Chapter 435: Shubnalu’s Trap (Part One)
Cold mountain wind caressed Nyrielle’s dark feathers as she soared through the night sky, racing away from her army and her lover in the hopes of confronting her former mentor as far from the people she cared about as possible.
A year ago, she might have acted differently. She might have let him come to her, arrogantly challenging him to prove that she was no longer the young girl who sat at his feet to learn the mysteries of Blood Sorcery.
A few months ago, she might have attacked Ritchel’s ice tomb directly, snatching Ashlynn out of harm’s way before launching a combined assault on the Frost Walkers, ensuring that they understood their place and never dared to challenge the Vale of Mists again.
Now, too much had changed for her to take either approach. Shubnalu’s moves against her among the Eldritch nations ruled by vampires had made it abundantly clear that she could no longer treat her former teacher as an ally, much less as a friend. There had been a time when each of the True Vampires had attempted to court her. On one occasion, they even joked about dueling each other for the right to seize her, but those jokes had ended when she bathed herself in the blood of the arena and took the Vale of Mists back from the Lothian butchers by force.
The jokes had ended, but Nyrielle couldn’t help but feel that at least one of them hadn’t given up on his desires to possess the only woman among their number. As the oldest among the True Vampires, very little could move his heart, and Nyrielle didn’t think for a moment that the ancient vampire felt anything approaching love for her. Rather, at some point, he’d resolved to possess her, and that thwarted resolution had turned into obsession.
Exposing Ashlynn to the twisted obsessions of the oldest living being among the Eldritch was far too dangerous, but unlike months ago, Nyrielle could no longer simply snatch Ashlynn and flee. Months ago, her heart had only just begun to reawaken. She had always been deeply committed to the people of the Vale of Mists and those she swore to protect,t but now, beyond simple commitment, she cared about many more of them in a way that was impossible for her even a year ago.
Nyrielle couldn’t bear the thought of losing people like Zedya, who was just beginning to explore her own newfound feelings for young Lennart, or her Uncle Tausau, who had just begun to feel again. Even Ignatious, her wayward, estranged progeny, had found a small but growing place in her heart as he tried to find a place in the nation she’d built.
For the first time since the night she fled the Holy Flames that consumed the Vale of Mists along with her parent’s lives, it wasn’t hatred or grief that gripped her heart and drove her to fly faster and faster toward her destination, but fear of losing the ones who had come to mean so much to her. And so, rather than risk any of them in a confrontation with her former teacher, she sought to head him off at the place she was certain he was waiting.
As Nyrielle arrived at the frozen lake where Ashlynn had once fought against Tuscan hunters, darkness swirled around her, twisting into the shape of a powerful headsman’s ax as she dove toward the frozen surface of the lake.
A single strike of the oversized blade shattered the foot thick ice like glass, sending broken chunks tumbling into the air along with a fountain of the coldest water in the world as Nyrielle plunged beneath the surface, returning to the under water entrance to the Ancestral Cave where Hauke and Ashlynn had confronted the abomination formed of Shubnalu’s blood sorcery.