Khamsin reached the snowy shore and began to run, leading the monsters away from Wynter.

She raised her arms as she ran, fingertips reaching for the sky, calling upon her gifts with every ounce of power in her, holding nothing back. The storm overhead exploded, clouds boiling out as thick and black as the ash cloud of an erupting volcano. Lightning cracked in a ferocious display. The air around her went violet and half a dozen bolts shot straight towards her.

The lightning speared her, lifting her off her feet in a blinding flash of searing, brilliant white. Her head fell back, her arms flung out. Tongues of flame raced through her veins. Torn flesh knit together. The air left her lungs, and her mind, her consciousness, went with it, riding the lightning into the sky, joining the storm. Becoming part of its wild, raw, power.

Always she’d been afraid of the storm. Always when the storm truly came alive, its strength had overwhelmed her and escaped her control.

But this time, Wynter’s life was in her hands. If she failed, he would die. And this power of hers—this dangerous, destructive, unpredictable power she had cursed and feared all her life—was her only weapon. Her only chance to save him.

She poured everything she had into the winds, into the roiling, crashing clouds. Not trying to control the storm, but trying to set it free. To build its wildness. The air around her went pure violet, glowing, throbbing, dancing across her skin. Energy gathered—both inside her and above, in the black, seething clouds. Her hair lifted in a nimbus of lightning-streaked darkness.

The garm screamed, but she could not hear their paralyzing howl above the shriek of the wind. The gaping mouths spewed matching clouds of blue-white vapor.

The sky lit up brighter than a summer day. The air around her flashed blinding white as three massive ropes of lightning snaked down from the sky in the blink of an eye and speared Khamsin.

Her chest expanded on a fiery breath. Pain ripped through her. But she stood firm, absorbing the energy, channeling it through her body, down her arms, out her fingers.

Her hands shot out, fingers splayed. Lightning shot from her fingertips and leapt across the distance to the garm. Thunder boomed with such force, the ground shook.

The garm, creatures of the remotest, iciest reaches of Wintercraig, didn’t even have time to scream. Fire shot deep into massive chests with devastating results. Their fluids flash-boiled into vapor, and their bodies expanded like inflated bladders. Furred skins split and viscous, blue fluid spewed from ruptured vessels.

She held the lightning, pumping the concentrated heat of the sun into the garm’s bodies until their fur charred and caught fire. She held it, until the beasts were engulfed in flames and the smell of burnt flesh permeated the air. Held it longer still, until the garm’s writhing bodies stopped moving entirely, and their blackened bones turned to ash that disintegrated and blew away on the gusting winds.

Only then did she release the lightning, discharging its remaining power into the earth and draining the volatile storm of energy until the black clouds turned gray and the hailstones mixed with freezing rain became snowflakes tumbling softly from the sky.

Then it was over. The storm dispersed.

Drained of strength, her legs turned to pudding beneath her, and she crumpled to the earth. For a moment, she lay there, dazed and struggling to catch her breath, but the determination that had driven her to call and master the storm now drove her towards Wynter.

She was too weak to stand, so she crawled on her hands and knees. Inch by inch, pushing herself by sheer force of will, she crossed the yards of frozen ground until she reached him.

He lay in a pool of violet-hued ice, still as stone and just as cold. His golden skin looked more like a translucent veil molded over a carved statue than flesh. His brilliant eyes were closed. His chest didn’t appear to be moving.

“Wynter?” She laid her fingers against his throat and panicked when she found no pulse. Her only reassurance that he still lived came when she pressed a desperate ear to his chest and was rewarded with the faint, barely audible sound of his heart slowly beating.

“Wynter, I . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and with it went her last ounce of depleted strength. She collapsed across his chest, and the world went dim.

Her last conscious thought was concern that her storm might threaten them still because she could hear the roll of thunder in the distance. And it was drawing nearer.

CHAPTER 22

Lies, Love, and Loyalties

“She’s waking.”

Khamsin frowned at the sound of Valik’s voice. What was Wynter’s second-in-command doing in her bedchamber? Her exceedingly territorial husband would not like that at all.

The thought almost made her smile, until the memories came rushing back.

The Great Hunt. Reika Villani’s deceit. The garm.

Kham’s eyes snapped open, and she sat bolt upright.

“Wynter!”

She cried her husband’s name, then fell abruptly silent. She wasn’t in her bedchamber. And Valik was not the only Winterman crowded around her.

She was sitting on a narrow bed in a strange room she didn’t recognize. Half a dozen White Guard in full plate mail surrounded her, swords drawn, their pale eyes cold, their golden faces frozen in expressions that ranged from impassivity to outright menace.

Her chest went tight, and dread washed over her in an icy wave.

She sought Valik’s face in the crowd around her and fixed her gaze on him. “What’s happened? Where is Wynter? Does he live?”

All she could think was that Wynter was dead. And a sick, terrible feeling consumed her. He couldn’t be dead. Not him. Not the fierce northern king who fought Frost Giants and won, who battled four garm with just his sword and his own fierce will.