“What is it?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Frost cocked his head, studying her. “You look different. It almost seems that with the truth of your heritage, the legendary part of your bloodline is coming to the fore.”
Collette shook her head. “I don’t feel any different.”
“That’s a lie, though whether to me or yourself, I don’t know. You have magic in you. Your mother was Borderkind. As Legend-Born, you’re called to something greater than the ordinary life into which you were born.”
“Bullshit.” She smiled. “You sound like Oliver. I’ve been trying to tell him since he was a little kid that ordinary people choose to be ordinary. We all have magic in us, no matter who gave birth to us. Maybe the legendary have longer lives, and maybe they can do things that people can’t, but it seems to me most of you are just as lost and wandering as the average guy or girl. It’s what you do, not what you are.”
Frost didn’t challenge the assertion, but he did ask her why she had that grin on her face.
“Because I think my brother’s finally come around to my way of thinking.”
The winter man made no reply. Last he had seen Oliver, whatever friendship had once existed between them had turned to sour resentment. He understood and regretted this, but there was little he could do about it. He could not travel back through time, and even if he had that ability, Frost wasn’t sure he would do things any differently. Collette and Oliver were still alive-thus far the schemes of Atlantis had been thwarted. How could he regret that?
“So, what’s our move?” Collette asked, ignoring his silence.
“The invasion force gathers to the north. We leave now. When we reach their encampments, I will have to carry you over them to make absolutely certain they do not see us.”
Collette frowned. “Over them? As in, through the air?”
The winter man smiled. “It would take us a very long time to dig a tunnel beneath them.”
She shook her head. “Wait. Can’t we just go around? Through the Veil? Head north and cross through again when we know we’ve gone far enough?”
Frost narrowed his eyes. “There are too many variables. Distance and time are different on the other side, as you well know. I am not certain where we would emerge in your world, now. We need to go directly to King Hunyadi, and as swiftly as we’re able. My observations about the invasion force may be of great value to-”
“All right. I get it.” Collette glanced around. “Which way?”
He pointed toward the path and they struck out from the chapel, headed due north.
“This should be loads of fun,” she muttered.
The winter man smiled to himself in the moonlit night. He wondered if Collette had begun to trust him. And he wondered if he deserved her trust. While he did not want her to die, what truly mattered to him was that one of the Legend-Born survive to see the end of this war.
“Don’t scream.”
Collette shivered. She didn’t like the sound of that. But there was precious little to like about anything tonight. They’d walked more than an hour before seeing the dark shape undulating across the night sky above, blotting out the stars as it passed. Frost had turned to her and with a gesture had lowered the temperature around them by fifty degrees. Ice crystals had formed on the air and her breath fogged.
The thing in the air had slid away from them. Her pulse steadied and she took a breath, then asked Frost what it had been. The answer had made her feel like throwing up. A shark? How could anyone be safe if there were sharks that swam through the air as easily as others swam through water? He believed that however the Atlantis-bred monster located its prey, it would have to do with heat or scent. His creating a little pocket of winter around her had hidden her from it.
In the midst of freaking out, she felt grateful for that much. Not that she wanted to be grateful to Frost, but she couldn’t help it. She and the winter man had spent a good deal of time, now, keeping each other alive.
But what he’d just said made her forget any favors he’d ever done her.
“What do you mean, ‘Don’t scream’?”
Frost narrowed his eyes. Ice-blue mist swirled up from them. “Precisely what I said. You will want to scream. You will be afraid. But I swear to you that I will not drop you.”
They had moved on from the air shark sighting perhaps another half mile. From the scrim of a stony ridge, they saw the troops mustered on the isthmus. Many were sleeping, but others were on patrol. Collette found herself strangely unafraid of encountering Atlantean soldiers, but if they were seen and a patrol raised the alarm, she feared what might answer that call.
She turned to Frost. “I won’t scream.”
The winter man nodded. If he doubted her, he did not put voice to those doubts.
He burst into a swirl of snow and ice. Frigid wind buffeted her. Collette shivered again and turned up her collar. Before her eyes the storm that was Frost grew, churning. The blizzard rose twenty feet in the air and spread a dozen in either direction.
She held her breath, staring in amazement at the power of the storm. The power of the winter man.
Then she gasped as the blizzard rushed at her. It whipped around her, circling a moment, and her teeth chattered. Her muscles clenched and she hugged herself against the icy grip of the storm. When the blizzard lifted her up off of the ground, blowing her up into the sky as though she had been catapulted, Collette nearly did scream.
Her mouth opened, but the freezing wind seared her throat and she clamped her lips. Her eyes went wide and she could not even curl in upon herself for warmth. The blizzard hurtled her through the air, buffeting her, carrying her on a slingshot wind, in a cocoon of driving snow. Her bones ached with the cold and she tried to breathe but found she could not. The wind lashed her face and she felt despair grip her heart. How could she survive this?
Barely aware of what she was seeing, she glimpsed enormous ships of glass in the distance, festooned with sails. She saw troops massing below as she spun across the sky in the grip of the blizzard.
Then the wind lessened. She found herself sliding downward, drifting. The blizzard buffeted her, blasted her, keeping her aloft. Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she descended.
The ground rushed up. At the last moment a final, powerful gust slowed her fall. Collette landed in a pile of fresh snow, tumbling through the white stuff and then onto rough, prickly grass and rocky earth.
The cold withdrew. The warmth of the southern night felt like a gift. Her flesh was seared. Her cheeks burned with the bite of the cold that had enveloped her. It was like nothing else she had ever felt and she wondered if she had frostbite.
The thought frightened her, but slowly, feeling and warmth returned to all but her hands and cheeks. Carefully, she sat up.
The snow was gone. Frost stood over her.
“We have to go. The hours before dawn are few, and we have no time to lose.”
Collette stared at him. “Don’t ever do that again.”
His eyes narrowed. “What else-”
“Leave me behind, next time.”
She wasn’t sure if she meant it, and it seemed clear Frost was not sure either. Collette didn’t care. She got up and marched north with him, bones still aching. It took a very long time for full feeling to return to her hands.
They’d gone only a few miles when they reached the end of the Isthmus. The Kingdom of Euphrasia spread out to the east and west. Already, Collette felt safer, and less inclined to be hostile toward Frost.
A Euphrasian cavalry patrol stopped them on the road. When they discovered that these strangers walking north were Frost of the Borderkind and Collette Bascombe, Legend-Born, a kind of euphoria seemed to come over them. One of the soldiers dismounted and gave Collette his horse. As she slid into the saddle, she felt a grim determination settle into her. They had arrived at last. Survived, at least this long. And now the war would truly begin.