Page 97 of Heart of the Summer Queen

I grit my teeth and turn to Elaric, determination flooding through me. “We have to succeed. For them, for Dalia. And for you.”

“I know,” Elaric mutters back, his attention remaining on the frozen family.

“We need a plan.” I peel my fingers from his and pace across the creaking floorboards as I think. “A way to gain the upper hand.”

“An ambush,” Elaric says. “Though that will be difficult now she’s alerted to our presence. Our best choice would be to waitlong enough for her to think we’ve left, that perhaps our courage has run out and—”

“Yourcourage,” I say quietly, the realization striking me.

Elaric frowns in confusion.

“She knows you are here, but not that I am. Perhaps she doesn’t even know you’ve found your Summer Queen. Maybe she believes after three centuries of misery, of being unable to break your curse, you’ve come to beg for mercy.”

Elaric scratches his chin. “If you remain hidden, I could openly approach Isidore, feigning defeat. With her guard lowered, believing I came alone, you could strike her with the sword before she detects you.”

I nod, scanning our surroundings. “We need to choose somewhere with enough cover for me to hide, or else we’ll lose the element of surprise.”

“If we make our stand here, she may refuse to enter and force me to confront her outside.”

“And if you won’t leave the hut,” I say, “she might decide to collapse the roof on us and force us out.”

“For that reason, it would be best to avoid battling her indoors. We’ll have to find somewhere outside.”

My eyes shift over to the window, and the shadowy trees beyond. Though a part of me is tempted to stay here and recover from the exhaustion of tonight, this is the only building for miles. If Isidore knows of its existence, she is certain to search here—making all our plans redundant. We can’t linger.

With a heavy sigh, I turn back to Elaric. “Then it seems we’ve no choice but to keep moving until we find somewhere suitable to lure her out. And pray she doesn’t find us first.”

thirty-five

We depart from the cottage, continuing through the rest of the forest. With the trees already thinning, I’m far from surprised when they soon end, exposing us to frozen plains.

Now freed from the forest, the impressive mountain range towers before us, its peaks scraping the clouds. And there, tracing the soaring ridges, I spy the castle Elaric glimpsed during our flight here. The castle Isidore has likely claimed as her stronghold.

“We should stick to the shadows as best we can,” I say, seizing Elaric’s arm and steering us into the shelter of the cliffs. Though the moonlight still finds us, the rocks provide some cover. With the bare land surrounding us, I see no other option to mask our approach.

As we venture upward, the wind intensifies, slamming into us with violent gusts that threaten to throw us off our feet. The snow deepens until it climbs halfway up my calves, crusting thick around my legs. It swirls so dense it obscures the path ahead. We squint against the blinding terrain, struggling to watch our step as we trudge on.

I tilt back my head, examining the brightening sky. How many hours remain before the sun breaches the peaks and strips all cover of darkness? We need to secure our position before then, somewhere suitable for me to ambush Isidore. But miles of endless snow and sheer mountains offer nowhere promising.

“Adara,” Elaric says, stopping abruptly and pointing in the distance. “There seems to be buildings ahead.”

I shift my focus toward where he’s gesturing. At first, a blur of white disrupts my vision, sleet whirling in the gale. I blink hard, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

Then forms materialize: faint silhouettes of buildings etched into the horizon.

“There are so many roofs,” I whisper back, partly in fear that speaking too loudly will cause Isidore to hear us through the flakes blowing around us. “Could it be a town? A city?”

“Perhaps,” Elaric says. “Let’s take a closer look.”

We press on, clinging to the shadows at the mountain’s base. Though the city glimmers closer with each step, it stays wrapped in haze.

I scan the sprawling plains, searching for somewhere to grant us cover while we survey the settlement ahead.

Finally, my gaze snags on an enormous rock half-buried in the tundra.

“Over there,” I say, pointing toward it. “We can examine the city from behind the boulder.”

We abandon the cliffs’ dwindling shelter, slogging across the open terrain as we make our way toward the rock.

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