Winterskin (Book One of Wrath & Winter)

Beholden to It: Part One

I am dreaming. I am dead. I am dreaming.

They look so much like her eyes. In life.

She was so beautiful in life.

"Katell," her fangs are barely there, but when she smiles they puncture lips as red as blood, "should you really be out here? So late?"

Behind us, something is going on. A tussle. A fight. Armor clanked against bodies as boots pounded through snow and skidded over ice. But none of that mattered. None of it.

They're all dead.

All of them.

My arms shake and shiver, but I grabbed her throat. She laughed, a deep and sultry sound that's like dry ash.

"You killed them."

"Nay," she shook her head, still grinning like a beast, "it was you," she tapped a taloned fingertip on my nose, "Katell the disobedient." Her eyes turn black as night, the irises overtaking the white, "Do you remember your promise?"

"Get off her!"

It's Elisedd. It's fire. It's the ground rocking and quaking, but her being undeterred. Combing the talons on her feet through ice and snow as something bestial shrieks through the entire sky. It scares her horde, but not her. Never her.

Just like Gram, she wasn't afraid of the dark. Of what crawled from its inky depths.

"You did this," her blackened eyes move from me, "you did this as well."

It all happens at once.

A warcry that sundered my ears. A sharp arc of air that belays an ax chopping through it. Blazing red flame swooping through the trees behind her, burning those that stay behind. Cooking those that wanted so badly to stay near their master.

The ground met my back. Stabbed into every bone and vertebrae. Hagen leaped over me, shield arm before her as she brought her ax down in a straight, sharp, arc.

Flesh and bone and blood. All screaming.

Then, there is laughter. Dark like the bottom of a moonless lake.

Laughter that divulged into gurgles.

Ice and fire spun through my veins. Though everything hurt, I pushed myself up onto forearms. Up onto thighs that'll only let me crawl to her. Beg her not to.

Please. Don't.

Please.

But a trail of black blood is already winding back into the woods and the pieces of her horde that took shelter from dragonfire are in there with her. Dragging her back. Seeing her home. She is fine. She is alive.

But she is not.

"Hagen," it came out raspy. Like the name didn't want to slink out, "Hagen!"

She's on her side. Coughing, gurgling like a woman drowning. Scarlet and black blood spurts from her injury, painting my hands, my knees.

The center of her throat.

It's missing.

***

Author's Note

Hey you guys! Hurricane Florence might be mucking up my release schedule this week )= it's projected to be a doozy and my family may have to evacuate. For any of you Wattpaders out there being affected by this hurricane and others, my prayers, thoughts, and goodwill are behind you. Please keep us in your thoughts as well!