by Ellie Cypher
Smoke pooled in the air above our heads. It were getting harder and harder to breathe. Sprinting, we turned the last corner, squeezing past a large fallen boulder and collapsed beam support. And there—the smugglers’ tunnel.
I put a hand over my mouth, coughing from the smoke. But in a boom of rock and earth, our exit fell out of existence. I blinked frantic. There had to be another way out. There had to.
There.
All those metal tracks converged on one tunnel. We ran for it; a whip of fresh air swirled the smoke around me like ghosts.
“Go!” I pushed Cody ahead of me.
From behind us a gunshot rang out. It hit the tunnel over my right shoulder. A howl soon followed.
I bit back a string of curses. The exit was ahead of us now. My heart sunk. Not cause the way were blocked. But because outside the exit, the world were a wall of gray. A storm.
I glanced back over my shoulder. Another shot rang out, as did the rumble of breaking rocks. On the threshold, Cody and I exchanged a long look. Neither of us had any bullets left. Between the fire, the rocks, and the Rover, there were only one option left.
“We may have shot him,” I called out, wind whipping at my face, “but we ain’t killed him.” Yet.
Hand in hand, before I could think better of it, I threw us out and into the waiting mouth of the raging storm.
Stars save us.
CHAPTER 32 The Taste of Hunger
We made it maybe twenty paces.
A whitewall of storm battered us. We must have emerged somewhere just outside of Nocna Mora. I could tell no more than that. A crack of wind tore at my back, driving me to my knees. I bare felt the impact as Cody’s hand was ripped from mine. His body tumbled away. Flotsam against the freezing ridge around us. Panic gripped me. I could not see him.
My ears rang with wind and cold. I scrambled to stand, to rise against the onslaught of the storm. My feet slipping again and again against the ice. Finally, I got to my hands and knees.
“Cody!” I screamed it. The only reply were the unrelenting tear of the wind. I fell to my side. Desperate, I gasped for air. The hammering of my heart a dull pain against my bruised ribs. I tried to stand. To do anything. I fell.
“Cody!”
No reply. I had to get up. Gathering what little I had left, I forced myself to my feet, muscles straining into the wind. I tried to raise my scarf to protect my face. Some measure of warmth. It weren’t there. I gasped out into the white. There weren’t nothing but storm. I stumbled.
I clasped a hand over my eyes as the snow moved faster. As it twisted around me. Pressure, like unseen hands, snagged at my limbs, pushing at my back. Forcing me down. Panic rose, slick and red in my belly. This were it. Stars, this was how I died.
In the haze, a body, heavy, stumbled into me. I cried out. The weight a spike against my side. I reached out. This time my fingers closed round something real. Solid. An arm out of the storm.
And then the body covering me, blocking out the worst of the wind. Cody’s face met mine. Relief washed over me. All of it gone a moment later as a massive gust of wind tore us apart. I lurched, finding his shoulder. And I held. I held on to him tighter than I ever held anything before. Bracing against the blizzard, Cody mouthed something. I couldn’t hear. Eyes on mine, he gave a pained twist to his lips.
Stars, we needed to get out of this storm. But the entrance, even if it weren’t collapsed with fire and rock, had long since disappeared.
Again Cody tried to speak. But the wind were still too loud. He pointed to his left. With great effort Cody tugged at my arm and stumbled us a half step forward.
“Don’t let me go.” I screamed it. It were naught but a whimper past the blaze of my teeth, but he must have heard. His grip doubled on mine.
We staggered to the left. The wind shifted, tossed us yards to the side. My back slammed into rock. My eyes watered at the impact. Snow slashed into my skin. I spread a hand over the stone. The mountain. Merciful stars.
I hugged my body tight against the crag. Pressing into the solidness of it. Next to me Cody, struggling, did the same, his hand still wonderful tight in mine. Now we just had to find a way to get back inside.
Again and again we pushed ourselves away from the rock, only to be slammed back. No cave or crack or refuge in sight. A cry pierced the air. I stilled. It came again. The whole world stilled, as if the storm itself had simply paused. And in that uncanny breath of calm I heard it clear.
