Page 2 of Wings of Snow

Another squeeze.Truth.

My heartbeat ticked steadily faster, and I tried to calm it. I didn’t know Drachu. I didn’t know if his riddles were what one always encountered with him or if he was toying with me, perhaps manipulating me in a subtle way to draw me in and make me curious, skirting Cailis’s truth affinity in the process.

The fact that Drachu was here and not in the sea told me that, on some level, he had to know we would be arriving. He wasn’t lying in that aspect, and Blessed Mother, he’d pretty much confirmed that.

But how?He might be a Lochen fae who carried magic that allowed him to shift forms, since he currently walked on two legs and wasn’t in his fish-like body, but Lochen fae couldn’t see the future.

Or could they?

Drachu’s commanding aura did remind me sharply of the crown prince’s. Perhaps he was like Norivun. Perhaps Drachu also carried immensely powerful gifts like my mate.

It would explain why Drachu was king, and it would explain his cryptic words and uncanny knowledge of my arrival. It might even explain why he claimed to know what I was.

Or maybe not, and it was all to deceive me.

Ock, Norivun, I wish you were here.My breath hitched when I thought of my mate. It’d only been a few hours since I’d last seen him, but already it felt like winters. My entire being ached for him.

Shoving that reaction away, I concentrated on the present.

Regardless of my regret over all that had transpired, we needed Drachu’s help right now because something in the Isalee field had tethered my affinities. I needed to free them, and the only way I could do that was if I was somewhere safe without the Court of Winter’s politics deciding my fate.

If Cailis and I hadn’t left, I would be shackled to the castle. My wedding planning to the vile Lord Arcane Woodsbury would be underway. I would have no time or resources to discover what happened to me or find a way to undo it.

But now I was free with rulibs hidden in our bags. My sister and I could seek the answers I sought. And once my magic had recovered, I would return to the Solis continent to fight the king and marry who I truly belonged with—the crown prince of the Winter Court.

Drachu canted his head, his smile disappearing. “Does the death warlord know that you’re here?”

Another arrow pierced my heart at the mention of the prince. “No. I imagine he knows that I’ve fled, but he doesn’t know where we went.”

I tried not to worry that we’d used our one and only potion to mistphase to this island. Until my magic was no longer suppressed and I could mistphase reliably on my own, we were stuck here.

“Come.” Drachu turned and began to walk toward the trees, away from the sea and into the thick forest. Despite frost coating all of the leaves on the island, the plant life was thriving.

Sand shifted beneath my feet as I followed him, my sister just behind me.

Overhead, the northern-most star shone its brightest. It was the Eve of Olirum. Magic pulsed through our atmosphere from the small celestial event, yet nothing about this night felt magical. I’d lost the Trial. I’d fled from my home. I’d left Norivun behind.

My heart squeezed again so tightly that my breath shuddered.Norivun, my mate, my love. When will I see you again?The band constricting my breath cinched more. Just thinking about the time ahead, potentially weeks, months, perhaps full seasons, in which I wouldn’t be at his side, made my heart feel like it was shattering all over again.

But I’d had to do it. Even the queen had agreed that I’d needed to leave until I could effectively fight the arranged marriages the king wanted to force upon Norivun and me.

Reality set in more and more with each step that I took. Nausea roiled my gut when I thought of the potential fate that waited for my mate. Norivun was supposed to marry Georgyanna, the spiteful Kroravee witch who’d beaten me in my weakened state during the final test in the Rising Queen Trial.

We’ll find a way, my love. We’ll find a way to change the paths forged by your father.

And we had to, because even though I’d refused to submit to the fate that King Novakin demanded, I was still bound to the prince, not only by our mate bond but by our bargain.

That single petal that had burned into my skin, then disappeared when we’d been sealed by the gods in a fairy bargain, had yet to make an appearance again, but I knew it would if I failed to uphold my end of our agreement.

Ihadto find a way to continue healing the dying crops, lest the gods punish me. But what I’d done previously couldn’t reliably save our land. Only two days ago, I’d visited a field in Isalee that I thought had been healed, but the plants had turned black again and the soil gray. Even more bizarre, when I’d dove my affinity into the land, it had felt as though a veil had been buried deep within the ground. As though that veil had coated theorem, and somehow that strange veil had latched onto me and was now encapsulating the power within my gut.

I picked at my fingernails as my feet met firmer soil near the forest. Once again, I tried to access my magic. It rumbled in my belly, still there, but as before, when I tried to coax it upward, it halted when it hit an invisible barrier. A barrier that perhaps wasn’t of the gods making at all.

My brow furrowed as I recalled a theory that Norivun and I had come up with—that the netting I’d encountered had come from fae, our theory leaning toward Lord Crimsonale or Lady Wormiful as the culprits.

A twig snapped, jolting me from my thoughts.

“Are you all right?” The fae king glanced over his shoulder as we approached the thick forest. He still hadn’t paid my sister any attention, and if I wasn’t reeling from all that had happened, I would have taken offense.