Chapter Five
“She’s found us,” Faye said. “Must have been unhappy to find you’d escaped.”
“You’re telling me,” Aizen said, his yellow eyes wide in alarm. Faye extracted the unstrung Ice Bow from her sleeve and prepared herself for action. She didn’t want to be turned to ice again, to lose another few centuries or more in the grasp of this horrid, tiny ice witch. They heard her cackling through the halls, her voice magnified by some sort of spell.
“Now, now, me dearies, where’s me dragon, where’s me little princess that escaped…? I’ll find ye… oh yes, I will!”
“She’s fucking crazy,” Aizen said, actually shivering in fear. “And insanely strong!”
Faye privately agreed. Any witch who could cast this kind of spell on a whim was not someone you wanted to mess with. Only the enchantments protecting the treasury had prevented them from following the same fate, but as they walked along, Aizen’s movements became sluggish. He glanced down at his feet in horror, realizing that the ice had started creeping up his veins.
“I’m being frozen!” He checked Faye, who still strode with relative ease over the floor. “But you’re not.”
Faye shrugged. The warmth from the bow emanated inside her. “It’s my weapon. It’s shielding me. I –” She turned to face Aizen, and stiffened when she saw the ice shooting up his body, wrapping around his throat, mouth, nose and eyes, before expanding outwards into a solid block. Whatever words he intended to say were frozen on the tip of his tongue, and Faye realized she was horribly, irrevocably, alone.
She examined him for a moment before squeezing her Ice Bow. It gave a reassuring melody and an extra wave of heat in her skin.
“Not these statues up here,” the witch’s voice came out in a sing-song way, followed by that girlish snigger. “Or these ones here! Oh, where are you, little dragon, little princess?” A short pause. “Perhaps I’ll make the whole castle my own, as revenge for your escape. Always thought I’d need a change of scenery. It does get rather boring when no one wants to visit you anymore…”
Faye prowled carefully through the castle, which she still knew like the back of her hand, careful, calculating, barely making a sound, except for her breaths and the chime of her feet when she stepped down too hard.
The ice witch’s voice kept drifting back, taunting her, mocking her ability to do anything.
“So many dragons here! Why, I could make a whole army of dragon souls. Mm… yes…”
Stepping into the banquet room, with the empty tables covered with blue tablecloths, Faye spotted the ice witch. Alicifer saw Faye walk in and her eyebrows popped up in surprise. “Oh! There’s the little princess!” She gave a gurning smile. “Not frozen? You know, I’ve been wondering for a few days now how you could have broken the curse. You showed no magical spark all that time… and now suddenly, you break it?” Before she finished speaking, she shot out a bolt of blue energy towards Faye. The princess blocked it with her bow, which chimed in anger. Now Alicifer stared at the bow. “What’s this?”
Faye didn’t bother answering. She retracted with her arm, and a shining blue arrow materialized in the bow’s notch. Alicifer gaped, before letting out a squeal as the bolt shivered towards her. She flung up a shield, but the arrow ignored the shield as if it was made of nothing, and she needed to dodge frantically. The arrow continued following her, and she was only able to stop it by vanishing at the very last second and reappearing elsewhere. “Skies, child, how did you get your hands on one of those?”
Alicifer appeared furious rather than frightened. She jerked out her fingers, and Faye felt a strong, invisible tug on her bow. She resisted, and shot off more arrows, making the witch curse. While Alicifer was busy dodging, Faye had the time to charge up multiple arrows at once, before fanning them through the room.
A shard of ice slammed into her hand, making Faye gasp. She dropped the bow and it instantly slithered to the woman’s palms. However, the witch couldn’t stay still, unable to stop the arrows directly. She teleported a few meters at a time to dodge.
“Wish I’d mastered long distance teleportation,” Alicifer panted. “Why are these arrows still following me?” She attempted to draw the bow back to fire at Faye, who was pinned to the floor, but nothing happened. “Why aren’t you freezing?”
Faye didn’t know, but the warmth in her grew stronger. With a supreme effort, she yanked her hand away from the ground, whimpering in pain, before rolling to her feet and charging after the witch. She rolled and dodged more bolts, calling for the bow to return to her.
