Celeste

  For a moment, neither of us moved.

  The riders held their ground in a loose line far from us across the road, horses shifting restlessly beneath them, snorts steaming pale in the cold morning air. Their silhouettes blurred against the rising sun, little more than dark shapes.

  I felt the gelding tense beneath me, muscles coiled tight under his hide.

  “Lioren,” I whispered. “Who are they?”

  He didn’t answer.

  He just stared, shoulders locked, a stillness settling over him I hadn’t seen before. Not bravado. Something sharp that tasted too close to fear.

  I tightened my grip on the reins. A chill threaded through my spine.

  “What do they want?” I asked, breath thin.

  Again, Lioren didn’t answer. His jaw worked once, like he was chewing over the truth he didn’t want to say.

  The lead rider nudged his horse forward another step. Dust cleared around his boots. The others shifted, forming a half-circle, silent and watchful.

  My pulse climbed with every hooftstep.

  Beside me, Lioren muttered something under his breath that might’ve been a prayer. Or profanity.

  “You know them?” I asked.

  “Oh, aye,” he said grimly. “I know them.”

  The lead rider shouted directly at us.

  “You!”

  Lioren winced so hard he looked physically wounded.

  My heart climbed into my throat.

  The riders closed the last stretch of road, dust kicking up behind them in a thick, rolling cloud. Their horses skidded to a halt a few paces away.

  Lioren straightened in the saddle, squinted, and let out a groan that came from the depths of his soul.

  “Saints preserve me,” he muttered. “It’s the Misfits.”

  I blinked.

  “The what?”

  “The Misfits,” he repeated, sounding personally wronged. “Worst damn mercenary crew this side of the mountains. They’re the loudest, dirtiest, most useless pack of idiots you’ll ever encounter.”

  Only then did I turn to actually look at them. To really look at them.

  The lead rider’s face came into focus through the settling dust. His red face, uneven beard, patchy cloak, and swollen wrist from where frostbite still bloomed.

  Recognition slammed into me.

  It was the drunk from last night. The one who’d cornered me and the one Lioren had nearly drove an icicle through the skull.

  My breath hitched and then the tension cracked open like thin ice.

  A startled laugh escaped me before I cold stop it.

  Lioren shot me a wounded glare, still pretending to be deadly serious. “Go on, laugh. I’m glad you’re enjoyin’ my imminent death.”

  I tried to smother the sound, but it only burst out sharper.

  Gods, I’d worked myself into a panic thinking I was about to die on this road. And here Lioren was, dragging me into a farce, standing next to the most ridiculous threat I’d ever seen.

  “What’re you laughin’ at?” the man shouted, spittle flying.

  Another laugh tore loose, louder this time, and I clamped a hand over my mouth, failing to stop it. I didn’t mean to laugh. I wasn’t even sure what part of me was doing it anymore. After everything I’d run from, everything I’d survived, this was what broke me. The fear had nowhere left to go, and it spilled out as laughter instead.

  His face darkened by the heartbeat.

  “You got somethin’ to say?!” he barked, stabbing a finger in my direction. “Ain’t nothin’ funny here.”

  One of the riders behind him shifted. “She’s laughin’ though, Rook.”

  Rook rounded on him. “I can see that, Jory.”

  “Just sayin’,” Jory muttered.

  “I don’t think you’re takin’ this seriously, love,” Lioren muttered, still feigning doom as if the Misfits were the stuff of legends.

  My laughter finally began to sputter out, thinning into shaky breaths. I wiped at my eyes and forced myself to breathe, trying to pull myself back together.

  “That’s your fault,” I managed, still catching my breath. “You’re the one who dragged me into this. Besides…” I gestured toward the bristling pack of idiots across from us. “If you’re so desperate to get paid, maybe this can be your first mission.”

  Lioren snorted. “Aye, that’s rich. Between the two of us, you’re the walking catastrophe. You could scorch this whole road clean if you sneezed too hard.”

  I turned my head slowly and gave him a look.

  “All right, all right. No need for the death-glare,” he muttered, already swinging one leg off the saddle. He slid down and leaned closer, lowering his voice. “If I die, toss my body somewhere scenic.”

  He straightened, dusting off his coat like the gesture made him braver.

  I stayed mounted, fingers resting lightly on the reins.

  He wasn’t entirely wrong. But my gift was a curse as much as it was a weapon. I could only use it freely when half the people around me were ones I trusted – and the other half weren’t breathing. Any other way, and the military would find me. The hunters would too.

