I squeezed Tristan’s fingers tight, refusing to give up, and a shiver ran through my body. It was cold, and growing colder by the second.

She was coming.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Tristan

The walls crackled as the moisture coating them crystallized into frost, the chill biting with every inhalation, my skin burning wherever it was exposed. But even without Winter’s familiar calling card, I would’ve known it was her. The magic she’d taken prickled with familiarity, and I felt almost – almost – as though it would do my bidding if I bent my will to it.

“Be silent, no matter what you hear,” I whispered, then I got to my feet, even as I heard a familiar clink of metal coming from Cécile’s cell.

The heavy door tore from its hinges, flipping end over end until it smashed against the end of the hallway with a reverberating crash. “I see you’ve been practicing,” I said, inclining my head to the Queen of Winter and praying Marc had bargained well.

She scowled, face fixed in the visage she’d worn when last I’d seen her. Magic slammed me against the rear of my cell, and I forced a groan into a laugh. “Careful now, I’m feeling fragile, and it would do neither of us any good if you were to accidentally kill me.”

“What makes you believe it would be an accident?” she hissed, grabbing me by the shirt and jerking me forward until we were separated by mere inches.

“Because you wouldn’t have risked coming here if there were anyone else capable of releasing you from this burden,” I said, prying her fingers loose one by one. Physically, I was stronger than her, and that was a very good thing.

Her lip curled. “Take it back. You may consider it a gift.”

I straightened my shirt. “No.”

Magic flexed in the air, and I held up one hand to stall her. “Not as a gift, but I will take it back in exchange for something from you.”

“You have no ground to stand on,” she said, lifting her chin. “You either take it or I kill you.”

“You give me what I want,” I said, “Or you remain bound to this world as surely as any troll.” It had been one of the gambles I’d made stepping outside of the safety of the castle walls. One, that couched in her offer of support was the desire to see all my kind dead before my uncle could put us to use. Two, that if I eliminated grounds for an alliance – which she intended to use as a guise for killing off as many trolls as possible – she’d take my magic to do the job herself. Three, that in taking my magic into herself, which was as corrupted by iron as was my flesh, she’d be bound to this world. Corporeal, and vulnerable.