the soft spot beneath my jaw, where it reached for my heart with barbed hooks. Taking root. Festering. “Why?” I spat, my breaths coming short and ragged. Jaw flexing as I ground my molars together. “Why am I the one who has to bend?”

“Because you can’t beat him,” she replied. Unblinking, her icy blue stare boring into mine. “You have no power, child. No talent or skill. Nothing.”

Breath frozen in my chest, I felt something churn deep inside my heart. Seething where it smoldered, frothed and furious, dangling on the edge of something dangerous. Awoken for the first time. “Nothing?” I whispered, vision growing dark about the edges. Narrowed down to two points of taunting chips of ice, blind to everything else.

“You’re no priestess,” she pressed, pupils little more than tiny pricks of black in an ocean of blue. “Not trained to use the gifts that might have saved us. You’re a plaything. Bound to service an elite.”

Sweat dropped from her hairline.

Tracing down the side of her face, where it was caught in fine lines. Growing larger as it fell, absorbing the anxious moisture gathered on pale skin.

I exhaled through clenched teeth. Her words worming through my flesh and bone, burrowing into the fat. Feasting on greasy suet in such a way that left me breathless and dizzy.

“Just another tool of war for the empire to use,” she continued. “So much potential, gone to waste. Used in the fight against her own people. Who was it that kept you from the temple?” she asked, panting now. Her cheeks glowing with heat, despite the way her eyes chilled me to the core. “Such arrogance could only be the doings of a man. Was it your father?” A short, breathless laugh bounced off my cheeks. My lips. And she said, “Ah, yes,” through a sneer that didn’t suit her genteel features. “It was. I can feel the way it hurts you to admit it. But you know it’s true.”

“Stop,” I gasped, the syllable hardly bothering to cross my clenched teeth. My knuckles bloodless where they were locked around Sasha’s fingers. And just there, splashing at the back of my throat—burning—a cauldron of pure, seething rage begging to be loosed. A beast over which I had no control.

She grinned, then. Cruel and wicked, a sharp thing designed to provoke. “It was your father who left you unprotected, Mila. He all but gifted you to the Caledonians. Ensured you’d be passed around between them, fought over until there’s nothing left but an empty, obedient vessel. A slave. Soiled… used…”

Acid boiled over as I stared into her eyes and saw nothing.

Just another betrayer.

A traitor who promised help but offered only pain.

Embracing the way it burned as it spattered over my lips, I did the only thing I could.

I unleashed the storm…

… and crashed into a wall of pure white energy.

A shield.

Tinged with electric blue.

My knees buckled, sending me crashing to the floor in a boneless heap. Both wrists caught in a frigid vice of bone and ice.

“The elites were born and bred for war,” she said, standing strong. Unbent. Towering above me as power billowed all around her. “But it is only a priestess who can take something corrupt and make it something new.”

And then I knew.

What she’d done.

Why she’d provoked me into violence.

It was my energy she wielded. Dark flames tempered by a master—a woman who needed no power of her own to see me beaten.

Vision going blurry, I took a breath. The first one I could recall that wasn’t bogged down by the weight of failure and shame. A breath that didn’t stink of poisonous elite energy. It was fresh and crisp. The closest I might ever come to freedom.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and felt the scalding heat of tears when they spilled over my lashes. “I don’t—”

“A shield won’t save you,” she said, and released my wrists. Cupping my face in both palms, her thumbs traced over the wetness on my cheeks. “But it’s a start. Something for us to build a solid foundation upon.”

I nodded, chin dipping as her hands fell away. Unable to bring myself to stand, I dragged my knees to my chest instead. Curling around myself so I might prod at the thing she’d built and stare in helpless wonder.

The beast, too, was held rapt and enthralled.

A tentative knock rapped at the door. “Priestess?”

“Come in,” Sasha said, and reclaimed her seat with a weary sigh I felt echoing through my own chest.

Alicia peeked through a crack in the door. “You’re needed in the infirmary.”

Sasha rubbed the bridge of her nose between forefinger and thumb. “Thank you, Alicia. I’ll be out in a moment. We’re just finishing up.”

The door snapped shut.

I didn’t look up from where my ankles were crossed, when I said, “Am I going to get pregnant?”

For a long moment, my question went unanswered. I was left to sit in an uncomfortable silence. One that only grew heavier with every passing second.

And then, “No,” Sasha said, and stood. Turning, she uncovered a glass case containing the unmistakable glitter of gold. An unused set of chains matching those that were sunk into her flesh and mine. “It’s the chains. Once activated, they interfere with our natural cycles. The bound priestesses are infertile.”

I nodded, swallowing a hard lump, but that was it.

Moving to stand before me, she extended her hand, and said, “You did well today, Mila.”

Taking her hand without meeting her eye, I snorted. Knowing it wasn’t true. I hadn’t done anything but react, take the bait she’d laid before me, and reveal myself to be exactly what she thought me to be.

Dangerous.

Volatile.

An empath.

“I’ll see you soon,” she murmured, one hand on the door. The other on my lower back.

“Tomorrow?” I asked, and cringed. Hating the eager lilt to my voice, yet unable to pretend it was a lie.

She shrugged. “Unless something comes up.” A tiny, sad smile flickered at the edge of her lips. “Such is the life of a slave.”

I shuddered, rolling my neck—and bumped the crescent bruises left high on my shoulder. But instead of leaning into the pit of seething hatred, I reached instead for the glimmering shield built by an artist. Drinking it in, I bathed my dampened senses in a wash of cool strength before I turned to go.

Centered. Refreshed.

It wasn’t much, as far as plans went, but it was a start. Something that didn’t belong to the captain or the empire. Something shared between women who might one day be equals.