The ravine swallowed sound in strange ways.
Our boots hammered the stone, Elya's breath came in ragged gasps, and somewhere behind us the Gorrach's legs clattered against rock in an awful, skittering rhythm—but it all sounded muffled, distant, as if we were running inside someone else's nightmare.
Moonlight spilled into the canyon in narrow shafts, painting everything in silver and shadow. The walls rose high and close, layered red and black, webbed with old, torn silk. The air smelled of dust, old water…
…and spider.
"Left!" Auralia shouted.
We veered just as a Gorrach dropped from above, landing hard where we'd been a heartbeat ago. Its legs struck sparks from the stone. Its eyes—dozens of small, reflective beads—caught the moonlight and flung it back at us.
A Rask'Vul rider clung to its back with his knees, lean and knife-thin, skin scarred in ritual lines. His spider-silk wrappings fluttered like pale banners. He shrieked something in his own tongue and hurled a coil of silk toward my leg.
The runes along my arm flared.
I swung my sword, not thinking—never think first when silk is flying. The blade cut through the line, rune-heat burning it mid-air. The severed ends curled and shriveled, falling as blackened threads.
Elya clung to the back of my cloak with both hands. I could feel her shaking.
Another Gorrach scuttled along the vertical wall to our right, parallel to us, its rider drawing a hooked spear. A third shape moved in the darkness above, tethered by a long, taut line. Three riders. Three spiders. A raiding party.
Of course they'd stake the city's hidden exits.
"Eiran!" Auralia called, breath sharp. "We can't outrun them."
"I know," I panted. "Didn't plan to."
I skidded to a stop near a jagged outcrop and swung Elya behind me. Auralia slid to my side, daggers already in hand, eyes scanning the heights.
The Gorrach in front of us reared, front legs rising, chittering rage. Its rider laughed—sharp as broken glass—and flicked twin strands of silk toward my sword arm.
Before I could cut them, they lashed around my forearm and wrist, biting through cloth and leather.
"Got him!" the goblin crowed.
He jerked his hand back, and the silk went taut.
Pain lanced up my arm as he tried to yank the sword from my grip—or yank me off my feet. The runes flared hotter, resisting, burning. I gritted my teeth and planted my boots, resisting the pull.
"Elya, stay behind me," I snarled. "Don't move unless I say."
Her fingers tightened in my cloak.
The second Gorrach skittered down the wall, closing in. Its rider whirled his spear in fluid arcs. The third stayed above, swinging on its long line, waiting for the opening the others would make.
We were outnumbered, out-positioned, and one bad slip away from being silk-wrapped meat.
So. Just another day.
"Auralia," I said, stepping into the pull, dragging the nearest goblin closer. "Take the one on the wall."
"I've got him," she answered—
And then her voice clipped off, strangled.
I risked a glance.
She was on one knee, one hand braced against the ground, the other clawing at her chest. Her breath came in short, choked gasps. Frost crackled across the leather of her armor, radiating out beneath her palm.
Not now.
"Auralia!" I shouted.
She looked up.
Her eyes were wrong.
The warm hazel I knew had been swallowed by a glacial, pale blue—so light they were almost white, ringed with a faint, shadowy halo. Frost-veins traced up her throat like pale lightning. Strands of her auburn hair were turning silver at the roots, the change creeping down like winter claiming the fields.
The mark under her armor pulsed—once, twice—and the air temperature plummeted.
My breath fogged.
The nearest Gorrach shrieked, its legs skidding on suddenly slick stone.
"Auralia?" I tried again, softer, as if gentler might undo whatever this was. "Can you hear me?"
She straightened.
Her movements were smooth. Too smooth. Every step precise, measured, economical. Not the fluid grace I'd seen a thousand times—this was colder. Calculated. Perfect.
When she spoke, her voice layered—hers, and something underneath. Something deeper. Older.
"My little whisper," that second voice purred through her mouth. "You've grown."
Every hair on my body stood on end.
"Asix," I breathed.
The Rask'Vul in front of us froze, senses picking up the change. His eyes narrowed behind his silk scarf. "She sings colder now," he said, almost reverent.
Auralia—no, whatever wore her skin—lifted her gaze to him.
"Don't," I warned. "Auralia, fight it. You're not his anymore."
Her pale eyes flicked to me for the briefest instant, and for a heartbeat I saw her there—struggling, drowning.
Then the cold swallowed it.
The Rask'Vul riders shared a glance. Something like unease flickered across their faces.
The one on the wall hissed, "We did not come for gods. We came for flesh."
"Then you misjudged your prey," Asix said through her lips, amused.
She blurred.
One moment she was five paces away, struggling to breathe. The next she was a streak of frost and silver, closing the distance to the nearest Gorrach faster than my eyes could track.
Her dagger cut through the spider's front leg at the joint. Frost exploded outward from the wound, crawling up the chitin in a spiderweb of ice. The leg shattered when it hit the ground, breaking into glistening shards.
The Gorrach screamed, collapsing onto its remaining legs.
The rider didn't even have time to fully react. Auralia's other dagger punched up under his ribs, and where the blade entered, the cold followed. Frost burst across his torso, across his arms, encasing him in a shell of pale, cracking ice.
He died with his eyes wide, mouth frozen mid-curse.
The second Gorrach lunged, spear arcing toward her.
She stepped sideways, the movement so precise it was almost mechanical. The spear whistled past her shoulder. Her free hand caught it, fingers closing around the haft.
Frost ran down the wood like ink on parchment.
The spear snapped when she twisted it.
