Prince Kael's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kael flew north until the fields turned to ice. The wind pushed him down. Each gust dragged at his wings, and the ember flames along his feathers shrank to weak red lines. Below him stretched a wall of frost-white pines with no road through them. He needed the frozen lake house beyond the trees. But the cold was winning. If his fire died, he would drop into the snow and stay there. He landed hard in a clearing and folded his wings tight. His breath came out in white clouds. He beat his wings once to spark them. Two flames guttered and went dark. Panic climbed his throat. A wingless prince could walk this wild. A frozen one could not. Something moved between the pines. Two yellow eyes caught his fading light. A cat stepped out, sleek and red, with dragon wings folded on its back and a tail that burned like a torch. Kael knew this beast. He had seen it caged in Silas Blackwood's tent, pacing behind iron bars. It had watched him then as if it understood him. Now it ran free, far ahead of its master. "You escaped him too," Kael said. The cat did not flee. It padded closer, and the heat off its flaming tail touched Kael's face. Warmth. Real warmth, in all this white. Kael understood. The beast carried its own fire, and the cold could not reach its blood. He reached out slow, the way he had learned to reach for the shadow woman. He pulled the last heat back into his palm so he would not burn it. The cat let him rest his hand on its warm flank. Its wings spread wide, catching the wind. It looked at the pines, then at him, and started walking into the trees. Kael followed. He kept one hand on the cat's burning side. Its fire fed his own. With each step his feathers grew brighter, the embers climbing back to life. The beast knew a path he could not see, weaving between trunks where the snow lay thin. It had crossed this wild before. It was leading him through. Hours later the trees broke open. A gray castle rose in the distance, its towers crowned with battlements, its stone dark against the white sky. Kael had heard no talk of a castle here. But that was not his road. Below the castle spread a flat sheet of ice, wide and pale and still. A lake frozen in the dead of summer. The house beneath it. Kael's wings burned full and hot again. He had crossed the frozen wilds. The cat stopped at the tree line, tail flicking, and would go no farther. Kael pressed his warm hand once to its head, then stepped onto the ice alone. The shadow woman waited below. So did the man who could kill her with a word.