Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers
21
“Lords and Ladies of the North District!” General Tilcot shouted, his voice booming out over the gathered audience without the aid of an amplifier. “Tonight we are honored to host his Royal Majesty Octavius Cicero Tiberius—”
Roaring, the audience welcomed the Emperor’s brother and drowned the rest of the general’s opening statement.
In the royal pavilion, a man stood and waved to his subjects. Hair a shocking mop of unruly white, back still strong and stiff despite his obvious age, he carried himself with the careless ease of a man accustomed to privilege.
Bowing deeply, the general and the captain both paid their respects.
“Welcome, your majesty,” Tilcot continued, then spread his arms in a sweeping arc and addressed the crowd. “Tonight is a night of triumph and celebration! A night to celebrate our promising young elites”—he flung his left hand toward a line of six young men, all pink cheeked and dressed in pristine uniforms—“and to display what marvels the future holds.” Grinning, the general strode forward and wrenched the top off the wooden crate.
The sides fell away in the most theatrical display one could possibly conceive—and revealed the massive weapon Asher had used on the field. The cannon that had left the frontlines a mess of craters and dancing, elite energy.
The very same that had almost killed me once before, now set up to finish the job.
I gasped. Staggering back into the butt of Reese’s weapon.
“I’ll not tell you again, priestess,” he growled and nudged me forward with a hard jab to my lower back.
Flashing my teeth, I turned to confront him. Reaching for the empath, for the banked fury that didn’t want to die at the hands of obedient peasants.
The well was cold.
A cauldron of frost and dust.
Neutralized of all that seething, frothing acid.
Sweat beaded on my brow, the effort for so trivial a result leaving me weak and trembling in the chill evening breeze.
“This is a day of reckoning!” the general boomed, and took the prisoner by the back of his neck. Shaking the pitiful man. “A day of triumph over our enemies!”
A wall of sound crashed down upon us. The Caledonian citizens cheering and screaming with one, insatiable voice as the captive Eloran rebel was forced to his knees.
The thin crackle of a man made to beg broke through the din of the crowd—but only just. Enough that I could hear it. That the sound sent a tsunami of dread spilling down my nape.
Chin tucked, I squeezed my eyes shut, creasing my makeup where Alicia couldn’t fix it. Fingers curled into tight, helpless balls.
And then I prayed.
The Head Priestess took a step, and her palms landed on my collarbones. A familiar grip, but this time, absent the choking haze of priestess magic needed to soothe the beast. “You know nothing of being a priestess,” she murmured, lips against my ear.
“Step back, priestess,” Reese growled. “Hands off the girl—”
“Yes,” she returned, and patted his cheek. “Thank you, Reese. I’m sure you’ve got your orders, but I can assure you, I’m quite safe from Mila. Especially in the state she’s in now.”
Grinding my teeth, I couldn’t argue. Couldn’t so much as feel even a tingle of her enticing spark.
At her touch, Reese let his weapon drop. His face going slack as his pupils swallowed a chocolaty ring of color, and without a word of protest he returned to his post. Face forward.
Lips parting on a shocked gasp, I frowned.
But before I could utter a word, she said, “There’s so much I could have taught you.” Extending her fingers, she ran pale digits down the side of Aiden’s cheek and ensnared yet another elite—I could see it now, in the sheen of glossy blank eyes. “So much potential left untapped.”
All around us, the general’s booming voice continued to drone, but every scrap of my attention was focused on the Head Priestess. The calm confidence that had rendered two elites obedient slaves with nothing more than a touch.
“You’re not a priestess,” she said again, and joined me on equal footing. Flanked by no less than six empty-eyed elites who moved in time with her unspoken commands. “Not trained to use your gifts, powerless without the empath as your crutch, but”—a gentle breeze caught her unbound, silver-blonde hair and sent it dancing between us—“I will not allow you to become another tool for the empire to soil.”
Pure, unfiltered terror slid into my guts. Slithering in a coil that spread through my entrails, only to double back and wrap around my heart.
“Sasha, please,” I whispered, eyes forward. Hardly daring to look at the woman I’d once hoped might become my greatest ally. My sister in rebellion.
On the stage before us, one inaugural elite after the other stepped forward to be introduced to the royal sibling. The general read from a list of their attributes and accomplishments, before sending each of the youths back into line.
“Every priestess who has ever been,” she whispered, electric blue gaze fixed to the general’s face, “has the potential to become an empath. This is a secret the empire can never possess.”
I nodded, quaking deep in my middle. Knowing she meant to act. That she couldn’t allow me to live and compromise the rest of her flock.
