Page 76 of A Frozen Pyre
A high, grating noise filled the air as Sedit ran his claws down the door. She looked at her hound in surprise, realizing she’d never had to let him outdoors. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that he might have to go in and out like a creature made of flesh and blood rather than nightmares and poison. She crossed the room, issuing quiet promises to Sedit until she opened the door. Her jaw dropped open at the kingly figure at the threshold.
“Ceneth.” She breathed his name in shock.
Dark wings blotted out the last of the pewter sky as he filled the doorway. He looked her up and down, gaze a mixture of relief and disapproval. He took a long look at Sedit, then looked calmly back at her. “Ophir,” he said. “May I?”
She opened the door with a silent nod.
He scanned the cabin and sighed. “One moment.”
Ceneth left the door open as he disappeared back outside. She stood statue-still in the center of the cabin, Sedit at her side, as she listened to the sounds of scraping and rustling. Moments later, Ceneth reappeared with an armful of logs. The King of Raascot knelt before the hearth, stacking several atop the ashes and embers and setting the others to the side.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
Her swallow was audible. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous, but she wordlessly complied. Her flame shot to life, consuming the logs in an instant. It banished the shadows, illuminating the room.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
He made a sound that one may have described as a chuckle, but the quiet staccato held little humor. “I was worried,” he said. “If your companion can create doors to travel across the continent, you could have gone anywhere. But I asked myself what I would have done if I was angry and frightened, and I knew the answer. I’d run. Physically. I’d want to feel my muscles burn, to feel the rocks and soil and dry pine needles beneath my feet. Perhaps the frost on my wings as I took to the sky, but to exhaust myself nevertheless. I was about to give up when I spotted the chimney.”
She looked at the now-cheery fire. “But it had died…”
“I was in the air. I spied you from some way off. Once the fire was out, you were a little harder to locate. Now…” He frowned. “I’m not going to put us in the awkward position of asking which of my subjects lives…” He watched her face before amending, “Livedhere.”
She continued to look at him with wide eyes as if she were little more than a child caught by a parent.
“Did you make this?”
She looked to her gown and was about to answer before she realized he was pointing not at her, but beside her. He was asking whether or not Sedit was her doing.
Her throat bobbed as anxiety bubbled through her. He’dwitnessed her manifestation of the ag’drurath. Now, with calm resolve, he was asking if she was responsible for the needle-toothed abomination at her side.
“His name is Sedit,” she said quietly. She cleared her throat as she found her voice. “I call him… I call them vageth.”
“Them?”
“The race,” she said, dropping her eyes to the floor. She hadn’t had to explain herself like this before.
“Hmm,” he said, the sound neither rude nor curious. “And there are others, I assume? Races of creations?”
She looked into his eyes for a long time before confirming with a slow blink and dip of her chin.
“Where are the others?” Ceneth asked.
“My other beasts?”
“Your friends,” he clarified. “Where is Dwyn?”
He scanned the room as if the cabin could possibly conceal two additional fae. She supposed he didn’t know of Tyr’s gift to step into the space between things, but it didn’t matter. They were completely alone.
“Gwydir isn’t the only thing I destroyed,” she said.
A painful memory gnawed at Ophir. Cruel words rang through her just as they had when they’d been flung at her in Castle Aubade. She’d barely survived her first attempt at manifesting a serpent in the sea cave beyond the castle walls. When discovering her cut, bruised, and covered in sand, Tyr had asked her why she was so careless, why she insisted on posing the greatest threat to her safety, and why she’d become the person she was. At the time, the fires of judgment and hate had burned like a furnace within her. His rebuke had driven her into Dwyn’s arms that night. Now here she was, months later, and she’d be lucky if even Dwyn remained at her side when this was all said and done.
“She’s out,” Ophir clarified.Probably finding a woodsman to drain, she thought. “I am sorry, Ceneth. You didn’t deserve what happened in your castle.”
He shrugged, but she could see the insincerity in thegesture. She’d killed one of his men and she knew it. Though she’d grown a little too comfortable with the loss of innocent life since meeting Dwyn, she didn’t expect others to feel the same. Raascot had paid the price for her vendetta against her father.
“The castle has been repaired,” he said. At the surprise in Ophir’s quiet murmur, he added, “Zita’s man can speak to stone. He was exceptionally useful before he…volunteered for another project.”
