Page 188 of Skalterra By Nightmare
Ice cracked and groaned, splitting Orla’s image. The floor shook, someone was shouting, but now that I had released the Skal, I couldn’t hold it back. It ripped through my veins, burning blue and bright, and I thought I might be dying, but through the pain and heat and light, I could see Orla as the ice around her fell.
And then as quickly as I’d combusted, I collapsed, shaking on the shattered floor.
44. Collateral Risk Management
The glacier groaned as the ice settled. It hurt to so much as breathe, and I lay motionless as footsteps grew closer overhead.
“Well done, little Saergrim,” a new voice crooned. I forced my eyes open to see Caitria standing over me, her dark face framed in frost-coated curls.
Rough hands yanked me to my feet, and pain radiated through every bone and muscle. Still, I fought back, digging in with the heels of my shoes and trying to gain purchase on the ice as I was dragged backwards with an emerald sword at my throat.
“Here she comes,” Ferrin growled in my ear. “Stand still, and be good.”
The walls separating us from Caitria’s side of the cave were gone, and the light in the cavern had dimmed, but now I could better see the people in fur-lined cloaks held on their knees by Ferrin’s soldiers. They stared back at me with scared faces, ruddy in the cold and cast in shadow by the light that streamed in through the cave entrance, but I recognized each and every one of them.
Siobhan, Teddy, Olive, Sarah, Gladys, Mr. Lane, and all the rest of Keel Watch Harbor sat on the floor of the ice cave.
The two closest to us kneeled just a few feet behind Fana, and my shaking limbs turned heavier at the sight of them. Sabrina’s face held more freckles than it had in Keel Watch Harbor, and her nose had a more pronounced bridge, but the strawberry curls that hung limp around her fiery orange and black glare were exactly the same. Maybe if she hadn’t had them hidden under her hood before, I would have recognized her when she’d chased us down on the frozen lake and put an arrow through Orla.
Ciarán sat next to her with his cowl down around his neck, a black eye that stood out against his pale skin, and a green sword held at his neck by one of Ferrin’s men. He stared past me with a look that held none of Liam’s warmth, but I could see my friend hiding in the shape of his face, easy to find now that I knew to look for him.
“Lady Saergrim!” he roared and lurched to his feet. The soldier guarding him grabbed him by his cloak and slammed him into the ice, but Ciarán kept his eyes up.
I shifted in Ferrin’s arms to follow Ciarán’s horrified gaze. My heart constricted when I saw the dust scattered on the ice where Gams had stood a moment ago.
“Gams?” I whispered.
Jonquil was gone too, and the ice where she’d lain was cracked and melted, a bright glow emanating from the crevice that now split the floor.
A shadow shifted inside, and Ferrin dragged me closer so we could look down into the broken ice together.
A young woman with long blonde hair stood in a pool of Skal with the skirts of her blue gown floating up around her waist on the surface of the liquid. She held Jonquil in one arm while the other fished in her dress pocket before pulling out a pair of thin-rimmed, circular spectacles.
She pushed them up her nose to better glare at us.
She really did look just like Mom.
“What a charming way to discover my grandkid is a Magician,” she sniffed. Her voice was just like Mom’s too, and the sound of it took my breath away. “Releasing me from my glacier when I specifically told her not to. How very like her.”
“Saergrim,” Ferrin chuckled darkly. “You look younger than I expected, based off your Nightmare.”
“I went nearly four hundred years without aging. It was fun to try it out.” The air around her rippled with blue heat, and Skal evaporated off her hair and gown in puffs of glowing steam.
“Out of the pool, Frozen God,” Caitria jeered. “Your people are waiting for you.”
Caitria approached Gams with her golden sword outstretched, leaving Orla to scramble towards Fana with her hands still bound behind her. The girl bowed into Orla’s attempt at an embrace, and I wanted nothing more than to join them.
Gams’s eyes flickered between my face and the sword at my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out at her. It was hard to reconcile the ethereal Magician in the pool with the image I had of my gray-haired, glaze-stained grandmother in my head.
“You were only trying to help your friend.” Blue stairs appeared beneath Gams as she ascended out of the pool with Jonquil purring in her arms. “Don’t worry, Wren. I’ll take care of this. This fraud knows which of us is the more powerful Magician.”
“Then you’ll understand why I can’t let you live.” Ferrin’s grip on me tightened. “You or your granddaughter. One of you dies, so who will it be?”
I was helpless to defend myself against the blade under my chin. Even the tiniest movement hurt, and my arms shook with fatigue.
“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Gams hissed.