The last of the young elites stepped back into line, and with a hideous grin, General Tilcot turned to the captain, and said, “And now to mark the beginning of the festivities, my own cousin, Captain Asher Rawlings of the Special Forces will use his golden priestess to usher us into a new era! One of unimaginable power brought on by a new generation of priestess!”
When a cool, dry palm landed on my elbow, I didn’t bother to flinch. No matter the way my heart hammered in my chest, the floundering of my breath, I set my jaw and readied myself for what came next. “This is the last weapon I have left.”
“She is a priestess of rare power!” the general boomed. “One whose innate gifts have been the subject of rumor and gossip, for with a single shot”—he strode across the dais toward the weapon that would spell my doom—“the captain was able to quell a rebellion!”
“Elites are born and bred for war,” the Head Priestess murmured, brow wrinkled as she watched her counterpart through a sneer. “But only a priestess can take something corrupt and make it new.”
I took a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to be their weapon,” I whispered, blinking. And despite my best efforts, tears spilled over my lashes. Hot and salty, I was shamed before an audience of Caledonians. Weak and pathetic at the very end, no matter the frost of numb blanketing me from head to toe.
“I think you are that new thing,” Sasha murmured, watching as the captain stepped forward, jaw a tight, grim line. “The priestesses are all gone. Taken and enslaved by the empire. All except you.”
My head snapped toward her, eyes wide as I tried to pull meaning from her words. Tried to make sense of what she said, despite the way my head spun. “Sasha—I don’t—”
“Pray to your heathen gods,” the general spat, kicking the rebel soldier before he stooped. Hands outstretched to claim the weapon.
But she gave me no time to understand. “I’ve had something delivered to the captain’s rooms,” she said, and smiled. “I think you’ll know what to do with it. That it isn’t the answer for the rest of them.”
She took another step—and her elites followed without a word of command. Claimed puppets, absent any hint of self-preservation or individual thought, they followed.
Each one offering up a flood of unimaginable power for her to redirect. To make new.
The general’s hands landed on sleek metal.
A trap snapped shut.
Sasha’s veins lit with a blinding gold. Flooded in the space it took me to stumble forward, a warning bursting from my lips.
Too late.
Forearms bunched with corded muscle, the general cried out. Unable to drop the cannon that surged with a blaze of poisonous green fire. Charging with a high-pitched squeal that warned of too much power, surging too fast.
A blazing goddess dressed in cleansing blue flames, Sasha merely continued her advance. Her elites a tight V of protection and sacrifice, they were a perfect contrast to her magnificence—they were drained of their vitality. Their magic gobbled up by a master, sent to kill a general.
And there, beneath the skin of powerful men, Sasha’s elites showed the strain.
Their veins turned black before my eyes.
“No!” I screamed, stumbling after her. Inhaling the scent of baking flesh, I gagged. “Sasha! Please don’t!”
Bellowing his rage, the general spun, splashing arcs of plasma all over the wooden dais.
Seared by the intensity of that sickly glow, I tried to squeeze my eyes shut—and found I could see even through the darkness behind my lids.
I charged forward anyway, flinging one bent arm over my eyes. “Sasha!”
“Let there be nothing but dust.”
The words echoed around the platform. Ethereal and without tether, they came from her lips but were heard above the screams of noble women. Louder even than the panicked cries of men hollering for order, and a general holding the reins of an explosion he simply could not hope to match.
Outnumbered seven to one, he lost control.
Belching thick waves of incandescent plasma, the weapon misfired.
A hard body collided with my ribs, sending us both crashing to the ground in a breathless heap.
I felt him, then.
His weight pinned me down, guarding me against the waves of heat that set fire to the stage and ate through a swath of Caledonian citizens in a single, burning instant.
Asher.
“Help her!” I screamed, straining to throw him off.
The general collapsed, swallowed by his own ambition, his legs simply… burnt away, nothing left behind but a greasy film that coated my skin. My tongue and sinuses.
But Sasha—she shone.
Veins lit with blue fire—with pure priestess magic—she wielded the energy of six elites and put an end to General Harper Tilcot.
Taking her vengeance, her spine arched. Bowing back at an impossible angle, her jaws parted on a soundless scream. Hair whipping around her in a storm of her own making, she showed me what a priestess really was, before they’d all gone extinct.
Draining her elites to kill a general, she turned them to char.
Awed, I watched them crumble. Couldn’t so much as blink when their bones were turned to ash, their eyes and flesh flaking, carried off as dust on the breeze.
Disappeared as if they never were.
Only she remained.
Broken but unbent.
The very last of Tritan’s priestesses.
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Thank you for reading Frost to Dust, The Last Tritan, book II. Flip the page for a full chapter preview of book III, Dust to Smoke, and don’t forget to preorder your copy today!!
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