by Aria Noble
They crashed through the doors of the cathedral at last and dropped hard into the repaired copter.
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Eli slumped into the glass bottom of the copter’s passenger bubble. His side was bleeding freely, and the blood that had coated his lips and neck was running fresh again. He coughed weakly, then winced as the motion pulled at the knife wound in his side.
Ember wanted to slump down with him, but there wasn’t time. If the queen hadn’t rallied yet, she would soon, and the presence of the queen telling Frost to get them would re-inflame the mobs. She might even be coming with her own copter, intent on chasing them down or heading them off.
They had to get out of the city. Over the wall. On their way to Sand, wherever that was.
Ember didn’t know if it would be safer there, but it couldn’t possibly be any more dangerous.
“See if you can stop the bleeding,” she said, probably to Felix, but she didn’t check if he heard her, only trusted that he had and made her way to the controls of the copter.
She’d been practicing as best she could for the last couple of days, but that didn’t make her feel any more capable as she flipped the switches and turned on the blades.
The copter’s blades began to rotate, slowly at first, but quickly gathering speed, until she could feel the lift beginning to lighten the weight on the runners. She nudged the lever to tilt the front blades, and the whole thing lifted straight off the ground.
“Hold on, boys. We’re flying.”
She turned the lever, and the copter spun toward the door. With another nudge forward, it burst out of the cathedral.
Some people had followed them — several folks had to duck away from the copter as it crashed against the doors, too low and unprepared yet for getting higher. Ember gritted her teeth and held the levers with both hands, trying to ignore the way the sweat on her palms made her grip slippery and the thundering of her heart nearly drowned out the roar of copter blades.
Higher. She had to get higher, or she’d end up crashing them straight into the next building.
She pulled on the lever that gave them height, and the copter jerked up so fast that her stomach couldn’t keep up and she nearly got sick across her controls — only her clenched-tight jaw kept the bile and acid from her stomach from spilling out her mouth.
Eli coughed again, and the sound was wet, like there was blood in it now.
“Ember,” Felix said weakly.
“Don’t you give up on me now. Not either of you, hear? We’re going over this damned wall, and no one’s going to stop us.”
She banked hard to the right. South — the direction her manufactured compass, which she mounted onto the copter’s dash, had been urging her to go ever since it started malfunctioning.
She was sure now that it was all connected. Whatever had disrupted the dolls, whatever had sparked the melting of the wall, caused the earthquake, misaligned her compass, even provoked her dreams of some great and terrible engine — it was all the same thing. It was pulling at her, and now, finally, she was going to find it.
They rushed through the city, gaining air as the copter settled into its flight speed, brushing over the tops of even the tallest buildings Frost could build, until at last the wall rose before them, as tall and impenetrable as it had ever been.
Except it wasn’t. It was melting, and there was warmth on the other side. It could be cracked by a trolley and torn through by a doll. It was as fragile as ice in front of a fire, and the queen of Frost had done everything she could to keep her people from knowing that.
No more.
Ember adjusted her grip on the copter’s controls. “Hold on,” she said again. “We’re going through.”
Something huge and black emerged from the corner of Ember’s vision. She looked at it with just her eyes, not turning her head, and saw the queen in her own copter coming up beside them.
“Ember,” she said, her voice magnified over the sounds of two copters and tinny in a way Ember didn’t recognize. “You don’t understand what you’re doing. If you go over this wall, you’ll doom us all. Not just me, but yourself, your friends, everyone who’s managed to scrape together a life after the Leshii died.”
Ember couldn’t talk back to her — whatever device she had in her copter to make herself audible, Ember didn’t have it.
But it didn’t matter. She was saying those things to try and stop her, but Ember wasn’t going to be stopped.
They were lies. Everything the queen of Frost said was a lie, and Ember should’ve known that right from the start.
For the first time, Ember looked back at her passengers. Eli was sitting half-propped against the curve of the glass bubble, Felix beside him pressing a wadded-up piece of cloth to his injured side. Both of them were bloody and bruised, their clothing tattered even where Felix hadn’t torn off several inches at the bottom of his pants to help stem the flow of Eli’s blood, and Ember’s heart ached.
She’d dragged them into this. If not for her, neither of them would be in such a state.
But they both looked up when she turned back to them. Eli pushed himself up a bit against the wall, and Felix nodded.
“Do it,” he said, and she knew they were both with her, just as they’d been the whole time.