Singing.
A woman’s voice. The song rose and fell in crashing melody. Whipping through me. Notes like a caress ran through my hair. Sounds trailing smooth along the curve of my throat, over my skin. Gentle. I shook my head. The song snapped. The world crushed back into me. Cody were there. Mouthing words I couldn’t hear. Staring at me, hair beating in the storm. I must be losing it. I wondered brief if this were what you heard at the end. When the ice-fever took hold. When your mind could no longer separate dream from life. The story from the real. When it were time to stop.
Not yet.
The words screamed up from somewhere deep inside me. Somewhere raw and primal and alive. A pulsing living heat at my core. And like the snap of a whip biting at your skin, determination tore through me.
I gripped Cody’s hand. Not yet.
The fight weren’t over till it were over. And I for one weren’t anywhere near done. I scanned the mountain. There had to be something here, some opening, some crevasse, some—anything.
And there.
A miracle of a small fissure in the face of the cold rock. It might just be enough. It had to be enough. It would be enough.
My back braced against the beating wind, head down, legs burning and lungs pumping, I pulled us both toward the shelter. Inch by freezing inch. I pulled us both.
Not yet.
CHAPTER 33 Tombs Made of Stone
The weight of the storm fell from my shoulders. Sudden as the dropping of a stone.
I collapsed to my knees. It took hysterical long to settle my gasps into something more like breathing. Inside the fissure of mountain, it were a different world. Silent.
Panting, I pressed my arms to the hard earth below. My ears rang with loss of the wind. My face and limbs burned with it.
I shoved Cody up to sitting. Before I fell against his side. The wind scratched at the entrance. Hungry. Angry. Waiting. Around us long veins of silver ore spiraled into darkness above. A chimney of perfect stone.
We had been so close.
I am so sorry, Brenna. I am so sorry. I tried.
I took a long shaking breath, ribs rattling against my burning lungs. Cody’s head resting against my shoulder. His breathing shallow and painful.
I pressed a hand to Cody’s head, leaning my cheek to his.
Breathing with him. Out in. Out in. Just breathing.
“I’m sorry, Cody,” I whispered. His hand tightened in mine. And I knew in that moment, in a spike of painful clarity, what all those people out there on the Flats had learned long ago. What they knew as they felt the blood freeze in their veins, their breath pool in their lungs. No one was coming.
Because out here there were no one left to save you.
My head went light as a growing warmth built on my chest, as the storm, cold and hungry, blotted out the rest of the world.
CHAPTER 34 A City of Ice and Bones
I did not expect to wake. Honest I didn’t.
I blinked into the unwelcome glow of an unfamiliar space and sat up. My head swirled. All around me sheets of solid ice, perfect as crystal, formed the stories-high walls encasing me. Not a window or door to be seen. And above it all a massive dome glittered like the facet of an insect’s eye.
Through it light dripped, syruped and slow. Beams of a glowing gold that fractured inside the walls, threading color through everything in the room.
Every once in a while, the path of light would catch and then disappear into the ice. Gone as surely as it had been swallowed whole, only to reappear impossibly, colors that were there and
then gone again in the blink of an eye. Like the flash of a fish under a darkening tide. I began shaking. I must be dreaming.
On aching feet, I stood and pressed my palms into the wall. Cold burned through me and I drew them to my chest. Cause despite the fact that I weren’t no colder than if I were standing by a fire, the walls were made of real ice. I stared at them for a long, slow minute.
An ice-fever dream, that’s what this were. What it had to be. But try as I might, I did not wake. Everything around me were undoubted real. And it were all made from ice. The basins, the shelves, the chairs. All ice. Flakes of gold and green sparkled within the clear freeze of the waters. Glimmering in the kaleidoscope of light.
Including Cody.
His body were laid out against the smooth floor, a soft pink filling his cheeks. I put a hand on his chest. Gentle rise and fall telling me he were still alive.