The bow cried out in a mournful note, clearly trying to move out of the ice witch’s hands.
“Oh, you’re one of them,” Alicifer said in utter disgust. “The royal family that once married one of my ancestors, getting the touch of ice. Took you long enough to defrost, didn’t it?”
Faye didn’t have time for banter. She launched herself at the woman, who dematerialized, and several of Faye’s arrows hovered in confusion before she willed them to keep chasing the witch. It seemed that the massive ice spell the witch had cast, along with her quick teleports, drained her of energy. But if she decided to teleport through the walls, well, that was it. Faye focused on the Ice Bow, her neck tendons straining until, with a cry of triumph, the bow ripped itself from the ice witch’s hands and happily spun back into Faye’s.
“Shit,” Alicifer said. Her attempts to resummon the bow no longer worked. Her ice shards were now effectively blocked by the bow.
“I do hope killing you releases the curse,” Faye said, redrawing the bow and firing. “And if not, well, I kind of want to kill you anyway.”
“Oh, bother,” the witch said, before snapping her fingers. The ice started melting from everything, and she turned herself into an ice block as the arrows smashed into it.
“What do you want, girl?” the witch said from within the block. “Riches? A nice prince from my collection? Speak up. I know when I’m beaten.” Alicifer appeared rather exhausted as she said this, wiping her brow inside the ice.
Faye walked closer to the exhausted witch, her eyes crackling in fury. “Remove the curse from every single person you’ve ever cursed. Return Aizen’s dragon soul. And take up residence elsewhere. That includes the people in this castle and the people in your little cave.”
“Bother,” the witch repeated, appearing cross. “That’s me entire livelihood gone. I’ve been collecting them for a few hundred years, me. Breaks me heart to lose it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be putting out a fake Quest, then,” Faye snapped. “Earn your collection by reputable means. Offer an actual reward for people to risk themselves. And maybe you’ll get more visits.”
“Hmph.” Alicifer thought this over for a moment.
“Or you can die,” Faye offered.
The witch rolled her eyes. “Fine. Take yer stupid frozen friends. Be mean to a poor old witch.”
Faye snorted, but kept her bow trained on the witch. She ignored her throbbing, pierced hand, which had been so frozen, the blood inside didn’t bleed out.
With a lot of muttering and grumbling, the witch kept to her forced deal, unfreezing everyone in the castle, returning Aizen’s soul, and promising to unfreeze everyone in the cave.
“I’ll be checking tomorrow,” Faye warned, allowing a blue bolt to shimmer. “If you double cross me, I will hunt you down and kill you. I will tell everyone in the world how to kill you, and you won’t be safe anywhere you go.”
Alicifer glared with malice at Faye, but nodded, before limping out of the castle, summoning an ice broomstick which took a few moments to assemble, mounting it, and flying off into the distance.
Instantly, Faye walked through the thawing corridors back to Aizen in the throne room. He, his parents, and the few servants in the room lay gasping, still feeling the shock of cold over their bodies.
She ran to Aizen’s side and touched him on the shoulder. “I dealt with it. You’ll have your soul back.”
Aizen shivered, before smiling at her in incredulous delight and grasping her close. “You did? Oh, you wonderful creature.” He planted cold lips on hers, and she sighed into the touch. Happy to help him. Happy to be here.
She needed to check in on the cave tomorrow and help out Anthony and the rest. She was going to be pretty busy, she suspected, over the next few weeks. But she certainly wouldn’t mind sticking along with Aizen for longer.
“Why do you have the Ice Bow, princess?” Aizen’s father barked. He sounded rather weak from the freezing. Faye’s hand began to throb harder – she needed a healer soon.
“Uh, let me explain, father,” Aizen wheezed, getting to his feet. Faye stood by his side, smiling.
Ready to take steps into her future. Ready to help the others in the cave adapt. And maybe, sticking next to Aizen, pursuing the fledgling relationship they’d started to develop, she could finally come to terms with what had happened, and the future she now existed in.
The Ice Bow hummed contentment in her hand.
I’m ready.
The End
Get Your EXCLUSIVE & FREE Copy of
TAJA’S DRAGON
See the Preview Below!
CLICK THE LINK TO RECEIVE YOUR COPY