Page 65 of A Heart of Ice and Shadow

Eventually, Gwen fell to her knees amongst the blooms and closed her eyes. Tears of panicked frustration ran down her cheeks. “Do something,” she snarled at herself. “You have to do something.”

Fueled by rage and worry, she hauled herself back up. If Iathana could use magick to transport wherever she pleased, Gwen knew it was possible. It could be done without stones or mirrors or some other enchanted object. She racked her brain, trying to think. She had done it once before, she reminded herself—with the mirrors. She’d even managed to slip back in time. If only she knew how in the hell she’d managed to do it.

Gwen knew no real spells. She’d only been able to do magick when she’d had to. When she was desperate. But she was desperate now. She closed her eyes. She had to get back to Volkov. Back to the forest. Back to Sirus.

She tried to focus. Levian had told her countless times that to do any great magick, mages had to first focus on the outcome, then work backward to weave spells. First Gwen thought of the castle. Then her room. The study. The forest. She tried to focus on it. Tried to will her magick to take her there.

“Please,” she begged.

As much as she tried to focus on one thing, it was the countless memories of Sirus that kept coming to her. All blurred together. Their nights together. Training. Their walks in the forest. Her heart ached.

“Take me back,” she pleaded. Her ears hummed. Gwen felt her power pulse through her body. “Take me home.”

The memory of them together in the hot spring came into vivid focus as a jolt of electricity shot through her.

It was suddenly very cold. Gwen rasped in a shallow breath as her eyes flew open and she saw the tendrils of steam rising from the hot spring in front of her, soft flurries of snow melting as they landed on its surface. The forest rustled at her arrival.

A spray of violet and a crackle of magick lit the sky above the trees, and she gasped.

She didn’t even really have time to soak in what she’d done or how. Her heart lurched into her throat, and she shot off into the forest toward the castle as fast as she could, breathlessly darting through the trees and the thick snow, her focus on only one thing.

She had to find Sirus.

Sirus spit out the foul blood of the zephyr paladin now lying lifeless at his feet. The taste was acrid against his tongue.

The attack had been swift and calculated. Nestra had ripped through the ancient warding spells that had protected Volkov forest and his clan for centuries, picking them apart one tendril at a time.

He’d told the others to flee. Gwendolyn was safe; the fight was not theirs.

In the distance, on the other side of the castle, he heard Barith’s roar of fury rip through the snowy predawn sky. Sprays of violet from Levian’s magick blurred through the clouds.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Levian had told him.

Barith had simply glowered off into the distance, his sword glowing with fire. “I could go for a bit of a tussle,” he’d growled with eagerness.

Niah had merely looked at him as if he were an idiot if he thought she would leave. The High Priestess might not have come looking for a battle, but a battle she would have.

A paladin, snarling with fury, flew at Sirus from behind with too little caution. It took only a few steps and one sword before he fell into a heap at Sirus’s feet next to his brethren.

Sirus spat again and peered across the field, over the half dozen wounded or dead acolytes he’d cut off on their western approach toward the castle. He trusted the others were proving similarly effective against the other advances. For several long seconds, he stood waiting. Trying to sense if there were more lurking in the forest. His attention shot to the edge of the small, snowy, blood-smeared clearing and locked on a pair of silvery eyes emerging from the shadows. Mirrors.

His thirst for blood renewed.

He’d half expected Nestra’s ghost to run when he took in the carnage before him. Sirus welcomed the chase. Instead, the soulless creature stepped boldly into the clearing. “You’re alive,” he growled with disbelief and disgust.

Sirus’s hunger swelled. “I am.”

“You should be dead.” He should have been. Unfortunately for the ghost, he wasn’t. The mirrors shifted over Sirus’s body, trying to comprehend. His enemy approached with caution, careful to keep a distance between them. “How?”

Sirus had thought it bold for Nestra to come here, even with her reinforcements, but he understood then why she’d felt emboldened. Her ghost had deduced who he was and had thought him dead after their battle in the mirrors. Nestra must have assumed she’d come and find Volkov mostly unprotected. Sirus spun the blade in his left hand to clear the blood of the paladin from its surface. How very wrong they’d been.

The ghost glared, awareness dawning. “You drank from her,” he guessed. “The Star.” Disgust filled those mirrored eyes.

“She will never be yours,” Sirus replied. “Just as you will never leave this place alive.”

The cockiness the ghost had displayed in the Hall of Reflections was gone, but he did not cower. A spray of magick spread over the sky. Levian and Barith were holding the line near the castle. “She will have the Star,” Aldor told Sirus, though there was an unease in the way he said it. “You cannot stop her now. Nothing can stop her.”

Nestra was near. Sirus could feel the presence of her power like he had Iathana’s. But the High Priestess’s magick was lesser than the dryad’s. And something about it was strange. Familiar, yet foul.

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