With a hiss, a liquid rope snapped out from the vortex, seized me, and yanked me out of Rin’s arms and off the edge of the dais.
I hit with a bone-jarring thud and barely managed to get my hands up in time to protect my face from smacking against the floor.
Rin leaped for me, but a blast of water hit him in the chest, shoving him off the front of the dais and sending him skidding across the floor to the middle of the room and to the feet of the original set of ice guards. Both guards jabbed down with their spears and Rin jerked to one side, grabbed the shaft of the closest spear and used it to wrench himself around and ram both of his heels onto the other guard’s knee.
That guard lost his balance and his spear swung wildly off target, giving Rin an opening to race back to me.
But the Winter Queen seized him with a wind whip and wrenched him back. He twisted instead of falling and cut through the wind with his small sharp claws.
Let me in, the Winter Court begged.
I can’t. My soul bond won’t let me. But I still had to do something. I’d seen Rin in battle and knew he was terrifyingly deadly, but he still couldn’t win against six ice guards, Padraigin, and the Winter Queen.
The odds weren’t even good that we’d be able to get away.
But capture wasn’t an option.
I had to get back to my guys. My soul already ached with the absence of their life forces and the connection I needed to make with them.
The Winter Queen swept another wind whip around Rin as the closest ice guard stabbed at him while the second set of guards hurried to join the fight, and the third set blocked the doorway at the back.
I seized the Winter Court’s cold inside me. I might not be able to let it in and sever her hold on it, but if I fought hard enough, I still had its wind.
The cold thudded through me, and I sent a blast of ice and air at the guards, trying to aim high enough that I wouldn’t also hit Rin.
But a water whip wrapped around my neck and wrenched me to face Padraigin before I could see if I’d helped.
“I can’t kill you with my mother watching,” she said, “not until she’s gotten the dragon. But I can make you suffer for killing Noaldar.”
The water whip gushed up my neck and swept over my face. Fear squeezed my heart. She was going to surround my head with water.
I tried to take a quick breath and buy myself more time, but wasn’t fast enough and ended gasping in water. My throat constricted and I fought the urge to cough and lose what little air I had.
Inside me, the Winter Court howled, desperate to gain hold of my soul, to free itself from the Winter Queen, and its frozen power turned the water to slush, stinging my eyes.
On instinct, I clawed at the liquid, even though I knew it was useless, my fingers passing through it, not even making a break long enough for me to draw in a small breath.
My lungs burned and my reflex to cough won out. Water sprayed across the floor with my cough and I gasped in another lungful of water. My pulse pounded with a too-familiar fear and the memory of Balwyrdan alternating between beating me and suffocating me with the leash spell swept through me.
God, I’d sworn I’d never be helpless again—
And damn it. I wasn’t going to be. Ever.
I strained to form a blast of wind and blow apart the water, but the Winter Court’s magic kept slipping out of my mental grasp. Everything within me was howling and cold and the room was growing darker. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t breathe, and was about to pass out.
Help me, I begged the court.
Let me in.
I can’t.
Behind me, only partially muffled by the water, something crashed with a resounding boom, and I prayed that was one of the ice guards going down.
If you can’t let me in, the court replied, I can’t help.
You’re seriously going to refuse? It’s not that I don’t want to let you in. I can’t.
Padraigin crouched and glared at me, her pale icy gaze so much like her brother’s and yet so different, filled with rage and pain.
Except Padraigin’s pain wasn’t the physical pain that Sebastian suffered. It was emotional. A deep, consuming heartache that reminded me of the pain I’d felt when I’d thought Cassius was dead.
“I was going to disband the harem when I became queen,” she said. “It was just going to be me and him.”
Her grief tore at my heart. I knew how she felt, knew the complete emptiness, the aching hole in her soul left by the death of her lover, and I knew the rage and desperate need to find justice. And while I hadn’t killed Noaldar — Deaglan had — with the water surrounding my head, I couldn’t tell her the truth, and I wasn’t sure she’d listen if I could.
“I hadn’t thought I’d find love again after my husband died.” She clenched her fist and the water squeezed my skull with an agonizing pressure. Black specs swarmed across my vision and the white room grew darker.
Please. Just a little wind, I begged the Winter Court.
Make me.
“You took that from me,” Padraigin said.
My body screamed for air and the darkness deepened. I had to do something. Now.
I clutched at the icy magic inside me. I. Said. Wind.
The Winter Court’s wind lurched and stuttered and a trickle of air cut through the water around my mouth. I greedily sucked it in, but it didn’t last, and my hold on the Winter Court slipped out of my trembling mental grasp again.
Wind.
Another stutter of air, this one not even strong enough to cut through the water.
“I’m supposed to be queen,” Padraigin said. More water flooded around my head, weighing it down until I couldn’t hold it up, and I sagged forward, forced to bow to her. “I know I am. I’m supposed to be with Noaldar. But the court abandoned me, just like Seireadan did. And because of you, I’m alone.”
Wind.
Nothing.
Please.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rin crash into the throne, stagger to his feet then sag to one knee. His life force crackled against my senses, sharp, fiery, dark, and frozen cutting through the Winter Court’s cold.
My pulse lurched. I had to save him. I couldn’t lose him.
And while I knew that was just our bond compelling me, I also knew the only way I’d survive Faerie without my guys was with Rin — so long as he didn’t betray me and hand me over to Deaglan.
Padraigin grabbed my hair, her life force bright and frozen, joining Rin’s snapping and crackling inside me, and she yanked my head up, forcing me to look at her. “You took everything from me.”
More dark specks swarmed my vision and my lungs burned. The little gasp I’d taken was already gone.
Let me in, the Winter Court hissed.
I can’t. Why couldn’t it understand that? If I could let it in, I would. Whatever it took to survive and get back to my guys.
It’s the only way.
I can’t.
“When my brother comes for you, I’ll take everything from you, too.” Padraigin’s life force snapped stronger, overwhelming everything else, the threatening darkness, the Winter Court’s cold, and my body’s desperate, screaming need for air. There was just her and she was a frozen power like her brother. Except instead of a vast universe of sparkling magic like Sebastian, she was a heaving, raging sea.
A gust of wind hit my back — doing nothing to dislodge the water — and my senses jerked to the Winter Queen. She was a frozen rage, straining to stay in control of a power that wasn’t hers and was constantly fighting her. Her life force joined Padraigin’s slicing and heaving inside me.