Page 46 of The Iron Raven

Leaping back, Ash raised his sword, then thrust it point down into the snow. I felt the ripple of glamour spread over the ground in an icy wave, and quickly leaped into the air, changing into a raven midjump. Below me, there was a flash of blue, and a layer of ice instantly coated everything, freezing the duplicate Pucks and turning them into rime-covered statues.

Whoa, that wasa lotof glamour. Well, congratulations, prince, I am officially impressed.

Swooping down, I landed on one Puck’s head, pecking curiously at his hair. The duplicate radiated cold, his face frozen into a permanent startled expression.

A few paces away, the Winter prince still knelt against the icy ground with his sword driven into the earth. Gazing at the frozen trio, a faint smirk crossed his face, until he spotted me perched atop one’s head. I let out a loud caw, flapping my wings at him, and his eyes narrowed.

Standing, he yanked out his blade, and the statue below me, along with the ice covering everything, shattered. The three Pucks instantly dissolved into nothing with the icy explosion, and I launched myself off the statue before I could be shredded by crystal shrapnel. Wheeling around, I circled the prince’s head once with an indignant caw, before swooping up and changing into my normal self.

Dropping to the ground, I shot a wide grin at the Winter prince, who was breathing slightly harder from the use of so much glamour at once. “You’re looking a bit tired there, ice-boy,” I observed. “Not much of a partygoer, then? Is this too much fun for you to handle?”

“I’ll show you fun,” the Winter prince said, and raised his sword. Smirking, I drew my weapons again as the ice faery stalked forward, and as he did, the ground shivered, a tremor going through the earth below us. For a split second, I could feel the cracks in the earth, the unstable crust of rocks and snow under my boots, like a layer of rotten, too-thin ice over a fathomless lake.

Uh-oh.

With a roar, the ground under our feet gave way. Rocks, dirt, and chunks of ice surrounded me as I plummeted, raising my arms and trying to keep debris from bouncing off my head. For a moment, I thought of turning into a raven and flying back up, but with the vast amount of rocks and ice chunks tumbling around me, I couldn’t get a bearing on anything. Glancing down, I saw a glimmer of black water rushing up at me and braced myself.

Dammit, this is going to be cold.

I hit the water, and unsurprisingly, it was really,reallycold. I stifled the urge to gasp as I went under, the frigid water closing over my head. I floundered to the surface and looked for the shore. Rocks, dirt, and ice rained around me, plunking into the water, chunks of ice bobbing to the surface again.

Looking behind me, I gave a start, seeing a massive arm rising out of the water. After a momentary heart attack, I realized both the arm and the hand attached to it were made of stone and jutting out of the water at an odd angle. Gazing around, I saw other structures poking through the surface as well; broken stone walls and the tops of roofs. The massive head of a stone statue peered out of the water at me, only its eyes and the top of its skull visible. Part of its face was gone, but from what I could see, the statue itself had been massive.

Ash’s dark head broke the surface several feet away. Flinging his hair back, the Unseelie prince gazed around as I had, before his glittering silver gaze landed on me.

I shot him a grin, treading water, though the absolute cold made it hard to move my limbs freely. “Oh hey, princeling. What a surprise. Fancy meeting you here.” I forced my teeth not to chatter through sheer application of will. The fey of the Summer Court were not terribly fond of the cold, especiallythisfey. “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to have a boat in your pocket, would you?”

He stared at me, and then a smirk crossed his face. Raising an arm, he gestured to the lake, and with sharp crinkling sounds, a portion of the water froze, thickened, and became a floating plank of ice bobbing on the surface. The Winter prince heaved himself out of the water onto the plank, gave me a smug smile, and raised his arm. An icy wind blew in out of nowhere, taking the boat, and the Winter prince standing on it, toward the far side of the lake.

Well, I suppose I deserved that.

With nothing else to do, I began swimming.

I followed the Ice Prince, stroking through the ridiculously cold water until I finally reached the shore, a stretch of silver-gray sand surrounded by a sheer wall of rock stretching up into the darkness. Shivering, I hauled myself out of the water and staggered onto dry land, gazing around to get my bearings. The cavern that we had plummeted into was very large and mostly covered in water, though there were a few dry patches along the edges of the lake. Luminescent blue-and-white toadstools grew along the walls and on pieces of driftwood poking out of the sand, casting the entire chamber in an eerie glow.

Gazing up, I searched for the hole that we had fallen through, but saw only a ceiling of rock, with just a few tiny slivers of light peeking through the stone. Apparently, we wouldn’t be getting out the way we came in.

I looked around and saw the Winter prince a few yards up the beach, taking off his cloak and draping it over a twisted branch poking out of the sand. Wrinkling my nose, I started toward him, pausing to gather twigs and pieces of driftwood that were scattered about the beach.

He gave me a cool stare as I joined him, dumping the armful of wood in the sand between us. “What are you doing, Goodfellow?” he asked as I knelt and began scooping out a pit. “Do you wish to fight right here? I am ready to continue.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to discover your patience, princeling,” I muttered, not looking up as I arranged the twigs and sticks into a pyramid. “I know you Winter fey don’t feel it, but right now I am cold, I am wet, and I am generally uncomfortable. Also, I make it a habit not to fight duels in soaked undergarments. I hate it when I start to chafe.” Holding a hand over the wood, I sent out a pulse of glamour, and a tiny flame flickered to life, slowly creeping up the twigs. “If you want to be helpful, prince, you could try finding us a way out of here. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to wait until I’m dry to start any more duels.”

He gave me a flat stare, then turned away, gazing out over the water. His stare lingered on a domed roof a few yards away, covered in glowing fungi that gave off a soft green light. “I don’t recognize this place,” he muttered. “I wasn’t aware that there was once a city down here. I wonder what happened.”

I peered up at him, frowning. “What? You’ve never heard of the Lost City of Frozen Skull Forest? What kind of Unseelie are you, prince?”

“The Lost City of Frozen Skull Forest vanished centuries ago,” the Winter prince said, a bit defensively. “No one knows what happened to it. There are no stories that claim it sank into the earth. This might not be the same place.”

“Frozen Skull Forest is right above us, ice-boy,” I pointed out. “I’d say the mystery is solved, unless you have evidence that the lost city somehow grew wings and flew away.”

He glared at me but didn’t say anything to dispute my claim.

I grinned and returned to poking the fire. “So, who lived here, anyway?” I asked, adding a few driftwood sticks to the growing flame. The dry branches ignited almost immediately, but when the flames reached the lichen growing along the wood, they sputtered and flickered blue and green for a moment. “I’ve never heard of a city in Winter territory that wasn’t Tir Na Nog, have you, princeling?”

Ash shook his head. “No. But there were fey who existed in the Nevernever before us,” he said thoughtfully. “Before the courts, at least according to legends. Though almost nothing is known of them.”

“Well, maybe we should remedy that.”

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