by Eva Brandt
A feeling of familiarity assaulted my senses, and the frozen ground cracked under the pressure of my magic. A female figure crawled out from the created gap, clutching her chest like she was suffocating. “Dear gods,” she whispered. “That was horrible. What is... What is going on?”
My eyes widened as I took in the identity of the woman who had been under the ice. It was... It was Cassia.
She slumped down onto the frozen ground, clutching her own arms, shaking, her teeth chattering. Memories assaulted my mind, flashes of the time we had found her in her meditation chamber when she had been struggling with a power she could not control. We’d been able to help her then, although it had been a close call. Had something similar happened now?
Every single instinct in my body started to scream, and within instants, Kerryn and I both shifted into our humanoid forms. We rushed to her side and dropped to our knees next to her, desperately attempting to see where she was injured. “What is the matter, treasure?” Kerryn asked. “Where are you hurt?”
“R-Raijin?” Cassia stammered. “Is that you? How... How did I get here? Where... Where am I? What happened?”
I shared a befuddled, panicked look with Kerryn. Neither of us had any way of answering that question. Worse still, my magic couldn’t provide me with any answers regarding Cassia’s condition. There seemed to be some kind of veil around her, scrambling my attempts to check on her wounds. I was no healer, but that still shouldn’t have happened.
“Cassia, you need to tell us where you are injured,” Kerryn said. “Tell us, so we can help you.”
“I don’t know,” Cassia replied. “I... It just hurts. Everything. Where is... Where is Emmerich?”
That was another excellent question. We’d left our soulmate less than an hour ago, with our fellow dragon and the nisse, and they had headed into an entirely different direction, to help the amarok pack. What had gone wrong? Why was she suddenly here?
Snegurka. Snegurka must’ve done something. Gods be damned, we should’ve never left her on her own, with only Emmerich. Our firedrake companion was powerful, but clearly, he’d been unable to keep her from harm.
Cassia gasped and clutched my hand in a vise-like grip, tears now trailing down her pale cheeks. She leaned against Kerryn’s shoulder, still shaking violently. “Raijin... Kerryn... It hurts so much. Help me. I can’t breathe.”
I didn’t understand what she wanted. Was there some kind of spell that would allow me to heal her? Should we be attempting the same thing we had done to help her the first time? For some reason, it didn’t feel right. The two instances might have been superficially similar, but Cassia’s reaction was not.
Feeling like my heart was breaking, I sought my answers in my still distraught soulmate. “We’ll give you whatever you want, Cassia. Just show us how—”
“Raijin,” a sudden voice cut me off before I could finish the sentence. “I don’t think that is your mate.”
I turned, only to see our parents had at one point come closer. Unlike us, they had not bothered to shift and were eyeing us with visible wariness.
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“That isn’t your mate,” my mother reiterated, somewhat pointlessly. I had heard her the first time around, and I still couldn’t understand what in the world she was talking about.
Of course the woman in my arms was Cassia. Who else could she be? I would’ve recognized her ice blue eyes anywhere, the glow of her irises reminding me so much of the spires of The Palace of Serenity. I would’ve known her sweet, but sharp scent among a million others. Nothing on this planet could ever feel like the touch of her soft, but strong hand clutching my own palm. No other woman could make my beast stir and my heart race the way Cassia did. She was my soulmate, my everything, and she was wounded. I needed to help her, as soon as possible.
Our parents did not seem to see things my way. “That’s not Queen Cheimon,” Emmerich’s father said, his chest already glowing bright red as he gathered his magic in preparation for an attack.
Brigid’s eyes flared, their emerald gleam reminiscent of the poison breath Kerryn so often used as his weapon. “I don’t know what kind of shape-shifting demon that creature Snegurka has decided to throw at you, but you need to move away from her now.”
Kerryn slowly got up and placed himself as a barrier between Cassia and our parents. “Mother, I would advise you to step back now. I have no idea what delusions have assaulted your mind, but lift one finger against my mate, and I will smite you down without mercy.”
