Brann forced himself upright, muscles quivering under the weight of exhaustion. He drew a ragged breath through clenched teeth, the taste of iron thick on his tongue. “You should tell me what’s going on here,” he said, his voice low, steady despite the tremor in his body. “While you still have a chance.”

  Therun chuckled, the sound deep and amused. “Bold. I’ll give you that.” His smile widened into something that showed too many teeth. “But I don’t think you’re in any position to demand answers. Look at you, half asleep already, bleeding from half a dozen cuts, frostbitten by your own tricks…if I wanted you on the ground, I’d only need to breathe a little harder.”

  He stepped closer, boots crunching against the frost Brann had left behind, eyes glinting in the orange crystal light. “Still, you’ve shown me something interesting this night. The way you fight… it’s familiar. Efficient, disciplined, Edran’s training, if my eyes haven’t gone dull, that much I’d stake a wager on.”

  He tilted his head, studying Brann as though dissecting him with sight alone. “But here’s the riddle. You bleed like a soldier, yet you carry yourself like a druid. And more curious still, you’ve no forest tethered to you, no grove at your back, you don’t follow their rules…you followed us into the city and risked yourself for people who don’t even know your name.” Therun’s grin thinned into something sharper, colder. “That makes no sense at all.”

  He drew a long breath, savoring his own words before he let them fall. “So the only conclusion I can reach, the only one that makes any sense, is this: you’re a deserter, a soldier who turned his back on discipline and his fellow men, who fled the chain of command and took to the trees instead. You picked up a few tricks from the druids along the way, perhaps, enough to make you dangerous, but not enough to save you. What I still can’t puzzle out is how you managed to sniff us out in the first place. We came cloaked, careful, unseen by half the town. Yet somehow you marked us.” His scar twitched as he tilted his head. “And more curious still…why risk your skin for them?” He gestured toward the faint blue glow pulsing in the cage. “Two nameless fools no one will mourn. You could have stayed in the shadows, but instead you bled for them. Maybe you just got too cocky. Maybe you thought we were an easy fight.”

  His eyes narrowed, watching Brann’s labored stance. “Am I close?”

  Brann drew in a sharp breath, chest rising with the effort. His eyes narrowed, a flicker of defiance sparking in their depths. “Not by a long shot,” he growled. “I’m something new.”

  He lunged.

  Cursed ice bloomed in his palms, petals of frozen glass opening as he swung for Therun’s face. If he could land the strike, if those blossoms bit into skin, the cold would seize him, disorient him, create openings. Brann poured every ounce of will into the motion, a desperate gamble.

  But it did not happen the way he imagined.

  Therun was fresh, unmarked by the fight, his body unspent. And more than that, he had been watching, dissecting Brann’s every movement from the moment the clash began. He crouched low, the motion quick and efficient, letting Brann’s ice-laden arms slice the air above his head.

  Then came the counter.

  Therun’s fist drove into Brann’s gut like an iron spike. The runes etched along the black leather of his gloves flared, glistening with a cruel light.

  Pain exploded through Brann’s body, folding him forward with a ragged gasp. His legs buckled, the air torn from his lungs. And worse, far worse, he felt his strength unravel. The cursed ice within him dimmed, its edge blunted, its blossoms wilting even as he tried to summon them. His will faltered, the frost slipping wild and useless across the stones.

  A wave of terrible pain consumed him, part from the blow, part from whatever sealing craft had been woven into those gloves. His breath came shallow, his vision blurred at the edges. For the first time, true panic scraped at the corners of his mind.

  Therun straightened, brushing dust from the knuckles of his black glove, his grin stretching wide. “You are an interesting individual, I’ll grant you that. Those ice powers… they don’t come from a trinket or a rune, they come from you, raw and untamed.” His eyes narrowed, studying Brann like a blade laid out on a workbench. “But I’ve never seen a druid wield frost that runs against nature. And yet you summon roots and flowers as if the forest itself answers you, two opposites, drawn together in one man.”

  He tilted his head, the grin sharpening into something crueler. “That must have taken practice… to make what should repel each other bend instead. Ice and growth...winter and spring, that’s what makes you dangerous, and unpredictable.” His voice dropped, silken with menace. “But you see, I’m the worst matchup you could hope for as you’ve already felt on your own skin. I specialize in sealing things, in making them quiet, and those powers of yours…” he flexed the runed gloves, sigils glinting darkly, “…need to go to sleep.”

  His hand slipped to his belt…Brann saw the motion and the leather pouch being drawn out, the sound of shifting powder inside.

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  “That,” Therun said softly, “is why I won’t take any more risks with you…we can dissect you back at camp after all.”

  He opened his fist and poured some of the pouch contents. Ash sifted between his fingers, black and gray, faintly glowing as if tiny embers still smoldered within. The smell of burned rot filled the air, corrupted wood, poisoned earth, the remains of trees twisted by something foul.

  A chill far deeper than his cursed ice crawled into Brann’s gut, he felt this felling once before, in the cursed grove back in Duskmire…those cursed trees. His mind raced, already clawing at every possible way out. He had fought soldiers and creatures and shadows, but this was different. This was a man who had studied him, understood him, and now carried the means to unravel him piece by piece.

