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themselves against the Valg at the start of
summer.
In the dead heart of winter, he now called
himself a fool. If he bothered to speak at all.
Words had become unnecessary, foreign.
As foreign as his half-frozen body, which
never warmed, though he slept as close to the
fire as he dared. If sleep found him, with the
screaming of the wounded and dying. The
knowledge of what hunted them northward.
There was no one left to help them. Save
them. The queen they’d thought amongst them
had been a lie. A shape-shifter’s deception.
Where Aelin Galathynius now fought, what
she had deemed more important than them, he
didn’t know.
The frigid night pressed in, threatening to
devour the small fire before him. The soldier
inched closer to the flame, shuddering beneath
his worn cloak, every ache and scrape from