He would do it too, even if there was clearly a misunderstanding in the middle. Perhaps Snegurka herself was affecting our parents in some way like she had the tengu. Just the same, neither Kerryn nor I would be willing to take chances with Cassia’s safety. If our parents attacked, we would retaliate and protect our soulmate, no matter what that meant.
“Son, we understand how you feel,” Devin said, “but you need to open your eyes and see reason. Your mate was supposed to go to the other side of The Realm of Eternal Ice, correct? She couldn’t have possibly gotten here in the amount of time we spent with the yetis and Lerna.”
“Stranger things have happened, and that’s no reason for you to attack her,” Kerryn argued.
My father rumbled lowly in his throat. “Perhaps not, but the demonic magic clinging to her every pore is. I can smell it all over her. Your mate’s scent was clear of such things. That can only mean one thing. The person in your arms is not Queen Cheimon.”
Cassia did not reply or acknowledge his words in any way. Instead, she clung to me even more tightly, crawling into my lap and holding me in an almost desperate embrace. “Raijin... It hurts. I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do, Your Majesty,” an unfamiliar voice said from somewhere to my right. “Of course you know. You would not be here if you didn’t.”
Still holding onto Cassia, I turned to face the speaker. It was the wendigo. I had no idea when and how he had recovered cognizance, but he was watching the entire scene and had apparently figured out what was wrong with Cassia. This might have given me a measure of hope and relief if not for his demeanor. Oki’s skeletal face was not capable of having an expression, but his magic pulsed with a feeling that resembled heartbreak.
“Oh,” Cassia said. “Oh. I remember now. Yes. I-I’m sorry.”
“I am the one who is sorry. I should have been more careful. You would’ve never had to take on this burden had I not failed in my duties.”
Cassia shook her head, her expression smoothing and her tears solidifying into ice crystals. Her beautiful pink lips twisted into a tiny smile. “Don’t be foolish, Oki. It wasn’t your fault. It was... It was nobody’s fault. This was always going to happen. I was only trying to pretend nothing was wrong, but I can’t do it any longer. I have to accept what I truly am and what I must do.”
She hugged me one more time and then got up, no longer seeming in the least bit affected by whatever injury had incapacitated her before. “I am so sorry, my dragons. I wanted to give you what you needed, to be yours like I promised, but in this, the realm must take precedence. Please, forgive me.”
“Treasure?” Kerryn asked. “What is going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Just please know... Please know that... No matter what happens to me, I will always love you.”
Kerryn’s breath caught and he made a grab for her arm. Shockingly, his hand went straight through her body, as if she wasn’t there at all. “Cassia?”
She only smiled again, and her figure began to glow, so bright I was almost forced to close my eyes lest I be blinded. I refused to look away, even for a moment, and I almost regretted that, because the next thing I knew, Cassia’s figure shattered, like a broken mirror exploding into a million shards of white glass.
The blast echoed within my magic, and I felt it all the way into the very center of my being. My beast roared in anguish, writhing and clawing at the edges of my consciousness. I did not understand
what was going on. I did not understand what I’d just seen, or what Cassia had meant through her cryptic goodbye. All I knew was that something horrible had happened to my soulmate, and I had no way of reaching her or helping her.
As the last shard of what had been Cassia’s body hit the ground and evaporated, a gust of wind swept over the silent tundra. Mariko, Cassia’s Yuki-Onna messenger, manifested right over the place where Cassia had been before. Just like that, I snapped out of my trance. A mix of desperation and anger replaced my shock. I shot to my feet and stalked to the side of the still fallen wendigo. “What just happened?” I snarled, grabbing his arm and digging my claws into his flesh. “Where did Cassia go? Why is your ghost woman here, in Cassia’s place? Explain!”
It was probably a good thing that Oki’s undead nature made him resilient to regular, blunt trauma because otherwise, my impromptu attack might have made him expire from his wounds altogether. Instead, he showed no reaction whatsoever to my anger, despite the fact that he must’ve felt some kind of pain due to the clashing natures of my magic and his own. “You have it all wrong, Raijin no Kurapati. It’s not that Mariko took Queen Cheimon’s place. It is the other way around.”
