Page 107 of A Frozen Pyre
“Her quarters?” Dwyn clarified. Her eyes drifted up to the deck of the chip. The captain’s quarters were directly below the wheel, completely removed from the crew.
“It’s not my business to know,” he mumbled apologetically. “We were surprised you came into the ship’s belly in the first place, m’lady.”
Dwyn turned for the ladder without thanking the sailor. She frowned up at the latched door on the ceiling. The same sailor jogged up behind her.
“Allow me,” he said. He quickly climbed the ladder and knocked thrice. Someone deckside cranked a chain until the hatch opened. “It’s sealed to keep us warm,” he explained. “Someone will always be top or bottom to ensure you can get in or out, should you or Her Highness need to. I’d put your gloves back on before you go topside.”
“Fine,” Dwyn said dismissively. She shoved her left hand into her glove, leaving her right hand exposed as it gripped the plate. She balanced the dish in one hand as she mounted the ladder. She’d managed to forget just how cold the air was in their short time in the belly of the ship. The instant blast of arctic air set her eyes watering. She was certain the ham had lost any residual warmth. “I hope you like cold meat,” she muttered, irritated. Dwyn got to the captain’s quarters and yanked on the door without knocking. It didn’t budge.
She began to bang on the door with her gloved hand. “Firi, I have your food. Let me in.”
“The princess hasn’t been topside,” a man called to her from the starboard side. “My lady,” he added hastily.
She glared at the man as if he were to blame for Ophir’s absence. Each word was a dagger as she asked, “Then where is she?”
It was clear from the shock on his face that he felt every drop of angst she threw at him.
A bloody cry cut through the wood from the belly of the ship. Dwyn and the sailor dropped their gazes as each looked beneath their feet. It was not the cry of man or fae. Dwyn’seyes tightened as a second cry, one like rust and broken glass and anguish, ripped the boards apart with its piercing scream.
“Firi,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
The hatch burst open a moment later. Dwyn dropped the plate of food as she stumbled backward, back pressed against the lip of the ship in horror as an atrocity stared back at her. A humanoid beast shook its head to scream, but as it did, its mouth dropped lower, and lower, and lower until its jaw dangled near the sternum of its manlike chest. The blood of a fresh kill dripped from its fangs. It whipped at them with the razor-sharp arms of a praying mantis. She threw her hands up to protect herself, calling to water that didn’t come. It was so cold that the bitter snow lacked the moisture she needed.
Dwyn thrust out her hand to attempt to bend the blood within the creature, but it shrieked as if she were little more than an annoyance.
“She’s gone!” came the hound-like cry from a voice deep within the ship’s belly. “The princess is gone!”
Dwyn’s heart dropped into her stomach. She lurched for the sailor who’d spoken to her only seconds before. The man shoved aside his fear as he responded to the emergency, extending his hand as if to help a damsel in distress. She whipped off her glove and gripped his outstretched hand. The withered husk of a man was taken on the wind before he’d even realized what had happened.
With a powerful yell, Dwyn called to the air and hit the demonic abomination with a gale-force column of wind. The creature screamed as the wind punched it with unbeatable strength as if it were the fist of the All Mother herself. The thrust sent the monster flying from the deck and skipping across the ice like a stone over the pond. It would be on its feet in a second, but Dwyn was fast. She dove into the hull and blinked rapidly against the change in light as she struggled through the darkness.
Dwyn tripped over something and collapsed to the floor. She gasped at the hot, sticky liquid covering her hand, herknees, and saturating the fur of her white coat. The creature had worked very quickly.
Panic tore her to pieces. She grabbed the first man she saw as she drained him to borrow the ability to heal. If Ophir was wounded, Dwyn would find her. Cortisol gagged her as she shoved through the chaos of hollering men. “Ophir!”
“She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!” one continued crying. She reached the man and gripped his shoulders.
“Where is she!”
“She’s dead,” he said again. His cheeks were red and stained with tears. Each ragged breath was punctuated with the horrible proclamation, time and time again. Dwyn looked over her shoulder at the slain man, his throat slit, his soft organs strewn about the belly of the ship.
“Where!” Dwyn demanded. She could scarcely hear her thoughts over the screams of the men as pandemonium filled the ship. Between the horrific fanged demon, the withered husks of men, and the slain princess, there was no sanity to be had. Terror rang in her ears, battling their screams. Her eyes spiked with tears as the fear consumed her.
“So many are dead,” he sobbed. “So many…” He lifted his hand to gesture to another body. Dwyn nearly hit him to get him to focus but followed the point of his finger to see the drained husk of a sailor.
She blinked at the body. She slowly released the man and walked over to the bloodless, mummified man. She’d killed only twice since boarding the ship, and their fragile bodies had already been taken by the wind and blown onto the ice. She took a few steps closer to the sailor and kicked the new man with her shoe. He moved easily beneath her nudge as if he were made of little more than paper. This was not her doing.
Her fear was replaced with something else entirely. She turned to the sobbing crewman and changed her question. “How did she die?” Dwyn asked woodenly.
“She walked out onto the ice. No one could stop her! She was claimed by the Straits.”
Time slowed as she worked through her next question. “And, what are you to do with this information?”
He wiped his tears as he continued to blubber. “Return to our villages and tell others how she died.”
There was a weightlessness to the numbness that claimed her.
“Firi, how could you,” she whispered.
