That was why my team and I had been seeking the flame of inferno all these years, following the prediction of the Weaver of the Fates who had appeared in my dream.
The Jötunn’s claws elongated, preparing to stab me. Gripping the twin daggers in my hands, I tried to slice them off at his wrists, but his steel claws twisted and grabbed the middle of both of my blades. His tongue darted out and morphed into a razor-sharp blade.
My team shouted my name in panic, but they were all locked in their own battles. Archer bellowed in rage, left his opponent, and leapt toward the Jötunn. Before the Jötunn’s sharp tongue could impale me, Archer buried his ice blade into the monster’s back.
“Archer, leave him to me!” I called urgently, knowing he might slow down the Jötunn but he couldn’t defeat him.
Archer’s second blade followed, stabbing into the Jötunn’s neck from the side. The Jötunn shoved my twin swords upward and smashed a claw backward into Archer, piercing his chest. To my horror, the bloodhound that Archer had been fighting appeared and gripped Archer’s body. His blood ran freely, drenching his armor.
White-hot rage and grief tore through me, and a flame burst to life on the peak of my icy storm—I’d given all I had to conjure that last ice magic. The flame engulfed the Jötunn and the rest of the bloodhounds, cremating them, all but the one who had grabbed Archer and was using my second-in-command as a shield.
The surviving bloodhound shot toward the sky, still holding Archer, and before my weakened wind could tear Archer from him, the bloodhound with an enormous snake head vanished. The portal sealed behind them.
“No! No! No!” I screamed, throwing up my hand to reopen it in hopes of getting Archer back, but I didn’t have an ounce of magic left.
I dropped to my knees, crying Archer’s name. My eyes and nose bled, and my fingertips dripped with blood as I attempted to summon my absent magic again and again.
Fayette knelt beside me, holding me, her trembling lips bloodless. She loved Archer and regarded him as more than her commander and friend.
She grabbed my hands to stop me. “My queen, don’t do this. If you try to use magic again when you don’t have any, you’ll die.”
“I don’t care about death,” I said dully. “For every one who was taken from me, a piece of my soul already died.”
“A piece of our souls was torn away from us too,” she said. “But Tessa, do you still care for the people you left behind? Do you care for Dux and me? We’re still with you.”
“How can you ask this?” I sobbed, but I let my hands drop, done cursing and calling for my spent magic. “We’ll have to go back to him. We can’t leave him like that—” I couldn’t bear to spell out the brutal truth we all knew. If Archer survived the chest wound, his fate would be worse than death.
“We’ll leave this planet and follow them and get Archer back,” I heard myself murmuring.
“Then you’ll perish too, Your Grace. And the last of us will die with you,” Dux said as he wiped his tears with his bloody sleeve. His fury and grief tasted as bitter as mine. “We have to let Archer go for now. He didn’t sacrifice himself so we’d all fail.” His voice turned steely. “Fayette, pick up our queen. We need to get going.”
Dux and Fayette had fresh wounds on top of their old ones from battling the bloodhounds. I needed to heal them as soon as my magic replenished.
I brought Fayette to her feet with me instead. I must be the queen I was born to be, even though I was a rejected queen. The bloodhounds might return and hunt me and my team again within a month. And if they secured me, Ragnarö would personally come to place chains on me and drag me back. He was growing desperate after I’d managed to slip through his fingers for so many years.
“We need to reach the leyline before Hell’s gate shuts down,” Fayette said, forcing strength into her breaking voice. “According to our contact, it’ll vanish before sunset.”
Dux fumbled with a magical watch that was similar to an electroscope.
“The compass has just detected a flow of energy in the north,” Dux said in a tight voice.
He pointed out the direction, and the three of us staggered further north. We stayed close to each other, our knuckles white on the hilts of our swords. We all tried to function normally, as warriors should, but grief had sunk into the marrow of our bones.
After the brutal battle, the forest remained deathly quiet except for the faint sound of our footfalls on a bed of dried pine cones.
“Dux, did you see our queen’s last wave of ice magic that carried the flame?” Fayette asked quietly. “It was the flame that vanquished the bloodhounds.”
Dux nodded. “I was about to ask Her Grace. How could it be? It’s never happened before.”
“I don’t know,” I said, bitter tears stinging my eyes again. “And why didn’t it happen earlier? I could have saved Archer.”
“It might have to do with this realm,” Fayette said, her eyes darting around. “This could be the land that holds the hidden fire we’ve been seeking.”
“That’s why we took the contract and came here, isn’t it?” Dux asked.
“Lucifer promised that the Earth’s Hell is the center of the inferno,” I said.
“If that ex-demon lord was lying,” Dux growled, “he’ll be sorry.”
We came here and lost Archer.
Yet a slim hope slid into me like a ray of sunshine. “Even without the promise of fire, we’d have come. We need the bounty money the archangel offered to buy the best mercenary army.” I flicked my wrist to emphasize my point. “So, we’ll deliver Loki’s head to his father. The sooner we get the job done, the sooner we can bring a troop to Ragnarö’s door. It’s Ice God’s fucking head I truly want.”
“May our hunt end here,” Fayette murmured.
“There!” Dux shouted, pointing.
We limped as fast as we could toward an iridescent gap in midair in the blackened terrain outside the forest.
The illuminated gap fluctuated, the light dimming.
“It’s going to fade!” Fayette called in dismay. “We aren’t going to make it.”
“The hell we won’t.” I dragged Fayette with me, Dux propping up her other shoulder, and we ran faster.
The gap began to close.
I roared and somehow managed to force out a gust of wind with my dried-up magic. It swept us into the narrow chasm right before it sealed. Agony throbbed through me, as if the wind had peeled my skin from my bones, but we made it.
A pungent smell of fire, smoke, and brimstone slammed into my face just as we landed on hard, scorching dirt.
Everything glowed red around us, as if it was burning. This realm was the opposite of the frozen world we’d left. Where chilly fog rolled toward the cold stone castle in my Ice Kingdom, molten lava adorned the landscape of the Underworld.
“Pyre to your ice.” The words of the Weaver of the Fates echoed in the back chamber of my head. “Find the hottest flame in the core of the inferno, Queen Morrigan, and you’ll never fear the Ice God again.”
“We’re in the inferno,” I murmured, hope and grief surging within me as I gazed at the peak of the black mountains spewing a river of lava into the reddened sky. “One last job and we’ll go home with an army, even if we fail to attain the fabled fire.”