The Last Winter (The Circle War Book 2)

by Matt King

  “That means Cerenus will side with Amara now?”

  Meryn gave a slight nod. “It appears that way.”

  Even though he’d expected the news, hearing her say the words sent a bolt through him, killing any last bits of hope he’d held onto. Cerenus was gone. They’d lost the only chance they had to gain an advantage.

  They didn’t lose it. I did.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “It’s only a matter of time before word reaches Amara about our Alliance. We will have to steel ourselves against what’s to come. The first step will be to collect August and Aeris from Earth. We need to regroup.”

  He nodded. His fingers tugged absently at the hairs of his beard as he gathered his nerve. “There’s something else I needed to say.”

  “John—”

  “No, I want to. It’ll eat me up if I don’t.” He took a breath. “I wanted to say that I know I let you down. Let all of you down. I don’t know what got into me when I was there, but I messed up and I want to make it right.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” she replied.

  “In my mind, I do.”

  Meryn took a step closer. Her blue eyes were like stars in the dimly-lit room. “Cerenus is unpredictable. He’s smarter than nearly all of us and he knows it. He enjoys making others work for his favor and he relishes the challenge of debate. None of us—Soraste, Balenor, or myself included—could have done any better than you did.”

  “I don’t know if what we had could be called a debate. It felt like he was in my head, even when he wasn’t. Some of the things he said…”

  “Like what?”

  He hadn’t thought of how to say it, hadn’t even expected to bring it up. Now that he was looking at her again, he wasn’t sure he could. “It’s silly. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “But now that you have, I’d like to know.”

  He rubbed his hand across his shaved head. “He happened to mention that he and you were…”

  “Were what?”

  “A couple. Once.”

  “Damn that man,” she said. She shook her head, closing her eyes before looking back at him. “There has never been anything between us. He only said that to make you jealous, to throw you off balance.” She looked away again, talking as much to herself as she was to him. “I should have sent August.”

  He took a reflexive step back. The words stung. “I see.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “No, it’s okay. You’re right. August would have done better.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “I only meant that I should have sent August because he doesn’t have feelings for me.”

  “But I…”

  She cocked her head at him.

  He stuttered. “I mean I do, but—”

  “You do?”

  “Well… I suppose so, yes.” He felt his skin flush with heat. In a panic, he tried changing the subject. “There’s something else—”

  She leaned into him and kissed him, full and hard. A rush of electricity came with it, and his body embraced the surge. They backed away for a pause, a silent test. Her fingers ran slowly down his arm. He leaned closer. This time, he kissed her, pulling her forward with his hands on the small of her back.

  “There really was something else,” he said when they took a breath, his hands still on her back, not wanting to let go.

  “No more talking,” she said.

  ■ ■ ■

  Bear woke up first, finally conceding defeat to the dreams that brought him out of his deep sleep. Beside him, Meryn lay motionless beneath the fur covering of their makeshift bed, still experimenting with what she called a “temporary hibernation.” He slipped out of the cover and grabbed the lower half of his armor. The suit cut some of the chill in the room. They hadn’t bothered to shut the windows during the night.

  His dreams conspired to dull the careless joy he’d felt with her. As they lay together, he tried desperately to hold onto the feeling. He managed to do just that until the nightmares came. At first it was more of his fight with Icomedes, only this time Meryn and the other gods were watching along with August and the Horsemen. Even though he couldn’t see Cerenus’s champion, he could feel the pain from his blows. August and Meryn—Meryn especially—looked on with disappointment.

  That was the dream he expected. What he hadn’t expected was to see his father again. But then, he never got to see Ray. Instead, it was like he was inside his mind, watching as Ray walked along the trail just before Talus attacked. He saw the monster coming, white lifeless eyes and stony skin, stomping through the forest to make a beeline for the cove where Ray sat, helpless. Bear tried his hardest to break through the confines of Ray’s body to stop Talus’s charge. He couldn’t. Instead, he watched and felt each blow from Talus’s claws. It wasn’t the savage beating he’d pictured. Talus took his time, savoring each slice his talons made across Ray’s stomach. Through it all, Bear remained conscious, a prisoner to the pain. For a brief moment, he saw someone else on the shore. He turned his head to see his mother. As soon as he did, he felt a crippling constriction in his chest like he was being crushed from the inside. The pain was excruciating. His mother looked down at him and cried.

  He blinked through the wind coming in through the open window. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Are you well?” Meryn asked.

  “You’re awake,” he said. He blinked hard and wiped his eyes. “I didn’t hear you get up.”

  “I woke when you did. There didn’t seem to be a reason to let it continue. In truth, it reminded me of my time in the star. I’m not sure I liked it.”

  She rose from the bed fully naked, the morning light shining against her tawny skin. Her clothes materialized with each step. By the time she got to the window, she was fully dressed. She started a fire in the pit with a wave of her hand.

  “You were having dreams,” she said.

