Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,38
help me get her up and running so we can find Mars and Hyla. I can’t do the work alone. It’s what I tell myself when I squint into the flurry, checking on him again and again.
The trail flattens out ahead, storm-ravaged trees jutting their spindly branches into the gray sky just over the rise.
And there stands Shyne, as bent and wind-battered as the evergreens, but still standing. At his back are a ragged group of fighters. I can’t tell if they’re armed, but when your choice of weapon is a rock, there’s never one out of reach here in the mountains.
It matters little. When at last we claw ourselves up the mountain, it isn’t the same Shyne waiting for us. He’s defeated, his dark eyes dead as Kyn places a quiet Crysel into his arms.
“She’ll be all right,” Kyn tells him. “It’s shock only. Exhaustion.”
Shyne stares long and hard at Kyn. So long, I twist my hand into the sleeve of his jacket and start to pull him away. We can leave. No one will stop us. Not now. Shyne certainly doesn’t have the strength, the presence of mind. But that won’t last. He has designs on my days and I won’t stay here and let him press another stone to my chest until I agree.
“You’re selfish like she was,” he says. “You could have saved everyone.”
But Kyn and I are already pushing through the trees and Winter’s here and she’s concerned the Shiv have spoken lies about her. Concerned she’s been blasphemed.
I tell her I’ll never believe what they said.
AND WHAT OF THE THINGS YOU’VE SEEN?
I won’t believe that either, I promise.
A blast of icy air cuts a trail through the swaying branches, picks me up off my feet and throws me backward. Kyn too. We land in a heap of tangled arms and legs and frozen branches, hail raining down, wet snow soaking through our already damp clothes.
Beneath us, the snow melts clean away, leaving Kyn and me on a patch of wet dirt. We’re huffing, fighting to peel the soggy branches from our faces, to find our feet, catch our breath.
“Took you long enough,” Kyn says.
Mars steps into the clearing, his black eyes so alive in his pale face it’s hard to reconcile how dead the kol made the Shiv elder look.
“How was it?” he asks. “I’ve never shaken an entire mountain before.”
Kyn throws a branch at Mars. “You almost killed us.”
Mars catches the branch, twirls it. “Stay close to Miss Quine, Kyn, and your safety is assured. Even at my command, Winter will protect her favorite toy.”
“You killed a lot of people,” I say. “Shiv. Not Majority scum. Women and children. You killed them while they . . . while they mourned a loss.”
I’m not sure I want Mars to know Shyne’s motives for taking me captive. There’s no knowing how he’d use that information.
“Would you rather we spend this day mourning you?”
“I’m a means to an end,” I say. “What’s there to mourn?”
His face darkens. “I cannot get my haul to the rebel camp without you, Miss Quine. If you fell, I assure you, I would mourn.”
I stand and reach a hand down for Kyn. He takes it and pulls himself upright, wincing and nearly pulling me over in the process.
“You’re a bastard, Mars,” he says.
“Aren’t we all?” A permafrost grin slips up his face and he slaps Kyn on the back. “Come. The rig doesn’t look nearly as broken as the two of you, but she’s making a sound that is far from pleasant.”
I stalk toward him. “You started the engine?”
“For the heater only,” Mars says. “Hyla was cold.”
“He speaks true. I stayed with your Sylver Dragon while Mars searched the caves. I promise you, Sessa, I did not drive it.” Hyla’s very serious. Despite my angst concerning the Shiv and my exasperation with Mars, I almost laugh.
“I . . . believe you,” I say.
“It took some time to find the cave they’d moved you to after the avalanche,” Mars says. “I do apologize. Winter is not a willing helpmate.”
But she seemed more than willing to destroy a cave full of Shiv. The idea spins inside my head, but he doesn’t wait for a reply, instead turning and striding down the path he’s cut through the snow.
Anxious to see the Dragon, I follow, unaware I’ve chosen Mars’s path over Winter’s until she bites a warning at my heels. I climb