Page 44 of Wilds of Wonder
White blanketed the vast expanse around us, nothing but snow and ice as far as I could see. The chill seeped under my clothes, my toes and fingers already numb. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get frostbite. Not something I was eager to experience.
“You can summon your fire magic if you want,” she said, the wind carrying her voice. “You’re at a bit of a disadvantage here.”
“I never let that stop me before. Besides I’m not going to use my magic and then spend the next year hearing you talk about how that’s the only reason I won.”
Even through the thick cloak and tunic, I could see her shrug. “You’re already planning on winning? Cocky, bone collector.”
She whirled.
“Where are you going?” I called after her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you just here to chat?” she yelled over her shoulder as thick flakes swept around her. “Because I’m here to find the lost diadem. May the best historian win.” She wiggled her delicate fingers in the air, making me smile.
The diadem was supposedly underneath the frozen lake in the exact center. No one ventured out here, too afraid of the creatures who lurked beneath the surface.
The white rabbit had already disappeared from my sight, a curtain of heavy snow blocking my view. I wasn’t even sure which way the middle was. Every way I turned looked the same, making it hard to get my bearings.
But I couldn’t let the white rabbit best me again. Not after she’d gotten those damn scrolls at our last challenge. Something she’d spent the last year taunting me about through our notes.
I reached into my satchel and drew out the saw I’d brought with me, one that many ice fishermen used in Fyriad. I’d learned that when I visited a few of them at the docks of the Silver Seas and asked how they went about catching fish. We weren’t allowed to use our magic in these little challenges; otherwise, I could’ve just melted the ice. Though that might have been risky. A saw seemed like the better choice. I wondered what the white rabbit had planned, then I pushed her from my mind. Something that was increasingly hard to do these days.
Another blast of wind made me stumble, but I regained my footing and stalked across the lake in the direction I believed was toward the center. The wind was unrelenting, and I pulled my cloak tighter around me, not that it did a damn thing.
If I got the diadem today, I wondered what I’d actually do with it. I hadn’t thought that far ahead when I’d proposed this little game of ours two years ago. It would be odd to keep something like that to myself, but I also couldn’t exactly waltz into the academy with a diadem that I hadn’t been authorized by the queen to find.
The ice trembled under my feet, and I looked down to see a long sleek body slithering through the water underneath. It should have been a terrifying sight, but instead of fear, a thrill shot through me. A sense that this was what I was meant to do. I wasn’t meant to be in a classroom, lecturing students, going on safe expeditions to fields and caves and hills that had been pored over already. There was so much history out there, history the white rabbit was uncovering herself. She was taking things into her own hands and finding amazing artifacts, uncovering important information.
Information that would help us learn about our past and how to approach our future.
But I didn’t want to lose this job. I didn’t want to have to go back home to my father. To his overbearing presence. To see the way he treated my sister so terribly. Especially if I’d lost a job. He’d focus all his attention on making her suffer for my mistakes.
So what to do with the diadem if I found it? I’d worry about thatlater. The ice shuddered again, a blue-spotted eel swimming right underneath me. These were the largest species of eel, sometimes as long as a ship and with an appetite to match a dragon. They typically ate fish, but they also weren’t picky about their meat or where it came from.
I blew out a breath, keeping my gaze trained on the ice for any signs of this diadem. In the distance, ice shattered, an explosion and a shriek splitting the air. My heart stopped in my chest as the white rabbit let out another blood-curdling scream.
I stuffed the saw in my satchel and took off, all thoughts of the diadem gone as I ran as faster than I ever had toward the sound. The eels normally didn’t surface to find prey. Not unless there was a lack of food below. Bloody fucking fire.
I hurried through a wall of flurries and slid to a stop right as the eel’s monstrous head erupted from the ice. Huge chunks of the frozen lake floated in the crystal-blue water, the ice jutting up as the white rabbit scrambled backward. She fell onto her back, and in her hand was the diadem.
Of course she’d found it.
The eel wasn’t after her. It was here to protect the diadem, which supposedly belonged to Spirit Frost’s wife. She’d worn it proudly until his mistresses tried to steal it. Out of spite, she put the diadem right in the center of this lake and instructed Spirit Frost’s pet eel to guard it. She might’ve died almost two thousand years ago along with the rest of the Old World, but these eels lived up to three thousand years.
I ran toward the white rabbit, shielding her with my body as the eel shrieked, thrashing its head in the air.
“Just give it the diadem,” I yelled, summoning my fire magic to ward off the eel.
It let out a low hiss, its black eyes flashing with fear, but it didn’t retreat.
“No,” she snapped. “I came all the way for this. I’m not going to let it go because of some threat. Are you really so easily scared away, bone collector? Because I have to say, I’m a little disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” I laughed in disbelief. “That I don’t want to lose my head to a centuries-old eel? It’s just a game.”
“It’s not, and you know it.”
The eel lowered its head and blew out a frosty breath that extinguished my fire. I rolled out of the way before it could pull me into the icy depths of that lake, and I landed on my back next to the white rabbit.
She held up the diadem as the eel reared back, readying itself to strike. “This is history. It’s a living, breathing thing that can teach us something. So I’m not giving it up.”