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  Experience had carved that lesson deep.

  It was one more reason why I missed Art. We both carried secrets the world wasn’t meant to see. Secrets we learned to hide together.

  The Misfits shifted.

  One of them squinted down a crossbow as if it were his first time holding one, and leveled it straight at Lioren from horseback.

  Another swung off his saddle and stalked forward, palms igniting in shaky, uneven bursts of flame.

  Lioren froze.

  Then he exhaled through his nose, a long, suffering sigh.

  “Oh, for the love of– don’t start with the dramatic entrance,” he said, stepping forward. “You lot couldn’t toast bread.”

  The Fire Caster flinched, but kept coming, flame guttering in his palm.

  Lioren lifted his hand.

  Cold snapped through the air with a clean, crystalline crack.

  A blade of Ice burst into existence in his grip, gleaming white-blue in the morning light.

  The Misfits collectively lurched back.

  “Rook!” one of them bellowed, voice cracking. “You didn’t say he was an Ice Caster, you son of a bitch!”

  Rook snapped back immediately, puffing up like a rooster with his pride on the line. “Dane’s a fuckin’ Fire Caster! So who gives a shit?” He jabbed a finger toward the man with the flaming hands. “Fire beats Ice, doesn’t it?”

  Dane the Fire Caster in question, looked deeply offended.

  “Not when he’s holding a fuckin’ giant death-spear made of frost!”

  Lioren groaned. “Saints above. They’re contagious.”

  One of the riders leaned toward the man beside him, lowering his voice without much effect.

  “Rook said this’d be easy coin,” he muttered. “Said the girl who spurned him rode off alone. We were supposed to catch her quick and have ourselves a bit of fun after–”

  His companion cut him a sharp look. “Gods, Bren, shut your mouth.”

  Rook whipped around, glaring at Bren.

  “What? She did ride off alone! Ain’t my fault–”

  He never finished his sentence.

  Light snapped across the air.

  A single bolt of Ardor sliced the space between us and struck Bren dead center in the throat.

  For a heartbeat he just stared, eyes wide with surprise. Then he made a wet, choking sound, fingers clawing at the sudden bloom of glowing light searing through his neck before he toppled sideways off his horse.

  Silence collapsed over the road like a dropped shroud.

  Horses snorted, stamping nervously.

  Lioren’s head snapped toward me, eyes wide, like he wasn’t entirely convinced what he’d just seen.

  And I just sat there, hand lowering slowly from where I’d released the Cast.

  Half trusted. Half dead.

  That was the only way I could use my power freely, and I was going to make damn sure none of these men were breathing when this ended.

  For a long moment, no one moved.

  Lioren’s lips tugged wide, in a grin so bright and feral it made my stomach flip.

  A laugh burst out of him, loud and delighted, like this was the best entertainment he’d had in weeks.

  “Oh, that’s how we’re playin’ it today,” he said, turning back toward the Misfits with a kind of cheerful doom. “My employer just gave me free rein, lads. Which means you’re all properly fucked.”

  Before any of them could react, Lioren pivoted, braced, and hurled the massive icicle in his hand with a crack of air.

  The Frost-spear whistled and went straight for Dane.

  The Fire Caster yelped, an undignified, high-pitched sound, and dove to the ground just as the spear ripped through the space he’d been standing in. It buried itself in the road with enough force to explode dirt and frost outward.

  Dane rolled, scrambling upright, palms blazing with sputtering flame.

  “You crazy bastard!” he shouted, flinging a wild burst of Fire at Lioren.

  Lioren ducked beneath it easily, laughing again.

  “Come on then, candle-hands! Put some heat in it!”

  The Misfits broke.

  One of them jerked his reins hard, turning his horse away from the chaos.

  “Fuck this,” he barked, kicking the animal into a sprint. “I’m not dying for Rook’s bruised ego!”

  He managed three galloping strides.

  Then a streak of white light tore across the road.

  The bolt hit him clean in the chest, hard enough to knock him backward off his saddle and into the dirt with a heavy thud. His horse bolted into the trees.

  The man hit the ground hard, clothes scraping against the gravel.

  For a moment he didn’t move.

  Then he groaned and rolled onto his back, clutching the smoking hole in his chest where the Ardor had struck.

  “Wait!” he gasped, eyes going wide as I rode toward him. He lifted a trembling hand, palm open in a useless plea. “Please–”

  White light flared and the second bolt punched straight through his skull.

  He went still.

