Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,42

pale.

The woman smiled knowingly. “Very little escapes my mistress’s notice. In her magnanimity, she has spared your life all this time, but now she has come to collect.”

She slid closer. “Do not be afraid, Your Highness,” she cooed, though the malevolence in her smile belied the words. “You will make a splendid addition to the mistress’s army once I am done. It is a gentle process and a painless reward.”

“I’d rather die than be that cold witch’s puppet!” Alex spat.

The lady laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “You will learn to love her with all your very being. You will live the rest of your life solely for her pleasure. Already this day I have taken many outlander children for the mistress. Today, they assume their place in the Winter Army, and you too shall join their ranks. Do you feel her love creeping up your veins, Your Highness?” The ice crackled, sliding past Alex’s knees to his hips. “Will you deny the queen?”

The woman held up a glittering shard of glass the size of a large grape. Alex frantically redoubled his efforts to free himself.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Tala had her sticks still, but her palms were clammy, sweating. She looked around, spotted a lone basketball on a nearby bench.

“Open your eyes, Your Highness,” the woman crooned. Alex tried to twist away, but the woman caught his chin, setting the glass piece over the boy’s right eye. “And stop struggling so. It will take but a moment, and you shall be free and exalted above all.”

For once, Tala’s agility failed her. Her foot hit a patch of slippery ice, and she slipped, landing flat on her back. Her momentum and the icy tracks continued to propel her forward, sliding past the startled Alex and the woman with panicked, high-pitched yelps. She hit the row of opposite lockers with a loud, metallic thunk that seemed to echo throughout the room, as if to further mock her inadequacy.

“Tala,” Alex groaned.

“Ah,” the lady whispered, her smile cruel. “An eavesdropper.”

Tala scrambled to her feet. Or tried to. Her feet refused to listen, and both legs shot out, in opposite directions. She tried to regain her balance, but continued to slide along the wet floor a few more seconds before finally finding a spot that still held friction. She swallowed and tried to reassure herself that she still had the basketball in her hand, like this was an advantage. “Let him go!” she ordered.

The woman’s face split into another grin, wider than a normal face allowed for. Her freezing ice-blue eyes glittered, the irises relegated to even tinier pinpricks. “You smell like irrelevance and spit,” she purred. “No whiff of magicks and spells to protect yourself from me. Is this the best you can do, Your Highness? A little useless commoner to defend your honor?”

“I said let him go!” Tala tried her best to appear threatening. A chihuahua, she thought miserably, would have been more intimidating.

The lady drew nearer in response, her hands forming talons. “I shall enjoy sucking the marrow from your bones, little commoner. I will tear out your soul from your twitching body, draw out your agony for a hundred years and back. I will—”

Ice spiraled out from her fingers toward her just as Tala threw the basketball as hard as she could. The ball shattered its way through the attempted attack, the spell crumbling upon impact, and hit the woman’s face with an unexpected and terrifying crack…and stuck there. The lady toppled backward, hitting the wall behind her not with a loud thud, but with the sound glass made when it shattered. Alex had stopped struggling, staring at Tala in horror.

“Uh,” Tala said. “I wasn’t expecting that. Did I kill her?”

“You ninny!” Alex hissed. “Run! She’s an ice maiden!”

“A what?”

“You’re being a huge butt! I said run!”

“You’re the butt, disappearing without telling anyone! And I’m not going to leave you here!” The boy was already blue, teeth chattering. Tala tried to free his legs from the blocks of ice jutting out from the floor, bashing desperately at them with her sticks. Each swing broke off a few chunks, but her progress was not fast enough for her liking.

“T-tala! Leave!”

“You can’t honestly think I’m gonna—”

“Foolish mortal!”

The now-frozen basketball fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. The woman’s hand was clasped against her face, and something liquid and colorless was dripping down her fingers. The wound on her cheek gaped, black