“Cody,” I whispered, trembling his shoulders careful like. His eyes fluttered open. And flashed with a brief look of panic, whole body going rigid under my hands, before he saw who it were waking him.
With care I helped him sit. He tilted his face up to mine. “Where are we?” His voice a bare whisper scattering out in the vast ice world around us.
“I—I don’t know.” I stared at my hands. At the little moons of gray under my nails, the dirt and grime. The memory of the Rover, bloody and crazed, flashed behind my eyes. “But it is certain real enough.”
“Help me,” Cody pleaded and, with a hand under his arm, I got him to his feet. We traced the perimeter of the high-ceilinged room.
I frowned. Cody’s limp were gone. As were all the cuts and scratches on his skin. None of our clothes were torn. Panic struck and my hand flew to my neck. Bren’s necklace were still there. But our guns were certain gone.
“Is there no way out then?” he asked.
“No.” But even as I said it, it was wrong. Across from us were a slim door cut out of the ice. Its entrance folded over on itself, so you could only find it if you looked at it just right. A foot left or right and it looked solid as the walls around us.
We walked over to it. Silver bars trimmed a doorway just wide enough for one person to slip through. Beyond it a great slither of stairs curling down and away.
“I don’t like this,” Cody said.
“Neither do I.” And though it certain beat freezing to death in an abandoned mine shaft, I had a more worrying thought. We didn’t walk here ourselves. Nor did we tend our wounds. I eyed the doorway.
Despite begin able to see all around, every angle, every direction, there were the unshakable feeling that—we are being watched.
Sudden as a storm, waves of ease ran through me, warm. It was safe here. And I was so tired. Yawning, I blinked slow down at the floor, eyes aching with sleep. I should lie down again. Rest. That would be best. Just sleep. And let everything go away. Dream.
I jerked my head back, eyes flying open.
“I… what?” I said confused, finding I had already lain on the ground. I gritted my teeth against that feeling of ease, comfort, of warmth. Because it weren’t right. We weren’t safe.
The moment I thought it, like the sheen of oil over water, the false feeling of comfort slid smoothly away. I jerked to my feet. Next to me, Cody were curled up, a tight ball against the ice.
“Wake up,” I said. This time when I woke him, I weren’t too gentle. “Something’s real wrong.”
He blinked sleepily up at me. “But I am so tired, Jorie. Aren’t you tired? We should rest.” His voice were hollow. His eyes smooth as the light dripping down overhead. I shook his shoulders till his teeth right chattered.
“No, we should not.”
The glazed expression on his face rippled away. He began to shiver. My gaze drawn, moth to a fire, to the door that stood in front of us, waiting.
“Maybe we’re dead?” Cody asked optimistically.
I snorted before I could help myself. “I don’t reckon I’d end up anywhere like this. Considering.”
I ran my fingers over the oxidized silver edges of the door. A shiver passed through the cold white of my bones as a sense of déjà vu near to overwhelmed me.
As if we had been here before. Had this conversation before. I grunted.
That couldn’t be right. Couldn’t it? I took a step toward the open doorway, and as before, a sense of calm filled me. But that weren’t right. I weren’t anything like calm. And there were nothing right natural about that feeling. From down the hallway, a flicker of light caught my eye. But when it didn’t come again, I pushed it aside. Trick of the light, was all. Must be. I shifted my feet over the slick floor.
“Jorie, are you alright? You look”—Cody raised a brow—“strange.”
I frowned in reply.
In the silence, Cody ran a hand over the smooth ice of the wall at his side. Awe covered his features. “You know what this place looks like?” he said, voice low and breathy.
Yes. “No.” Don’t say it, don’t make it real. But wishing weren’t going to work.
“Vydra. My uncle was right. It’s real and we’ve not just seen it, we are in it.” He slid down the ice wall to sit, legs splayed out in front of him.
“Maybe.” I fixed Cody with a long stare. But our location weren’t what had pins racing down my spine. Alive or dead, there should have been someone here. “But if you’re right and this is Vydra, what I want to know is where precisely is the Ice-Witch.”