She drove the broken end up into the spider's jaw. Cold erupted from the impact, racing up its face in jagged lines. Its eyes clouded, going milky as the ice filled them. It convulsed, legs spasming, then went still—frozen solid from jaw to brain.
The rider tried to leap clear.
She flicked one dagger through the air.
He hit the ground in two pieces.
The third rider, swinging above, finally reacted.
"Skra'ith will want to know of—!"
Auralia raised one hand, palm up, fingers curling as if closing around something invisible.
The air itself froze.
A sheet of pale frost manifested mid-air, slicing across the arc of his swing. The silk line snapped with a brittle crack. He dropped—right into a blossoming circle of ice that formed beneath him like a hungry flower.
He didn't rise.
It all happened in seconds.
The ravine went quiet.
Shards of frozen chitin lay scattered across the stone like broken glass. Frost smeared the ground in radiating patterns from where she'd struck. Cold, unnatural and sharp, bit into my exposed skin.
Elya whimpered behind me, tiny body trembling.
"Auralia," I said again.
She turned.
Her eyes were not human now. They glowed faintly in the dark, that deathly blue, pupils thin slits of deeper shadow.
She took a step toward us.
The frost followed—spreading under her boots, creeping toward my feet like searching fingers.
"Stop," I said, lifting my hand. "Don't come any closer."
Her head tilted, curious.
"Why do you run from winter, little Warden?" Asix asked through her mouth. "You burn so loudly. You could cut down worlds for me."
"I'm not yours," I growled.
"Not yet," the god replied.
I stepped forward anyway, sword lowered. "Auralia. Fight him. You don't belong to him. You're not his weapon. You're not his whisper."
For a flicker of a heartbeat, something in her face shifted. The tension around her eyes changed. Her jaw clenched.
Ice crackled along her throat.
"E…iran…" she managed, voice strained, Asix's undercurrent distorting the sound. "Get… back."
I didn't.
I closed the distance—and did the single most stupid thing I've done since returning to this life.
I reached for her.
My right hand closed around her wrist.
The world exploded into cold.
It wasn't like waking in snow, or plunging your arms into winter water. It was the kind of cold that lives in graveyards, in deep caverns where light has never existed. It shot up my fingers, into my palm, racing along bone, hunting marrow like prey.
My runes flared in panicked response. Heat surged from the lines along my arm, pushing back—fire and frost slamming into each other under my skin.
I screamed.
My fingers went numb instantly. The skin of my hand blanched, then flushed an ugly, mottled purple as frost raced up my wrist, crystallizing along the bracer. Leather cracked. Metal groaned.
For a moment, I watched ice climb my forearm and thought: I am going to lose this hand.
Auralia's eyes widened.
"Asix," she choked, "no."
The cold faltered.
It faltered.
The blue in her eyes flickered. Like a flame about to go out—or like one struggling against a storm.
"You will not take him," she gasped. "Not him. Not again."
Her back arched as if she'd been struck.
The frost shattered.
It cracked away from my skin in jagged plates, tinkling as it hit the stone. My hand throbbed painfully, sensation coming back in a wash of pins and needles and agony. I stumbled, falling to one knee, cradling my arm against my chest.
It hurt. Gods, it hurt. But it was still there. Still attached. The runes smoldered angry red beneath the skin.
Auralia collapsed.
The silver bled from her hair, strands darkening back to their usual auburn. The frost-veins along her throat faded, leaving faint pale traces like old scars. Her eyes—when they finally opened—were her own again, hazel and shaken.
"Eiran?" she whispered.
I forced a breath through clenched teeth. "Still here."
She pushed herself upright slowly, looking around at the shattered ice, the frozen corpses, the Gorrachs split like cracked statues.
Horror sank into her features.
"Did I—?"
"Yeah," I said hoarsely. "That was you. And him. Together."
Her gaze dropped to my hand.
Her face went white.
"Your hand," she choked. "Oh gods—I—I did that?"
"You stopped," I said. "That's what matters."
Tears gathered in her eyes. She shook her head. "If you hadn't—if I hadn't—he would've—"
"Hey." I reached out with my left hand, the one that still obeyed me, and cupped her cheek. "Look at me. You pulled him back. You fought him. You chose me over him."
Her breath hitched.
That did more to hurt me than the frost.
Behind us, Elya finally found her voice, small and shaking. "Are you… are you both okay?"
"Define 'okay,'" I muttered.
Auralia scrubbed at her face, forcing herself to stand. When she spoke again, her voice was raw but steady. "We need to move. The Rask'Vul won't ignore a slaughter like this. And if the soldiers heard anything…"
"…they'll be coming too," I finished.
She offered me her arm.
I hesitated, glancing at my right hand. It still tingled horribly. The skin was reddened, the fingers stiff, but it moved when I told it to.
Barely.
I grasped her forearm with my left hand instead and hauled myself to my feet.
"Can you still fight?" she asked quietly.
"Not well," I admitted. "But I can still walk. Shout. Be irritating."
She huffed a weak laugh. "As long as we have that."
We gathered Elya between us and pressed on, deeper into the ravine. The moon watched silently. The ice we left behind glittered under its light like a trail only gods could read.
As we walked, the pain in my hand settled into a dull, constant ache. The runes along my arm pulsed in time with my heart, hot and angry.
Asix had reached through Auralia's mark and nearly taken something from me.
He'd marked us both now.
I looked at her—at the girl who had just torn apart a raiding party like winter itself, and then fought a god inside her own skin to keep me alive.
Whatever else happened, whatever roads we walked, one truth settled in my chest like a stone:
I would not let Asix keep her.
Not in this life.
Not in any other.