Wicked As You Wish by Rin Chupeco

Author:Rin Chupeco [Chupeco, Rin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

18

In Which the Dame Has the Last Word

With sleep came nightmares.

Tala stood before two heavy gates against a background of endless, swirling black. One stood to her left, crumbling and in disrepair, of aged bone. The other on her right, white and gleaming.

“Choose,” a voice whispered, a slow rattling hiss not unlike the ice maiden’s. Alex’s face, pale and exhausted, drifted into her line of vision, but faded from view just as quickly.

“Choose.”

Beyond the left gate she saw fire. Screams rang through the raging inferno, and the flames reached out for her, the heat searing her skin. Tala stumbled back, coughing.

Zoe, Kensington, and West sat motionless before her with heads bowed, indifferent to the loud roaring from the skies. Above them, several hundred—perhaps even thousands—of creatures made of fire raked the ground with flames. Tala found herself yelling to warn them, pleading with them to run, but a large fireball engulfed the trio, and they disappeared in the smoke.

She saw Alex kneeling before a curved hook suspended in the air. She saw Cole lying motionless on his side, a sword through his back while wolves made of ice worried at his hands and feet. She saw figures rising from the blood-soaked ground—corpses, crawling and snarling and clawing their way out from black soil—and she saw Ken again, only this time withered and drawn and no longer laughing, leading them away into darkness.

“Choose,” another voice cackled, and this time it sounded like the Dame of Tintagel’s.

Beyond the right gate a crystal castle stood. Tala saw the Snow Queen, so lovely and elegant and cold, sitting on an ice throne at the center of a frozen lake. Her eyes were closed, her expression serene.

She saw Loki, sitting in a chair forged from steel and knives. They swung at a mirror with a heavy cudgel, which broke into thousands of pieces.

She saw a woman rising from the sea, skin a dark brown and black hair long and flowing. She held a curved dagger in one hand and a bright, shining sword in the other. Her eyes were oddly mismatched; brown in one, and golden in the other. Tala watched as she bestowed both weapons on Kensington, who raised the sword and stabbed himself with the dagger without hesitation.

She saw another Zoe running across a snowy field, pursued by a magnificent hawk, while just beyond her vision a shadow lurked in wait, biding its time to strike.

“Choose,” the voices whispered again and again, quickening and overlapping among themselves until a multitude of choruses called down on her. “Choose.”

Tala took a step toward one of the gates—

—and awoke, panting, in her bed. It was still dark outside, snow thudding violently against the windows. The curtains blocked her view of the sky, but bright flashes of lightning streaked from behind the thin material. She’d never seen thundersnow in action before, and for a few minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes away from the horrifying display of nature.

She wiped the sweat off her forehead, willing her breathing back to normal.

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