“Wynter! Wynter, wake up! Please, beloved. Come back to me.” She dropped her sword in order to seize his shoulders and give him a shake. Then she grabbed his face between her hands and chafed his cold skin, all but willing warmth back to his flesh.

“Dear gods, please, please, let him live. Please. I’ll do anything, give anything, pay any price, only let Wynter live.” Muttering frantic prayers over and over again, she pulled him into her lap, cradling his head against her chest, smoothing the cold silk of his hair back away from his face. Hot tears spilled from her eyes and rained gently upon his face. She kissed his cold lips, breathing into his mouth. She clasped his cold hand against her cheek and pressed her lips into the still-icy palm. “Come back to me, Wynter. My husband, my love.”

The thick fans of his white lashes stirred, fluttering against his still-pale cheeks.

Her breath caught in her throat as his lashes lifted, and a smile of utter joy broke across her face as she beheld eye of glacier blue rather than the soulless clear ice of Rorjak’s wintry stare.

“Khamsin?” He frowned up at her in puzzlement.

She laughed. “Oh, thank the gods for their infinite mercy.” She fell upon him, showering him with kisses, weeping with abandon. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“Lost me? What’s going . . . on?” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the carnage surrounding them. The garm and thralled Winterfolk fighting tattooed Calbernan islanders. The maimed bodies of his people littering the snow. “The Calbernans. Falcon.” His face lost all expression. He turned back to her and she was horrified to see the blue leaching from his eyes, the golden color leaching from his skin. “You betrayed me. You brought the sword to your brother. You joined them to fight against me.”

“No! Wynter, no!” She reached for him with desperate hands as he shoved out of her grasp and climbed to his feet. “I didn’t betray you. I would never do that! I couldn’t! I love you.”

“Liar.” The voice that emanated from Wynter’s lips was no longer his own. It was a dark, raspy, threatening voice, pure evil, filled with corruption and hate and all things vile. Just the sound of it sucked the warmth from her flesh and drained the hope from her heart. The ice that had melted from Wynter’s skin re-formed over cold, white, bloodless flesh.

“Wynter, please! Don’t do this! Fight him! You can’t let Rorjak win. You’ve got to fight him. Please, beloved. Please.” Her chin trembled. Her voice broke, and she began to sob, tears spilling down her face. “I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible. More than I ever knew I could love anyone. Please, stay with me. Please.” Her hands trembled. Her whole body shook, racked with heartbreak.

“You pathetic, mewling skurm,” a voice sneered at her back. Something white slashed through the air.

Kham gasped and scrambled backward to avoid the killing stab of Thorgyll’s icy spear.

Reika Villani had not fled the battle, after all. She had, instead, escaped into the forest in order to circle around and attack her foe from behind. “He is not your love, nor will he ever be. He is Rorjak the Great, God-King of Mystral. And I will be the queen who rules beside him through all eternity.”

“Like Hel you will.” Kham lunged for Blazing. Her fingers closed around the hilt, and she thrust the blade towards the heavens, screaming, “Helos help me!”

Power rushed to her call. The diamond in Blazing’s hilt went blinding white. She slashed the blade towards Reika, instinctively channeling the power down her arms and out through the sword the same way she had the lightning. Instead of flames, a concentrated golden white beam of energy shot from its tip.

Reika froze in midlunge, a look of almost comical surprise stamped on her coldly beautiful face. Khamsin scrambled to her feet and spun around, sword drawn back for a second strike. She hesitated in confusion. Reika was still frozen in midlunge. She hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch. As Khamsin watched, the skin of Reika’s face shifted along an invisible seam, like two blocks of ice moving in different directions. Then her legs folded, and her body separated into two vertical halves that crumpled to the ground. The seared and cauterized flesh of her bisected corpse steamed in the winter air.

Thorgyll’s spear dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill, coming to rest at the blood-drenched feet of Dilys Merimydion.

She heard the tinkling sound of breaking ice behind her. A draft of cold air washed over her, prickling her flesh. She didn’t need to turn around to know the Ice King had risen again.

Merimydion met her eyes, then glanced at the spear at his feet. She nodded.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered. She steeled her heart, clenched her fist firmly around Blazing’s hilt, and spun around to stab her blade deep into the Ice King’s frozen heart.

A split second before the blade plunged into Rorjak’s flesh, she saw the glimmer of blue in his eyes, the shimmer of golden warmth rising beneath the icy white of his flesh. Her arm jerked. The sword that had been aimed directly at Rorjak’s heart pierced scant inches above it instead.

“Merimydion, wait!” she cried, but the Calbernan had already scooped up Thorgyll’s spear and let it fly. Khamsin had no time to think, even less time to act. Instinct took over.

She leapt between her husband and the icy, irrevocable death rushing towards him.

“Wynter, I—” The breath in her lungs left her in a sudden rush as the spear slammed into her shoulder. The weapon impaled her, piercing flesh and bone, then burying its enchanted point into the thick plate of Wynter’s armor. The armor crackled with frost.