  The air sizzled with the fading echo of my casting.

  I pulled the gelding’s reins, turning back toward the road, and froze.

  Of the six Misfits who’d come riding down on us…

  Two lay dead by my hand.

  A third, the Fire Caster, slumped half-upright against a tree trunk, his body bristling with so many ice shards he looked like a walking pincushion. Frost crept across his cloak in delicate spiderwebs.

  The remaining three were on the ground, groaning or cursing, each skewered somewhere by Lioren’s handiwork. One had an icicle clean through his thigh. Another had two in his arm, pinning sleeve to skin. The last was curled on his side clutching a calf that was now more ice than flesh.

  Their horses were long gone.

  Lioren stood in the center of the road, chest rising in a steady, unhurried rhythm, another ice spear resting casually in his hand as if he were deciding whether to finish the job or save it for decoration.

  He glanced over at me, eyebrows raised.

  I exhaled, heart still thundering, but a kind of cold clarity settling in with it.

  Lioren worked quick, efficient, ruthless when he needed to be.

  He’d made damn sure none of them were getting away.

  One of the injured Misfits tried to sit up, Ice jutting from his thigh like a broken fang. He saw me looking and dragged himself a few paces across the dirt, hand leaving a smeared trail behind him.

  “No-no, please don’t–” he choked, voice cracking into something wet and desperate. “I didn’t–I didn’t even touch you–I swear–”

  The sound of him…

  It scraped something raw inside me.

  I could endure threats. Violence. Even death.

  But begging… I’d seen too much of that in the cells.

  Better they died quick and clean. Before fear hollowed them out.

  Before they became something I’d have to carry.

  I opened my mouth – maybe to grant that mercy, maybe to silence him myself, but Lioren moved fast.

  He stepped past me, spear of ice glinting sharp in his hand.

  He drove the spear down in one clean, vicious strike.

  It punched straight through the man’s open mouth and pinned him to the road in a spray of frost and blood. The pleading stopped instantly, cut off mid-breath.

  Silence rolled in thick and sudden.

  Lioren yanked the spear free with a grunt, flicking red ice from the tip.

  Then he sighed.

  “I swear, one more word and I was gonna start beggin’.”

  Before the quiet could settle fully, one of the remaining Misfits pushed himself upright, blood dripping down his chin. An icicle jutted from his shoulder like a broken tusk, but he still lifted his head with a shaky sort of defiance.

  “Do it, then,” he spat. “I ain’t scared of you.”

  Lioren stared at him for a single beat, flat and unimpressed.

  Then he lifted his spear.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s not drag this performance out.”

  The man’s eyes widened–

  –and the spear plunged clean through his throat.

  He fell back without another word.

  We stepped toward the last surviving Misfit.

  Rook was half-hopping, half-dragging himself across the dirt, one leg useless with a jagged spike of ice jutting from his calf. He looked over his shoulder, panicked, breathing in sharp, wet gasps as he tried, and failed, to pick up speed.

  Lioren clicked his tongue.

  “You run worse than your Fire Caster fights – and that’s sayin’ somethin’.”

  Rook let out a strangled noise somewhere between a whine and a curse, nearly tripping over his own dragging foot as he tried to pull himself farther.

  We caught up to him in a handful of steps.

  Rook collapsed onto his good knee, panting hard, one hand clawing uselessly at the dirt. His eyes darted between us, wild, cornered and pathetic.

  Lioren planted his spear against his shoulder and looked down at him with exaggerated sympathy.

  “Far be it from me to deny a lady her revenge,” he said, stepping neatly aside as if presenting Rook like a poorly wrapped gift.

  Rook’s gaze snapped to me immediately.

  And the way he stared at me, trembling, pleading, wasn’t new. I’d seen that look before. In the cells. People who’d flinch at footsteps, who’d be afraid of what came next.

  Rook opened his mouth, but I was already done listening.

  The bolt hit him before a sound escaped.

  A clean, bright flash and a sharp crack.

  Then stillness.

  He slumped sideways into the dirt, the light fading from his skull as quickly as breath.

  The road went quiet. Even the morning wind seemed to pause.

  The smell of blood clung to the air.

  I watched it fade, watched the last curl of steam lift from Rook’s body, and let the weight settle over me, not crushing or drowning. Just there, honest.

  I wasn’t helpless anymore.

  I nudged the gelding forward.

  “Let’s go.”

  Lioren fell into step beside me, silent for once.

  The road opened ahead.

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