  Bear nodded. He reached for the top half of his armor.

  “About your father?”

  “You’re not getting in my head, are you?” he asked.

  She smiled. “No. I know of nothing else that would make you say that you were sorry while you slept.”

  He hesitated as he put on his armor. He had a mind to flip on his mask.

  “My offer still stands,” she said.

  “What offer is that?”

  “To talk to him.”

  His reaction was immediate. “No, but thank you.”

  “Does the idea make you nervous?”

  “I told you before. It’s not natural.”

  “The need for forgiveness is natural.”

  “But it wouldn’t be him forgiving me, would it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He finished latching his armor in place and sat down on the couch.

  She returned from the window to sit at his side. Her hand folded into his. “You had something else to tell me last night. What was it?”

  The energy coming from her touch distracted him. He had to focus to remember. “Shadow. I needed to tell you about Shadow.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think she’s gone.”

  The light in Meryn’s eyes swelled. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

  “I mean I can’t feel her anymore.”

  Meryn opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. She looked out the window for a pause before returning to him. “Look at me,” she said. “And be calm.”

  He let his eyes meet hers. In an instant he felt her inside his head, his mind filled with pressure as her mental fingers searched through him. He resisted the urge to pull away.

  Her fingers receded in a rush. She shot off the couch.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Paralos,” she said, staring off through the window.

  He stood to join her. “What about him?”

  “Do you remember when I told you that you seemed more powerful?”

 
; He nodded. “Yes.”

  “You are,” she said, turning to him. Her jaw tensed in a scowl. “Paralos has taken Shadow’s energy and given it to you. He’s severed your connection.”

  At once, Bear had the feeling of being lost. He felt an instant void, or maybe just acknowledged it for what it really was—fear. “Why would he do that?”

  “That is what I plan to ask him.”

  She stepped onto the balcony of the room. Her body started to dim.

  “Wait,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “To deal with Paralos. Stay with Balenor. He will keep you safe until I return.”

  She was gone in a flash, her energy skyrocketing into the clouds. He watched her go until she disappeared into the fading stars.

  A knock on the door drew his attention. “Who is it?” he asked.

  One of Balenor’s guards entered. “Balenor asks that you join him.”

  Bear took a final look at the sky. As he followed the guard out of the room, his mind started to process what Meryn had said. Shadow was gone, for good. Their connection broken. What he couldn’t piece together was why. What good was he without her?

  The guard led him down a series of platform elevators until they arrived at a dimly-lit hallway. Some sections of the walls were a dark shimmering blue toward the end.

  “Through here,” the guard said. He stopped to let Bear go ahead.

  Bear walked forward. When he got to one of the lighted sections, he looked over to see a transparent panel bordered in blue. Something stirred on the other side. He stepped closer. Squinting through the wavy light, he saw the bodies of the Horsemen strewn across the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  His hand reached for Meryn’s mark. Before it got there, the guard fired his weapon, sending a slug into Bear’s chest. He fell to the floor. The guard was on him quickly, dragging him backwards into a cell.

  When the gun’s effects lifted, Bear jumped to his feet. A blue wall of light formed in front of him, stopping him from racing through. He pounded his fist against the barrier. The light was as solid as iron.

  The guard disappeared around the corner.

  Bear slammed his fist against the cell. Cracks of light appeared and then died away. He reared back to try again.

  “You won’t get through,” a man said.

  Bear’s hand froze mid-strike. He recognized the voice. He searched through the hazy light, hoping not to see what he already knew was true.

  “You bastard,” he said.

  Balenor walked to the front of his cell. His face was stern. He pointed an open palm at the door. Meryn’s mark streaked away from Bear’s armor through the wall of light. The god turned it over in his hand, then crushed it in his fist and let it fall to the floor.

  “Why?” Bear said through clenched teeth.

  Balenor looked back to him. “To survive,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Aeris sat on the end of their makeshift boat, as far as she could get from August. She stared straight ahead, silent except for the occasional order to steer away from a rock in the river.

  “We should be getting close to the hop-off point,” he said. “Which is great, because I’m starting to get blisters.” He held up the rope attached to Shadow’s barge trailing behind them.

  Aeris said nothing. She didn’t even look back.

  “Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll take another shift.”

  It was another quiet daybreak under gray, bone-chilling skies when he saw that they’d reached their destination. “This is our stop,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he spoke louder. “One of us needs to hop out and guide us to shore. Whoever stays needs to hang onto this—”

  “What was the creature’s name?” Aeris asked.

  Surprised by an actual response, it took him a second to realize she wasn’t talking about Shadow. He had to think back to the fight in the woods. “Polaris,” he said.

  Aeris didn’t react. He was about to ask for her help again when she stood and dove into the water. She came back up and took hold of the front of the boat, dragging him toward shore.

