Page 118 of A Frozen Pyre
“Tell me!”
Dwyn chewed on the inside of her cheek. She remained tense as she picked her words. “This was never my plan, Ophir. But I may have helped Eero see the benefit in first bringing the manufactured rings from Aubade, if only to help the transition go smoothly. You would have made a spectacular ruler, and you could have had both kingdoms in an instant.”
“This was…” The wind left Ophir’s lungs. “This was your doing? All of it?”
Dwyn took a step closer. “From the first day I met you, I’ve been saving you. I’ve saved you from the waves, from your nightmares, from your enemies—I’ve saved you fromyourself more times than either of us can count. What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m on your side?”
“You aren’t on my side,” she gasped. Ophir stared on with helplessness as she realized there was nothing she could manifest to get her out of this. Dwyn had commanded her vageth as if she were its mother. Powerlessness sucked the air from her lungs as her knees wobbled once more. The new vageth nudged her calf with concern, but she could barely look at it. The creature should have been her salvation.
“Let me prove it to you,” Dwyn said quietly as she closed the remaining gap between them. Ophir clenched her eyes tightly, flinching against the touch as if it pained her. “You are hurting yourself, Ophir. You are sentencing yourself to a lifetime of pain because you refuse to experience the joy and luxury and life that are rightfully yours. I swear to the goddess—you, Ophir, I swear toyou—that I will not let you stand in your own way, even if it makes you hate me.”
Voice dripping with disgust, Ophir said, “There are things love is, Dwyn, and things it isn’t. And it’s not this. You don’t love me.”
“But I do, Firi. I do.”
Forty-Three
The maps were well named.
Harland had always suspected that the Unclaimed Wilds were full of mountain tribes and sovereign people. He hadn’t believed them to be truly vacant. An eternity of trudging through the forest without a single sign of cut logs, of smoky chimneys, of shelters, had led him to believe that the tattered paper map curling in Aubade’s war room had been right all along.
The moment he broke through the clearing, he understood what he was seeing.
The princess had made a shelter surrounded by ancient and beautiful trees. His gaze snagged on a large patch of melted snow in the meadow, and he frowned. Footprints had been stamped into the snow on either side, then stopped where the charred evidence of fire and the glistening traces of ice showed bits of the ground.
Ophir and Dwyn had fought. He could think of no other explanation for the singed ground and ice-slick remnants of water. He shuddered to think of what a battle between them might look like as, though Ophir was the most formidable and powerful fae on the continent, she lacked something that Dwyn possessed.
Ophir was not evil.
Harland’s heart quickened. He scanned the clearing for other evidence of movement and finally landed on a single trail of footprints leading from the cabin and into the woods on the far side of the meadow. The single set of tracks led him to believe that one had left, and the other had stayed behind. The other scattered markings appeared to have been from an animal, as they were too wide and chaotic to have been created by a fae. He paused near the tree line and listened, but he heard nothing.
Tyr hadn’t been to the cabin, then. Even with his gift to step into the space between things, he wouldn’t have been able to hide his footprints. Harland wondered if he was around. He wasn’t stupid enough to call out to the man. If Dwyn was angry enough to fight Ophir, then stealth may very well be their best and only asset.
Harland surveyed the woods, estimating just how large the clearing must be. It was practically the size of Aubade’s coliseum.
If he was going to go, it should be now.
Harland broke free from the tree line and sprinted for the cabin. There was no wisdom in remaining out in the open for long. He slowed his pace as he approached the cabin and pressed himself into the wall. He snapped his mouth shut and breathed through his nose, forcing himself to calm down as he sidled along the wooden structure toward a warped window. He slowly leaned in order to look into the structure and saw…
Harland was at the front door in an instant. He threw it open and met Ophir’s wide, startled eyes. At her side, a vageth jumped to its feet.
“Harland!” she gasped, muffling the sound as her hand flew to her mouth. She looked up at him from where she sat on the ground in the center of the room. Though the cabin had the basic amenities, when he’d spied her slumped on the floor, he’d feared the worst. She looked to the hound and put a hand on its hide. “He’s a friend, Sedit,” she whispered.
The demon continued to eye him suspiciously, but it rolled its limbs into a calmer state.
Harland slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn’t need Dwyn spying the open frame from across the meadow. Every precious second counted.
“Where is she?” he said, voice low to match Ophir’s.
Ophir looked at the fireplace, then back at Harland. “She’s getting firewood.”
“But you don’t need wood,” he said with a little hesitation. The fire that glowed and burned in the fireplace floated as if on the wick of an invisible candle. Ophir could hold the flame with her own intent if she chose.
“I know,” Ophir said bitterly. “And she knows. But I’ve been…noncompliant. She’s trying to prove a point by forcing me to not light a fire.”
“Forcing you?” Harland repeated the woods slowly.
Ophir’s shoulders slumped as her eyes returned to the ground. There was little to look at in the humble cabin, the bed and chair piled high with the dark cobwebs of strange, gauzy blankets. There were no decorations. There was no food. There was only Ophir and her animal.