“The Witch.” He whispered it, mouth opening a little in surprise before he closed it quick. “We need to go.” He made to move for the door.
I grabbed his arm. A sudden thought struck me. “Is that what the Rover were rambling on about? Giving Bren to her, to the Witch?”
I needed to think.
I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes.
Footsteps, fast and hard, fell from out in the hallway. Cody and I jolted to our feet. When had we fallen asleep? Why could I not stay awake?
The footsteps grew closer. And faster. We exchanged a look. I ran to the ice door, pressing my body flat as I could against the side. And careful peered out. From the far edge of the corridor, I caught a flash of figure. Slender and running. A wave of blond hair. And then it were gone. She were gone. My heart jumped into my throat.
“Bren!” I screamed it. It had to be her. But before I were across the threshold, Cody’s arm flashed out in front. Nearly making me fall. I batted it away. “What’s wrong with you? That’s Bren. You saw her.”
“Maybe.” Cody’s frown deepened, face skeptical, reserved.
Everything I should have been but couldn’t make myself be.
Hope, as deadly as a dagger pressed to my ribs, were intoxicating. My body burned with the push of it. For Bren it didn’t even matter if that feeling were real. Even if there were the brittlest of chances, I would gamble for it. Part of me heard Cody, heard the logic of what he were sayin. The impossibility of our situation. But the rest of me? The rest of me reared up raw and ragged and grabbed hold of that voice and drowned it. Drowned it down deep, till it were nothing but a whisper pressing against the soft underbelly of my heart. Cause I would find her.
“We are following. Now.”
Cody shook his head. “It could have been anything. We can’t trust what we see in here, Jorie. All those books I’ve read, they’ve all have one thing in common.”
“And what is that?”
“The power here, it distorts you, twists you up until you cannot tell what is real and what’s not. You can’t fight what you can’t see, Jorie, what’s inside you already. We can’t just—”
I didn’t care. I shoved his arm out of my way. I had already lost her. I wouldn’t do it again.
CHAPTER 35 The Ice Garden
This hallway was made from the same shining slick ice as all the others.
Two stories high, the carved walls coiled around themselves, the frozen body of a hollow serpent. The floor was so polished it reflected our footsteps back up at us. Walls rippled with the
passage of our shadows through the light. I ran until my lungs burned. Cody panting at my side, saying words I weren’t listening to.
I lost count of the turns and slowed to a walk. Caution, which had begun a slow buzzing at the base of my spine, were now blaring bright. We were doing little but spiraling in upon ourselves. The air began to take on a colder, heavier edge. I slowed.
But I needn’t have. There weren’t no one here.
Finally the corridor came to an end. A tall arched doorway loomed before us. I exchanged a long look with Cody. Either we went on or we went back. And I for sure weren’t going back. Together, we walked through it.
A massive chamber erupted grand and cold before us.
A deep river-blue bathed the mammoth space, swaths of light echoing off every bend, every dip and curve. And it weren’t empty.
We slipped inside. The great forms of animals pressed in on us from all sides. Their bodies encased by ice, as if simply caught. A life suspended. I ran a hand over the thick curve of ice, fingers lingering in the smoothness of the cold, as I passed under the heavy jaws of what at first glance was a bear.
I took my hand back from the bear’s mouth, shivering at the teeth. Where there should only have been one, a second and third row lingered behind the first.
The farther we went, the stranger and more obvious the distortions became. As if someone had played around, taking bits of one animal and linking them into another. It were a menagerie of impossible creatures. Each different. Each one more unsettling than the last. And it didn’t seem to end. An eagle with the body of fox. A great ice bear with the tail of a serpent behind.
Row after row of incredible things. Only here and there, small gaps existed in the order. A place where a creature had once been. Only now it weren’t.
I missed a step as I passed a particularly fierce-looking wolf. Its coat thick with not fur, but with vines and branches, bits twisted as an old oak. A painful burning built against the hollow heat of my chest. I pressed it down as I made my way into the center of the great cavern.