If Smith dies, I’ll never forgive either of them.
“Darling, look at me.”
I finally turn. She waits there in the hall, the starlight enchanted into our lanterns glittering off her crown, the jewels dripping off her throat, the delicate crystal-ice daggers she grasps lightly in her hands. Crimson stains their edges and I watch idly as a drop slips down the blade, freezing before it can drop from the tip.
“Why?”
Her face shifts at my question, at the rawness of it. It’s like someone’s carved behind my ribs, hollowing me out and filling me with ice and numbness that spreads through my veins like poison.
The temperature in the hall drops. Her rage, mine, it doesn’t matter. My shirt stiffens as the blood saturating it freezes. His blood.
It shouldn’t have been him. I would forgive her if it had been anyone but him.
She blocks my first attack. Simply raises her hand so the spear of ice deflects into the nearest wall.
A spike of ice this time. Stronger, faster, fueled by grief.
She blocks this one, too, but she doesn’t expect me to have run behind it, rapier ready. Her daggers barely block my blade.
The point of it scratches the skin of her collarbone. Black blood beads up.
Before today, I would have apologized for that. Now, I revel in the sight.
Even though I brace for the punishing blow I know she’ll unleash for the injury, the cutting wind she summons sends me flying into the end of the hallway, trapping me in place against it long enough that she can pin me to the wall with ice.
I struggle against the bonds.
“Tell me why!” I order.
She says nothing.
The words keep coming, vitriol spewing from me so fast I can’t understand what I’m saying, what I’m trying to say. I hurt and I want her to bleed as deeply as I do.
“A year, Mother. A year of watching him and reporting back to you. A year to find out he knows nothing about his power or what causes it and that he can’t control it to save his life or the lives of anyone around him. He is not a threat. And still you doubt my counsel—”
“Because you would do anything to protect him.”
She waits for my argument. I have none. It’s true. It’s why my older brother lies in an unconscious heap in that room. It’s why my mother is bleeding. And it’s why she will probably kill me for what I did in the apartment.
“Why are you smiling?” She steps closer, eyes narrowing and daggers lifting without thought.
“You can’t hurt him,” I tell her.
The ice around my limbs tightens.
“It’s done,” I continue, enjoying the pain. A sign of her frustration. “The spell’s in place.” I repeat it to her, watching the emotion drain from her face, the color vanishing as the old words, the words of power, hum their bond even here.
“You’re lying,” she whispers.
“Check,” I suggest, tilting my head toward my trapped left hand.
The ice t
here shatters and she grabs me, turning my palm roughly to face her. The sight of the pale line cut across my hand is what does it.
The outburst of power breaks my nose, leaves blood weeping from my eyes and ears, shatters the ice holding me up so I fall painfully to the ground. And the entire time, I laugh.
Because she can’t touch him. Our power forbids it.