Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers
Dust to Smoke
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She was dying.
I could feel it on the wind.
Could see it in the quiet glow still flickering in her veins, where dying embers glowed a soft, gentle blue in muscles with nothing left to give.
It was there, in the pull behind my ribs, where she’d touched me with her gifts. Where she’d built protection I had thought to be a trap. Blinded by my helpless fury.
My impotent, boundless rage.
And now it was too late.
The Head Priestess couldn’t be saved from the bone chilling void.
Still, I reached for her. Crushed beneath the protective weight of a possessive male, I extended one trembling hand and took her ankle in hand. Wrapped it in fingers grimy with soot—stained by the ashen remains of the elites she’d sent to escort her into the void—and threw everything I had into the abyss.
To bring her back.
Fueling her dying body with what little remained of my corrupt gifts.
“Mila.”
It was a warning in a voice I didn’t quite hate.
One I ignored as I wilted beneath his weight, faltering with the effort needed to sustain her broken shell when I had so little to left give. Desperate to hold her here, on this side of the veil.
Where I needed her.
Where I could apologize for the hurt I’d caused.
Chaos reigned all around me. The screams of the dying and ruined a haunting symphony wailing tribute to the power of Tritan’s last true priestess.
Flames, flickering with a poisonous green, consumed the podium that was supposed to be our final stand. Sluggish, but hot enough to crisp the cheeks of any daring enough to get too close.
I felt nothing.
Nothing but the dusting of frost, the cold where she’d gone… where I meant to follow…
“Mila, stop.”
I couldn’t. Not now, with her lips tinged blue. Her chest so still.
A warm, calloused palm caressed my cheek, lips moving against my ear. “You have to let her go.”
It was cruel to ask for such a thing when I hadn’t given everything I could in the attempt to save her.
“There’s nothing more you can do.”
At this, a wordless sound of pain and denial crackled over my lips. Aggravating the blisters lining my throat, where I’d inhaled the searing heat of her final moments. The dust and smoke of her doomed escort.
Long fingers carded through my hair, soothing, despite the catch of callouses that pulled at my scalp. “Let her go before she takes you with her, little warrior. Before she takes us both.”
My grip tightened around that slender ankle. Nails biting into flesh growing cold and spongy, dimpled in a way that seemed unable to bounce back. Still, I held on despite the way the cold spread. “I... don’t care...”
Lips pressed to the corner of my jaw, the rasp of his beard prickled against my ear. “Your fight isn’t over,” he murmured and caught my jaw. Turning my eyes away from the woman I’d failed, he ensnared me with an unblinking stare. Trapped me in twin pools of swirling, inky depts.
A primal call to arms, he dared me to fight. Issued a challenge in a language I couldn’t speak but couldn’t ignore.
Anguish splintered through my chest, and I sobbed, torn right down the middle. Brushing up against her spirit, just once more, before he reeled me in. Allowed a single, silent farewell, before he pulled me back from the edge with the reins I no longer held.
She slipped away, fading into nothingness so quickly and irrevocably, that for a moment I wasn’t sure if she’d ever really existed at all.
“She’s gone.”
It was spoken in a voice thick with pain. One I didn’t recognize as mine or his.
He brushed a lock of tangled hair back from my face, careful where it stuck to tear-stained cheeks. Patient, he was content to wait, ignoring the flames and the chaos.
And to my horror, a flood of tears washed over my lashes—I saw it in the reflection of eyes gone dark as pitch. “She… she killed herself,” I rasped, eyes wide. Reeling, my hairline growing damp and itchy. “Killed them all.”
“I know,” he whispered, and traced the delicate angles made wet with shock, brushing at the deluge of tears that tracked down my cheeks and cleansed me of the soot of the dead.
“It was a trap. The”—I whined—“the instant he touched th-that cannon, h-he—” Traumatized, gut wrenching sobs broke through my illusion of inner strength.
Hushing me, he sat back and pulled me into his lap, cradling my cheek tight against his chest, where my tears were hidden from the hordes of frantic Caledonians trying to escape. Where they might dry against his skin and couldn’t be burned away by the heat of Sasha’s final stand. “She knew what she was doing.”
The offer of comfort bought only another flood of pitiful anguish, and I clung to him.
My enemy.
Fingers winding tight into the sodden fabric of his formal wear—gritty with a dusting of unspeakable grime—my lips moved of their own volition. “She died an empath,” I murmured, quiet enough that I wasn’t sure he heard my confession. “And I gave her the idea. It was my fault,” I whispered, and it echoed all around us with the ring of truth.
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