Page 103 of The Iron Dagger
“Why do you care?” asked Gideon.
“What if we could . . . ” Seith looked between them, and a fierce gleam had entered his bloodshot eyes. He knew he had their attention. “What if they could help us take it back? The throne?”
There it was. This was the true motivation behind his desperate desire to help her. He wanted the throne he had been promised. After all this time, that greed was still there. The thing he would throw his family, his lover, and his child away for. For the first time, Hara looked upon his rangy form and threadbare robes with the barest touch of pity. The thirst for power hadeaten at his flesh and picked clean his bones. It was all he had left.
Hara unsheathed one of the short bone daggers at her hip and held it to her sternum. Gideon started toward her in alarm. She glared unblinking into Seith’s eyes.
“I would sooner sink this knife into my chest than help you become king.”
But Seith did not look worried. Instead, there was a knowing look in the way his mouth curled.
“They found out, didn’t they? About your alchemy. You are the last in the Ilmarinen line, and your elemental power is rarer than any in recent memory. But they wanted to use you for gold. To keep you enslaved.” He stepped forward. “Theycannotwin, Angharad. Your mother and I are the rightful rulers, and you are my heir. You are braver and more just than I. You can make all the changes you could dream of, reverse all the wrongs that Corvus has done. I think this is what was meant to be.”
For a moment, Hara allowed herself to imagine it. Her mother restored and respected, and Hara able to return to the palace to put an end to the cruelty and the greed that had overrun the realm. She could close the mines and give the fae a place at court. She could shut down the armament factories and watch the war in the south dwindle and dry up. She could—
“We cannot know what was meant to be. Not without her,” said Hara, and she lowered her knife. “Now, I am going to begin reversing your wrongs.”
Gideon
Gideon walked silently by Hara’s side as they trudged uphill. Seith had tried to protest, but it was only when Gideon turned the bone knife on him that he transformed into hisanimal shape and dove into the stream. He was a coward to the last.
After a time, Hara’s soft voice broke the silence.
“You took out your jewelry.”
He touched his ear reflexively. “The fae are even more sensitive than witches. I did not want to cause them discomfort, so I buried my jewelry and my weapons away from their home.”
There was a pause as Hara considered this. “Did you not wish to retrieve them?”
The thought had crossed his mind; he felt naked going into the Maw unarmed. But mixing metals with magic was risky, and secretly, he feared that mere blades or hand pistols would not be of much help in the spirit world. Besides, Hara still carried her bone knives.
“I was thinking about what you said. I don’t want to risk harming your mother or the others trapped inside,” he said.
Hara gave a quick nod, her mouth firm, and he wondered if she carried the same fears he did.
When they reached the top of the rise, the landscape changed. Gone were the spruce trees and scrubby bushes.
The river they had been following fractured into several smaller rivulets that braided across the plain. The ground was a pattern of tan and black curves where water had flowed and dried a million times. They stood before a wide and empty expanse of sand, rock, and boulders of ice, surrounded by snowy peaks on all sides. Desolate and barren compared to the lushness further down the mountain, but the starkness had its own beauty.
Ahead was a giant wall of white, hulking and foreboding.
“There is the glacier,” said Gideon.
Hara glanced at the sky. The evening sun was on their left.
“We need to go this way,” she said, pointing to it. “In my vision, the sun was setting, and it was directly in front of them.”
Gideon gestured for her to lead the way, and she began to guide them towards a rocky outcropping to the left. As they neared the glacier, Gideon began to hear tiny hisses and cracklings in the ice. A deepcrackmade chills run up his spine; it felt as though a giant beast was about to burst forth out of the ice at any moment.
By the time they rounded the jutting rock, the sun was setting before them, and to the right was a river of gargantuan ice boulders and deep crevasses.
And there it was: a massive circular hole atop the glacier, a void. The ice surrounding it was dark and gritty, and it made the interior almost black. Water slipped over the edge and trickled down inside, forming deep vertical grooves that were swallowed up by the dark.
The bitter wind whipped at Gideon’s face, and he turned to Hara. She looked haunted, like she had seen this all before in a dream. It would not do to show her his fear. He took her hand, and when she turned her eyes to him, he gave her a firm nod. She returned it, and then they began to make their way to the edge of the glacier together, slipping on the precarious footing and holding on to each other for support. They climbed the gritty ice slowly, making their way to the flattened top where the hole yawned.
When they reached the mouth of the pit, they hesitated. It was treacherous here, and any false step could send them slipping and plummeting over the edge. An odd roaring came from the depths within, and it made Gideon’s hairs stand up.
“Do you hear that?” Hara breathed. “Or is it the stone?”