Ember jammed the steering lever forward, and the copter smashed against the wall, shattering the fragile ice with iron blades.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They flew for hours, and there was still nothing but barren desert on every horizon.
Ember had finally set the copter down on a flat piece of land, too exhausted to keep concentrating on flying the machine, and let the world grow dark around them.
The heat was stifling. She’d never felt anything like it. It sucked the moisture out of her mouth and the sweat off her brow, and now, several hours after leaving the cool of Frost, she felt wrinkled and small and delirious.
The boys didn’t seem to be in better shape. Eli’s eyes had closed some time ago, and now he lay crumpled on the floor, raspy breaths and sluggish bleeding the only indication that he was still alive. Felix sat curled up in the very back, his legs against his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking very slightly back and forth and whispering to himself words Ember couldn’t quite make out.
Despite her exhaustion, the heat that weighed on her shoulders and headache that pounded at her bruised skull, Ember couldn’t relax. The complete featureless desert wasn’t unlike the tundra in the fact that its lack of shelter and extreme temperature promised death to anyone who didn’t keep their wits about them, and she was apparently the only one with wits left to keep.
But the pressure, the heat, the strangeness of it all, kept her knife in her hand and her restless, panicked energy on a hair trigger.
“What was that?” Felix asked suddenly, straightening out of the ball he’d curled himself into.
Ember turned. She couldn’t see anything through the dusty glass of the copter but sand and more sand, distinguished from the scattering of rocks only by the way the hot wind collected and spun it around.
She couldn’t see or hear anything else.
“I thought I saw…” Felix’s voice trailed off. He bit his lip. “Maybe not. Just a shadow.”
“I don’t like this,” Ember admitted, mostly so she wouldn’t have to keep thinking the words only to herself.
“Yeah. Maybe we should keep flying?”
“I’m worried about the fuel. I’d rather—” She choked on her words, cleared her throat, tried again. “Rather we fly during the day, when we can see, and preserve the fuel at night. I’m not sure how long a copter can go on only one tank.”
“Right. That’s smart.” But he didn’t sound convinced.
Neither did she, really, because it wasn’t much of a plan, and they both knew that. None of her ideas had been much of a plan, not since first deciding to go with Eli to Frost. Everything had been reaction, and the plans she formed had only been thought through to the poin
t where they got her over the wall and out of Frost.
They’d been over the wall for hours, and now, Ember felt like it might’ve been the stupidest idea she’d ever had. At least in Frost they had food and water and shelter.
“Don’t.” Felix’s voice interrupted the dour turn of her thoughts.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t go regretting it. It was right. The queen lied. About everything. And she needed to be exposed for that.”
“Yeah. I know.” Now she was the one who sounded unconvinced.
Felix scooted forward, careful not to bump Eli and disturb what was probably not a particularly healing sleep, but was at least something to help him dull the pain. He propped himself up onto his knees and set one rusty hand on her leg. “Ember, look at me.”
She did, slowly.
He looked back at her with perfect seriousness. “I don’t regret it. Neither should you. Whatever happens, we’re in this together, right?”
She put her free hand over his, laced their fingers together. “Right.”
He smiled, just a little, with just the corners of his lips, but it felt so good to see his smile that Ember couldn’t help but smile back.
Then, slowly, making sure it was okay with every shift she made, she tilted toward him, lowered her head against his shoulder, and finally let her eyes slip shut.
* * *
“Ember Mikailanova.”
The sound of her name jolted through the drowsy almost-peace that had settled on her. Ember jerked upright and spun around, knife lifted, prepared to kill again if she had to.
There was a man standing outside the now-opened door of the copter’s passenger bubble. He was swathed from head to toe in light, loose cloth, only the shine of his eyes visible from between a head wrap and a face covering, and he held a small black tube that shone a powerful electric light out of one end.
“It’s okay,” he said, lifting his cloth-covered hands as if to prove he wasn’t armed. “I’m a friend. The prince of Sand has sent me to fetch you.”
Ember’s story continues…
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Prince of Sand, Book 2 of The Frost Trilogy is a thrilling journey beyond the southern wall to the city of Sand where she will face the question, what is she willing to sacrifice to find the truth and save the world?
Get Prince of Sand today!
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Aria Noble
About the Author
Aria Noble tells stories of ordinary girls thrust into extraordinary worlds full of mysteries and magic. Her characters aren't afraid to question their assumptions, discover their strength, and possibly even change the world along the way. Fans of Shannon Hale, Phillip Pullman, and Marissa Meyer will love Aria Noble.