Festival of Frost by C H Williams

Author:C H Williams [Williams, C H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

GRAYSON

Grayson shook the cold from his bones, pacing around the fire—a fire he wasn’t brave enough to ask if Lilah was fanning.

The creature lay, a crumpled mess, opposite them.

“We should move it,” Juli whispered, where she sat in Lilah’s arms.

Grayson nudged the singed carcass with the toe of his boot, watching as the movement shook a rain of ash onto the pale dawn earth. “No. It’s a warning.” He glanced over to Li, her look of skeptical disdain for once absent, leaving her looking painfully young. “What we should do is leave. Get up into the foothills. There’s better shelter up there, and vora, too. They’ve avoided these—whatever they are—”

“Ice spiders,” Lilah said softly, eyes sparking.

“Fine.” Grayson felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. “The vora have managed to steer clear of the ice spiders for this long. It’s like we agreed. Either they can help us, or at least tell us how to find the wards. Personally, I favor the latter. It’s only a matter of time before the settlement gets hit. And…” He met Lilah’s gaze. “They don’t have Li anymore, which means they’re vulnerable.”

No Lilah to defend them.

No Juli to heal them.

And no Grayson to tremble like the coward he was.

He’d known his sisters were special.

Anymore, though, their talents were useless. What good was Lilah’s fire in the Capital, where the best she could do was burn it to the ground? It’d been kept close, a family secret. Too many good men and women had already died for the talents they couldn’t master.

Juli’s Touch was easier to overlook. More useful. Nobody said anything about it, but she’d been good at mending from the start.

Then there was Grayson.

Grayson, the little boy who’d liked to play in the dirt.

Grayson, the adolescent who’d romanced his days away with lace cuffs and fetes.

Grayson, who’d sworn to be a different sort of man in the Basin.

Grayson, who got fucked in a barn and left behind.

You will have your moment, he could recall their mother saying. There is some magic in you, yet.

Not that he believed it.

Nor would she, if she could see them now.

Grayson pulled Juli to standing, then Lilah, trying rather clumsily to brush them off as he did so.

They left the beast, burned to a crisp, before the dying embers.

A warning of what they’d do.

Of what Lilah was capable of.

An omen not to follow.

But the ice spiders did, anyway.

The days waned into weeks, and the ice spiders followed.

Into the foothills, around the twisting switchbacks trod by game and vora alike, chasing the three of them up, up, up, to find an early winter.

Each night felt the same.

Grayson hardly slept.

They were supposed to take turns, ostensibly, but he didn’t want Li, or else Jules, to be alone. Not that he could do much.

But at least he was a wake to watch Lilah’s fire wall them in.

During the days, they kept watch for any signs of life or ward. Any pebbles, as white as snow, or berries yellow, or leaves of brilliant green.

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