He freed himself from my hold and stood up.”I will tell you what I can, but we don’t have time for elaborate explanations,” he said, eerily mimicking Cassia’s earlier words. “If you want to save your mate, you need to come with me. There may still be a way to stop this disaster from escalating further.”
“Save her?” Kerryn repeated, a dose of hysteria sliding in his voice. “Save her from what?”
“The fate her father, Helios, condemned her to.”
Eight
The Two Queens
Cheimon
Earlier
If I wanted to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure what I expected when I took the amarok pup in my arms. Maybe I just wanted to give him comfort, or maybe on some level, I refused to give up on a life while it was still within my power to try something, anything.
It was stupid, so stupid, but I could not help myself, not when I knew there was still one last thing I could try.
Once upon a time, before my whole world had changed, before the powers of the avatar of winter had consumed my life and my body, I had been very different. I had been a nymph, one birthed by a meliae and fathered by a solar deity.
Life had bloomed at my fingertips just as easily as it had at my sisters’. And while I’d never gotten the chance to learn much magic, I still remembered that, still remembered being able to touch a wound and close it, just because I wanted it to go away.
Then, I had gone up against Snegurka, a woman so much stronger than I could ever hope to be, and for a few seconds, maybe... I’d killed her.
It shouldn’t have meant anything, but it had.
I still remembered the taste and feel of her blood, the way it had burned me from the inside out, freezing my soul, chasing away the heat of my father’s solar-oriented magic.
By the time I’d opened my eyes, everything about me had been different, and I’d lost my skill to heal. My sisters had tried to help me get it back, but at the end of the day, it had not made a difference, since, at age fifteen, I’d been forced to leave Cassia behind altogether, and become Cheimon.
“You’re the only one who can do this, Cassia,” my father had said. “Your attack on Snegurka makes you uniquely aligned to her magic. You can absorb her powers and truly become this realm’s queen.”
“But Father, I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I’m no ruler.”
“Nonsense. You were born to lead. Otherwise, you would have never been able to stand against her, to begin with.”
To this day, I wasn’t sure if I believed that. There were so many things my father had said and done that I doubted. God of the sun or not, he was not infallible. But he was also not in Chronikos now, and for good or ill, I’d taken him up on his offer that day. I had become Tou Cheimóna’s queen, and I had a duty to its people. I had a duty to the little amarok dying in my arms, and that took precedence over everything.
Emmerich knelt next to me and his warm arms enveloped my waist. In his familiar heat, I found an anchor, the doubts chased away by his strength and solidity.
Hadn’t I been a nymph for my dragons? Hadn’t I been Cassia whenever I was with them, in their embrace? It stood to reason, then, that I could be the nymph Cassia for the tiny amarok as well.
Light erupted from my hands, healing magic rushing over the body of the small wolf like a river. Behind me, Emmerich let out a choked gasp, but he did not release his hold on me. The bond between us pulsed with a truth as pure as the driven snow and hot as the scorching rays of the sun. It was life, in its clearest, most genuine form, and it gave me the final boost I needed to accomplish my goal.
Too late did I realize that my decision to help the pup had not come without consequences.
As the amarok in my arms cracked his eyes open and started to stir, a low, wicked laugh echoed in the cavern. I looked up and my heart fell as my gaze met that of my worst enemy.
Snegurka stepped out from the shadows, dressed in the very same ornate robes she had been wearing the day I’d confronted her, at The Bridge of Melting Snowflakes. In every other way, she was different. Her beauty had not faded, but the immaculate white of both her garb and her skin had turned pitch black and her eyes flashed red, like burning coals. A part of me ached at the knowledge that it had been my family that had caused the change.
