Home > Ice Like Fire (Snow Like Ashes #2)

Ice Like Fire (Snow Like Ashes #2)
Author: Sara Raasch

Meira

FIVE ENEMIES.

Five dented helmets sit lopsided over five equally dented breastplates; five black suns shine, scratched yet distinct, on the silver metal. More soldiers than I could ever take on my own, but as I stand in the center of their ring, boots planted in the snow, I cock an eyebrow at the closest one, the calm that precedes a fight descending over me.

My chakram already rests in my hand, but part of me doesn’t want to throw it just yet, reveling in the feel of its smooth handle against my palm. Dendera thought herself so clever, hiding it where she did—but really, giving it to the Cordellan soldiers was almost too easy. Where else would I go for a weapon if not the weapons tent?

“Do it!” comes a high-pitched squeal.

“Shh, she’ll hear you!”

A deluge of shushing follows when I snap my head toward the row of boulders outside my ring of mock enemies. A cluster of small heads ducks behind the largest rock.

“She saw us!”

“You’re standing on my foot!”

“Be quiet!”

A smile flutters on my lips. When I face the closest of the soldiers again, the pile of snow within the dented helmet and breastplate sags a little, knocked askew by the same gust of icy wind that beats at my skirt. The illusion wavers.

I’m not in battle gear—I’m in a sleeveless gown of pleated ivory fabric, my hair done up in elaborate braids. My “enemies” are stacks of snow that I hastily kicked together and dressed in the discarded Spring armor that litters my kingdom. My audience isn’t an army, but a group of curious Winterian children who followed me out of the city. The chakram is real, though, and the way my body reacts to it makes this almost believable.

I’m a soldier. Angra’s men surround me. And I will kill every one of them.

My knees bend, hips pivoting, shoulders twisting and muscles knotting up. Inhale, exhale, spin, release—the moves rise from my memory, as ingrained into my body as the act of walking, despite the fact that it’s been three months since I last threw my chakram.

The blade breaks out of my palm with a hiss that punctures the cold air. It whirls into the closest enemy, rebounds off a rock, knocks into the next soldier, and sings back to my hand.

Every taut nerve relaxes and I exhale, long, deep, pure. Snow above, that feels good.

I let the chakram fly again, and again, finishing off the remaining soldiers. Cheers erupt from behind me, tiny voices laughing as snowflakes settle over the fallen bodies of my victims. I stay in the position of my last catch, hips bent and chakram firm in my hand, but the illusion is thoroughly broken now—in the best way.

A grin curves my lips. I can’t remember the last time someone laughed in Winter. The past three months should have been filled with such joy, but the only sounds I’ve heard have been thuds of construction, murmured plans for crops and mines, soft applause at public events.

“Can I throw it?” one of the girls calls, and her plea encourages the rest of them to demand the same thing.

“Better start with something less sharp.” I smile and bend to scoop snow into a loose ball that I let slide from my fingers. “And less deadly.”

The girl who first asked to throw my chakram understands before the rest of them. She drops to her knees, smashes snow into a ball, and hurls it at a boy behind her.

“Got you!” she squeals, and takes off, tearing over the field in search of a hiding place.

The rest of them lash into a frenzy, packing snow into projectiles and launching them at one another as they sprint over the fields beyond.

“You’re dead! I hit you!” one little boy cries.

My smile slips.

We don’t have to fight anymore. They’ll never have to throw more than snowballs, I tell myself.

“Isn’t this a little . . . morbid?”

I whirl, fingers spasming around the chakram. But I don’t even get the blade up before I see who’s entering the little clearing created by the foothills of the Klaryns on one side and rippling fields of snow on the other.

Theron tips his head, some of his hair falling out from behind his ears to swing in a brown-blond curtain. A question hangs in his gaze, the lines around his eyes holding concern.

“Morbid?” I manage half a smile. “Or cathartic?”

“Most cathartic things are morbid,” he amends. “Healing through melancholy.”

I roll my eyes. “Leave it to you to find something poetic about slicing off the heads of snowmen.”

He laughs and the air grows a little cooler, a delightful chill that fizzles against my heart. His coloring looks harsh against the perpetual ivory backdrop of Winter—the lean muscles of his body are hugged by Cordell’s hunter-green-and-gold uniform, the material thicker to account for Winter’s chill and the fact that his Cordellan blood doesn’t protect him from my kingdom’s climate.

Theron nods back the way he came, toward the city of Gaos. If the Klaryns were a sea, Gaos would be Winter’s largest port—the biggest city with access to the most mines.

It’s a place I’ve spent far too much time these past three months.

“We’re ready to open the Tadil Mine,” he says, shifting in what could be a shiver of cold, but could also be a shiver of anticipation.

“We just opened a mine yesterday. And two last week,” I counter. I hate how my voice twists. Theron shouldn’t be the recipient of my anger. But Noam has stayed away from Winter for the most part, and when he does visit, he goes to Jannuari while I’m in Gaos, or to the Klaryns while I’m in Jannuari. That doesn’t stop me from arguing every edict he issues through Theron or his generals—every mine he demands be opened; every resource he commandeers—but I have no way of stopping men who are just following orders, soldiers who are here merely to “oversee Winter’s rebirth.”

   
Most Popular
» Nothing But Trouble (Malibu University #1)
» Kill Switch (Devil's Night #3)
» Hold Me Today (Put A Ring On It #1)
» Spinning Silver
» Birthday Girl
» A Nordic King (Royal Romance #3)
» The Wild Heir (Royal Romance #2)
» The Swedish Prince (Royal Romance #1)
» Nothing Personal (Karina Halle)
» My Life in Shambles
» The Warrior Queen (The Hundredth Queen #4)
» The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen #3)
young.readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024