Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,46
isn’t a storm of her making. Mars is pulling the strings, using her to slow the Rangers. I want to be angry. Want to hate him for using her as a weapon, but my face still stings from the thrashing she gave me, and I find myself wanting to know if she too can feel a cold shoulder.
CHAPTER 12
The wrench is stuck. I kick it until the lug nut twists and falls to the snow, and then I jam the wrench onto the next one. Hail falls now, pelting my back and shoulders.
“Stupid Kerce smuggler,” I say. “He could at least keep the storm off us while we work.”
“He’d keep it off us if he could,” Kyn says. “All he can do sometimes is keep us alive. Winter fights him every step of the way.”
“She fights him?”
“It’s always been like this between them. Everything’s a battle. Every step he takes in her ice-white world, every breath of her air in his lungs. Everything. All of it. A fight. Could you imagine living like that?”
“He could stop using her as a weapon. Make peace.”
Kyn grunts and rolls his tire to the side of the road. “After the scene at the Shiv settlement, you still think she wants peace? You have any idea what she whispers to him? The things she puts inside his head. She cares nothing for peace.”
My hands are clumsy. I’ve never had to do this and argue at the same time. Kyn moves me out of the way and sets to work on my tire.
“Ask yourself the difficult questions, little ice witch. Why does Winter try so hard to keep you happy? Why are you different than the rest of the Kerce?”
He rolls the final tire onto the shoulder and pushes his way toward the back of the cab where the spares are bolted.
“You saw her slap me, right?”
When he returns, we work in silence, mounting the spares and lowering the jack until the tires touch the road. Kyn gathers the tools and retreats to the tool compartment.
“Hey, Sylvi,” he yells, holding up a hinged rod. “What’s this?”
“It’s for the rock saws,” I call. It’s not. It’s the stem of Drypp’s old ice bike, but I’ve reasons for keeping that to myself.
He turns the device in his hands, eventually sliding it away.
“I trust you’re done, Miss Quine.” Mars drops lightly from the top of the cab to the hood of the truck, and finally onto the ground. “The wolves won’t have any trouble navigating Winter’s little fort there, but it will keep the Ranger’s pickup from getting through. Remind me to thank her.”
A crack and a splash and Winter’s design folds in on itself. The spires crumble, the icicles stream water—water that rushes toward the Dragon.
I back toward the rig. “Mars—”
He moves fast; a muttered Kerce word and a gust of wind lifts me off the ground. My stomach lurches and suddenly I’m on top of the Dragon, watching as he advances on the melting citadel, his hands outstretched, Kerce words spilling from his tongue.
I drop to my knees to catch my breath and watch as Mars strides fearlessly toward the most fantastic thaw I’ve ever witnessed. Kyn scales the trailer and joins Hyla in the turret, the two of them watching just as I am. Kyn’s arms lift and come to rest on top of his slowly shaking head. Hyla’s guns are drawn but to what advantage, I can’t say. She’s just frozen there, I think. A spectator. The sight, breathtaking.
I jump the gap and run the length of the trailer, dropping into the lookout between the two of them, watching as Mars fights the castle’s disintegration. He’s able to slow the collapse, to steady a few of the melting walls, but he cannot stop the thaw entirely.
When at last Mars’s hands drop to his sides, water rushes beneath the trailer and around the tank tread, but Winter’s left the road frozen and intact. I whisper my thanks, but my gratitude is limited. Winter’s thawed a thoroughfare through the center of her palace. A chilly haze rises from the ice-white ruins and, as it clears, a pickup comes into view on the other side, harpoon gun mounted on top.
Even from this distance, I can see men clad in white standing in the bed, loading it on approach.
“Weapons!” Hyla calls, swinging out of the turret.
I reach for her arm. “Hy—”
“Yes, my lady, I know. I won’t fire the turret gun here.”