  I can’t win in this state, the thought pressed against his mind, bitter as gall. His hands clenched anyway, frost crackling at his palms, but the realization settled like stone in his chest. If Therun cast that ash, the fight would no longer be his to control.

  Brann’s eyes locked on the pouch, on the shifting powder glowing faintly in Therun’s palm. He knew, instinct told him, that if that ash touched him, it was over. He needed to act, and fast.

  Torvil’s lessons flickered in his mind. Not roots, not vines…something stronger, something that consumed. The carnivorous bloom, its broad sticky petals meant to trap and smother. Torvil had warned him that it took more energy than most summons, that it drained the body as much as the earth itself.

  But what choice did he have?

  I can’t let that ash reach me.

  He forced his trembling hands outward, his will clawing through fatigue. The cursed ice buckled under the strain, flaring wild, but the roots answered. They twisted together in a violent surge, bursting from the stone floor and a massive flower erupted before him, its petals wide and glistening with a resinous sheen, sticky and thick as sap.

  Therun’s grin only widened. “Oh? Let’s test it, then.”

  The ash left his hand in a dark scatter, motes swirling like dying embers. They drifted toward Brann, toward the flower, and stuck. The petals caught them, folds closing around the tainted dust. For an instant, Brann thought he had succeeded. Relief surged through his chest as he turned toward the broken ceiling above, summoning the roots to lift him back into the night air.

  But he never saw it coming.

  The moment the ash clung to the petals, its corruption seeped inward. The power he had poured into the plant buckled, twisted and broke apart. The flower convulsed as if struck by lightning, its sticky flesh splitting in a grotesque bloom of sparks. The energy fueling it unraveled in an instant.

  The backlash came in the form of an explosion of wind and orange sparks of energy.

  Air twisted through the tunnel in a violent spiral, roaring like a storm trapped in stone. Dust and shards of root tore free, spinning in a cyclone. Brann was flung sideways, crashing hard against the wall. The roots he had called to lift him shattered, their strength ripped away, leaving only brittle husks cracking under the gale.

  His vision blurred, his body screaming from the impact. The wind howled around him, and at the center of it Therun stood steady, the cage in one hand, his grin sharp as ever.

  “Clever,” Therun said, voice cutting through the storm. “Trying to run away…but you don’t yet understand what you’re playing with.”

  Brann lay broken on the stone, lungs heaving, his body refusing to rise. His limbs shook with fatigue, his veins heavy with the poison of Irris’s daggers and the drag of Revik’s blades. Another strike from Therun, one clean blow, and it would be over, he knew it.

  Better die by my hand than theirs.

  He had one card left, and it would cost him everything.

  With a trembling hand, Brann reached beneath the collar of his tunic and drew forth a medallion. A rough stone rune dangled from it, etched with lines Torvil had carved himself in the weeks since the forest incident. Torvil had called it his floodgate, his last defense should all else fail. A seal upon the well of his cursed ice, meant to be broken only once Brann mastered the power. This time was as good as any, Brann thought.

  Therun’s eyes widened as he glared the runes. For the first time, the grin faltered. “No…” he hissed, breaking into a sprint. His boots struck stone with thunder, his scarred face lit with sudden alarm but Brann moved first.

  He slammed the runestone against a small glowing crystal set in the wall. Both shattered with a sharp detonation, shards tearing into his hand and forearm. Pain lanced through him, white-hot, but he did not cry out. He only smiled, blood dripping down his knuckles.

  Therun’s grip seized his other arm an instant later, crushingly strong. “What have you done, cur?” he spat, face twisting with fury.

  Brann’s lips parted, breath shallow, voice a ragged whisper. “Let’s see how good you are at trapping in the cold…”

  The world shifted.

  A wind stirred from Brann’s body, unnatural and sharp, a gale of frozen breath that swept through the tunnel. The air itself thickened into ice, crystals forming midair before shattering, cutting at skin and stone alike. The temperature plummeted in an instant, bone-aching, soul-killing cold, the kind that silences forests and freezes rivers solid.

  Therun’s eyes narrowed, but his grip did not falter. “I will not be defied,” he snarled over the rising gale. “I will have you.”

  But even his defiance began to break. His lips split and bled, the moisture in his eyes crystallizing until tears turned to shards of ice. His flesh stiffened, his breath caught. The ash in his pouch flared weakly, but it had no hold here. His sealing arts bound items, bound summons, this was neither. This was raw power, erupting straight from the marrow of this man.

  Therun’s jaw clenched, he would not yield, not to a half-spent stranger, but choice was stripped from him. His arm began to lock, the frost biting deeper and his breath stuttered into mist.

  With a curse he twisted his wrist. A black blade sprang from his sleeve, narrow and sharp. He drove it into Brann’s side, the steel sinking deep. Brann gasped, pain shattering through the cold haze.

  Therun ripped the blade free and leapt back, retreating through the rising storm. He sprinted for the way they had entered, boots hammering against stone, and vaulted up through the broken gap into the night air.

  A heartbeat later, the tunnel sealed itself in a tomb of ice.

  Walls, floor, and ceiling froze solid, crystalline frost swallowing everything in its reach. The air turned still and deathly silent. Only Brann remained, his body curled amid the frost, bleeding and shivering, yet somehow still alive.

  The cold could not kill him. Not yet. Not anymore.

  He had become its vessel.