I forced myself to remember that my father had only done what had been best for the realm, and there had been no other solution at the time to keep Snegurka’s evil from spreading. I might have had more trouble focusing on that had Snegurka not spoken out, her voice as icy and ruthless as it had been the day she’d tried to kill me and Jack. “Oh, this is rich. The queen of The Realm of Eternal Ice, kneeling in the dirt, to heal the spawn of a pack of rabid wolves that should not even be breeding.”
Alpha Panuk did not take kindly to the insult. He snarled at Snegurka and took a step forward, ready to attack. “Filthy monster! You have no right to—”
Snegurka waved a hand, and a gust of icy cold wind sent the amarok flying. “Silence, animal,” she drawled as he hit the wall of the cavern. “Do not interfere when those superior to you are speaking.”
I silently wished that I could have cushioned the impact in some way. Amaroks were hardy, though, and the blow the Alpha had received was not lethal. I had other priorities right now, such as making sure everyone else remained uninjured.
I placed the amarok pup down and got up, fully intending to take on my nemesis and preferably win in a far more decisive manner than I had all those years ago. Things did not turn out the way I had planned, as my knees almost gave way when I tried to stand. Had Emmerich not stepped in and supported me, I would’ve probably fallen over like some kind of swooning, terrified damsel, right at my enemy’s feet.
I took in the flickering, unstable feel of my magic and cursed to myself. Oh, no. This was not good, not good at all.
Snegurka gave me a knowing look, her lips twisting into a predatory grin. “Is something wrong, little half-breed?”
I hated that she could see right through me, and I hated that I didn’t know if, in my condition, I could protect my people from her. I’d made a serious miscalculation, and now I was paying the price. But what else could I have done under the circumstances? Had I not embraced my nymph abilities, the amarok pup would’ve died.
Emmerich took my hand and squeezed it in silent comfort. My head cleared, and I straightened my back, burying my panic behind the same mask I had been using for so many years now. “Yes, something is very wrong, and that is your presence. Why did you do this, Snegurka? What could you possibly hope to accomplish by hurting these people?”
Snegurka eyed me from head to toe like I was a bug, and she, the person making plans on how to better squash me. “First of all, little half-breed, they’re not people. They are beasts. Second, I don’t think I ow
e you any explanations about my reasoning. If anything, you’re the one who owes me a debt.”
“I owe you nothing,” I answered steadily. “Your powers were granted to you so that you may serve the realm, and you chose to abuse them. At that moment, you forfeited all claim to the magic of time.”
Snegurka’s eyes flashed with a fury that bordered on madness. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep well at night? That stealing my life, my magic and my future from me was... righteous? Come now... We both know that isn’t true.”
It was not a matter of righteousness. I had always been uncomfortable with the idea of Snegurka being trapped in that horrible pit, but I had accepted it because I’d had no other options. Some days, I had found myself wishing that I could’ve been strong enough to end it all when I’d been younger, to fully contain her power instead of leaving us in this strange, in-between state.
But I hadn’t been capable of it, and because of that, here we were, once again, back at the beginning, with me still trying to protect someone I loved, and her still so much more powerful than I was.
“Oh, little Cassia, you always were too soft. Too weak. You know in your heart that you should’ve left that pup to die. Winter is not kind. The Realm of Eternal Ice devours those that cannot fend for themselves. You do not deserve the throne, because you do not understand the sacrifices you must make to protect it.”
She was right. I despised her and myself for acknowledging that, but because of my refusal to let the pup die, I had exposed my people to a worse threat. His life was not worth more than all the lives I was now risking due to my weakness. I hated the cruelty of the thought, but it did not make it any less true.
By forcing myself to use the healing skill of my nymph nature, I’d weakened and temporarily suppressed my ice magic. Right now, I was Cassia more than I was Cheimon, and Cassia was not strong enough to hold her own against Snegurka.
My dragons had told me that Snegurka was baiting me. I should’ve listened to them. I should’ve been prepared for this. I shouldn’t have let my heart rule my head. My father had constantly told me that sometimes rulers had to make difficult decisions, and I understood that very well. It just hadn’t occurred to me that the decision in question would be something like this.