Page 3 of The War of Four Winters

Our horses found their way back to us through curtains of falling snow. In my blind rage earlier, I hadn't truly seen the transformation of the Twilight lands around me. Now, as we mounted and began our return to Calibarra, the strange beauty of it stole my breath.

Snow fell in absolute silence. Not the wet, heavy flakes I knew from Ostovan winters, but crystalline fragments that caught light and shattered it into rainbow shards. The ancient pines towered above us, their branches laden with white that sparkled with an almost blue tinge. Even the air felt different here. Sharp and clean. It scraped my lungs with each breath.

Ruith rode slightly ahead. My gaze fixed on the way snow settled in his dark hair, refusing to melt. As if the land itself had claimed him. The same snow that soaked into my clothes and bit at my exposed skin seemed to embrace him. Made him more ethereal. More Other. A reminder that for all we'd become to each other, he wasn't human.

"How many winters have you seen?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.

We'd never discussed it, though the thought had haunted me since he'd made his bargain with death. One day each year spent cold and still. Trading precious years of his life to keep my heart beating. If I was lucky, I had maybe thirty more winters ahead of me. Thirty days of death for him, scattered across whatever span of life elves were granted.

He glanced back. Snowflakes caught in his lashes. "Does it matter?"

"Answer the question."

A pause. Only the soft crunch of snow beneath hooves filled the silence.

"Thirty-two." His voice was carefully neutral. "Young enough that my enemies still whisper I'm unfit to lead, old enough to prove them wrong."

"And how many do your people usually see?"

I found myself holding my breath. Unsure why this answer suddenly seemed so important.

The shadow of a smile crossed his face. "The oldest I've known reached one hundred and seventy winters. Though few of us die of age alone in these times." His expression darkened. "My father is nearing one hundred and twenty. Still strong enough to make both our lives difficult for quite some time."

The knowledge settled heavily in my chest. Not immortal then, as humans whispered, but still... I might live another thirty years, if lucky. He could have over a century more. And he'd pledged to spend one day of every one of those years in death, all to keep me at his side.

"Don't," he said softly. "Every winter was the same before you. Let me have these that will be different."

The words caught in my chest like a blade. Such a simple way to dismiss the weight of his sacrifice. As if trading days of his life for mine was nothing more than a pleasant change of seasons.

"You could have a century of unbroken winters ahead of you."

"A century of winters alone." He turned in his saddle to face me fully. Snow clung to his dark hair like a crown of stars. "I made my choice, Elindir. Let me have the peace of it."

I looked away first, unable to hold his gaze. The snow continued to fall in that unnatural silence. Each flake was perfect and sharp as diamond dust. Like everything in the Twilight lands, even the weather carried an edge of dangerous beauty.

We rode deeper into the ancient forest. Trees wider than village houses rose into the white sky. Their branches wove together so tightly that the snow fell in strange patterns, creating paths and circles in the air that seemed almost deliberate. The elves had names for these trees. Names so old they weren't even words anymore, just sounds shaped by centuries of reverence.

A wolf's howl shattered the silence. My horse's ears pricked forward but showed no fear. More howls answered. The sound rolled through the forest. They were speaking to each other, I realized, in a language as old as these woods.

The sound triggered fragments of memory I'd been trying to piece together for weeks. The ritual hunt that had made Ruith king. I remembered the blizzard. Howling in the snow. Chasing after what I thought was a lone wolf and then...

And then everything was strange for a time. It felt like a fever dream. Ruith battling a great white wolf who became a man. Ruith cutting out its heart. Coming down the mountain somehow unscathed with the heart of a dead god in a pouch… It seemed impossible, but in this wild and ancient land, perhaps not.

The snow deepened as we rode. The forest transformed into something from a dream. Everything sparkled with an almost blue tinge in the strange, diffused light. Shadows took on colors I'd never seen in normal winters. Purples and greens that shifted when I looked directly at them. Had I really ridden through all this beauty blind with rage earlier? My fury at Michail felt distant now, though I knew it would return soon enough.

Then we cleared the tree line, and all thoughts of beauty vanished.

The pristine white carpet ahead was broken by dark patches where snow refused to settle. Blood stains. They were weeks old, but still seeping into the frozen ground. My horse picked his way carefully around a discarded shield. Just weeks ago, this field had been a sea of bodies. The place where I had died.

I touched my chest. Phantom pain flared where Senna's blade had pierced my heart. The snow wasn't thick enough yet to hide all the signs of what had happened here. Scorched earth from battle magic made black scars in the white expanse. Broken weapons caught the weak sunlight. Places where the grass would never grow again. Where too much power had been unleashed at once.

There were other marks, too. Ones only I would recognize. The exact spot where I'd killed my former overseer. Someone had since moved the rocks that had been slick with both our blood. The place I'd come to rest when I was too weak to keep crawling toward Ruith...

My mount snorted and tossed his head. Perhaps he remembered that day. The chaos of battle. The screams of dying men and horses alike. The sound of steel on steel and magic blasting. None of the accounts sung in the great hall mentioned those details. None spoke of how, even dying, I'd made sure Senna would never use that damned rod to hurt anyone ever again.

Ruith's horse drew alongside mine so close our legs nearly touched. He said nothing, but reached across the space between us to grip my arm. His touch anchored me to the present, to the quiet fall of snow rather than the memories of blood and fire. He'd held me here, though I was already gone and had no memory of it. Somehow, I knew that. And then he'd given up his own life to bring me back. The silence between us held the weight of that memory as we approached the fortress gates.

Above us, Calibarra's broken towers rose stark against the white sky. What had once been a ruin was slowly transforming under our occupation. Scaffolding clung to the outer walls where masons worked to repair ancient stonework. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys. Proof of life returning to long abandoned halls.

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