  He held on tight to Shadow’s tether until they got to the riverbank. They offloaded her together. Once she was on land, he did his customary check to see if he could still hear her breathing. The gurgling noise coming from her lungs sounded better than before, but still weak. At least it’s something.

  “I’m going to look for a way to get us moving faster,” he said. “We need a way to carry her, unless you think we can wake her up.”

  “We can do as you like,” she replied. She let go of Shadow’s raft and walked down the river to sit on the shore.

  “All righty then.” He hiked up the bank and onto the street. Three days of travel and not a word about what happened with Dondannarin. Wouldn’t even let him start the conversation. He looked back at her. She stared straight ahead at the water. For once, he didn’t feel like Shadow was his most pressing concern.

  There was nothing like trying to find transportation to remind him that Gemini’s blast hadn’t just killed people. Anything with a motor or plug was useless. He did his usual test of a few cars and motorcycles to see if they’d been far enough away from the blast’s center to avoid the electrical overload. Nothing. They’d been robbed of their life like everything else.

  He walked until he saw a string of mountain bikes strewn across the broken front window display of a sporting goods store. He considered them for a second, then looked over at the street. No way we’re trekking through snow on those. He kicked open the door to see if anything else caught his eye. A shaft of dull light lit the back wall of the store. “Well, will you look at that.”

  He returned to the river a few minutes later feeling like Santa Claus. “Found something,” he said as he tossed the cross-country skis and poles on the riverbank.

  Aeris looked down at them with her arms crossed over her chest. “What use are these?”

  “They go on our feet.” He put one foot in a ski and clicked his toe in place. “Then we use these poles to help push ourselves through the snow. See? They glide.”

  “And what of the animal?” she asked.

  He ignored her use of the word, writing it off as a side effect of what she’d gone through. “We’re going to have to wake her up,” he said. “Either that or we wait here until she’s ready. There’s no way we can carry her the rest of the way.”

  “I see no more reason to wait,” she replied. For some reason, it didn’t sound like she was talking about Shadow anymore. She seemed anxious to keep moving.

  She cut a path through the snow to the raft and knelt beside it, placing her hands on either side of Shadow’s head.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. Little by little, thin waves of white energy started to seep through the side of Shadow’s temples. It only took a few seconds for Aeris to collect it all. When she was done, she backed away to the edge of the water.

  He looked between them. “What’s the matter?”

  “I would not stand that close if I were you.”

  Shadow’s breaths deepened, doubling in speed. She gave a low growl as her orange eyes slowly began to open. She blinked, slowly at first, then faster as she fully awoke. Her hand went to her chest as she sat up. She shook her mane, sending a cloud of snow raining down on the ground.

  “Easy, girl,” he said. “You’re okay.”

  Her head whipped around at his voice. She kept one hand covering the scars on her chest as she slowly got off of the raft. Her eyes narrowed. She bared her teeth.

  “It’s me, remember? It’s August.”

  She rushed forward on three legs, letting out a sharp roar and pounding her free arm on the ground. He stumbled back. She started to inch her way up the hill, never taking her eyes off of him.

  “You should leave her alone,” Aeris called out.

  Shadow turned to face Aeris, who backed closer to the water.

  “Sh
e’ll be okay,” August said. He held out his hand. “Won’t you, girl?”

  Shadow took a step back as he approached. Her growl steadily grew louder.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  With a roar loud enough to crack his eardrums, she lunged forward, nearly snapping off his hand with her jaws. He lost balance and fell to the ground. Shadow swiped at him, cutting long streaks through the snow as she took aim at his scrambling legs. As soon as he got to his feet, she swung her arm around, slamming the meat of her forearm into his ribs. He was off the ground instantly. A second later, he crashed through the front window of a store, leaving him struggling for air on a bed of broken glass.

  His eyes took a few seconds to focus through the pain. He held onto his mending ribs and tried to stand. Shadow streaked by him. She looked back with a final growl before she leapt to the top of a building and disappeared into the morning fog. A muffled roar followed her into the shadows.

  Aeris walked up to the street in front of the store. “I warned you,” she said.

  He shot a look at her. Glass shrapnel flaked off of his armor as he regained enough energy to stand. “She acted like she didn’t know me.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  He wiped the last of the glass away from his mask. The wind howled down the street, blanketing them in a swirling cloud of snow. “How long until she remembers?”

  “It is impossible to predict,” she said. “Maybe a day. Maybe never.”

  He held his tongue at her lack of sympathy, possibly, he thought, for the last time. “I’m going after her.”

  “I would not—”

  “I know what you wouldn’t do, okay?”

  “She will kill you,” Aeris said flatly. “The fever has taken her memories. With time, they may return, but it’s too dangerous to approach her now.”

  “So we’re just supposed to let her run free out here? She could die, or get captured.”

  “In the end, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She started to answer, and then stopped herself. Her eyes looked glassy. She blinked quickly. “Nothing,” she said, turning her stare into the building snowstorm.