The impossible unfolded before me yet again. Lady Frost effortlessly turned back an onslaught of attacks from one of the kingdom’s most skilled mages while advancing all on her own, driving him to the point of exhaustion, all in a matter of minutes. Her fighting style was the embodiment of senseless violence. If she had fought the duel in my place… Sola would be dead. I thanked the heavens that it had been me instead.
As the fight continued, Saintess Helian grew visibly concerned. Finally, she broke into a sprint in Frosts’s direction, shouting at the top of her lungs.
“Frost, stop! Don’t kill him!”
The vice commander casually walked up to Atropa, who was now openly begging for mercy. Indifferent to his cries, she kicked him in the gut. The archmage buckled forward, and as he collapsed face first in the snow, a cloud of dark smoke swirled up from his body. Lady Frost turned to face us.
I’d seen that expression before. It was just like Sola’s not long ago. I gestured for the knights to stay back and ran to offer the saintess my support. I was the only other person here who could take on a mage. “Be careful, Helian! She’s not in her right mind!”
Frost reached down, lifted Atropa by the neck with one hand, and then threw him against one of the remaining stone spires. Blood sputtered from his lips as he begged. “Mercy… please…”
The vice commander giggled and held her sword against the side of his neck. “I told you I’d claim the last strike.”
Helian chose that moment to drive her fist directly into Frost’s back, sending her flying. Her body slammed hard against the wall of the archmage’s mansion, and the impact loosed the snow from its rooftop. It fell down in white sheets on top of the girl.
The saintess turned to face me. “You brought medics, right? We’re going to need them.” The remainder of the estate’s guards had arrived in response to the duel, and upon seeing their master in such a state, drew their weapons and charged us. Fantastic. Just what we need.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Sighing deeply, I held my blade against Atropa’s throat. My turn, I suppose. “Drop your weapons if you wish to see your master live another day. And summon your medic.”
I made two critical mistakes.
First, I had shown Frost everything. As we grew up, we trained together, played together, learned together, and slept together. She saw every part of me because I held nothing back. And apparently, she had been watching more carefully than I realized.
I thought this harmless because in the novel, she was no one, and once we parted, would become nothing. But what I’d done was leave my mark on her, one so strong it created an imitation. She was not just in love with me… she may have wished to become me.
Assuming that Frost was no one—this was my second mistake. She had not appeared in the novel’s main plot, so how could she have been part of my story? I’d been foolish. Many characters in the novel lacked names, but I convinced myself that she was different. Because I chose to believe she was not part of the events that awaited me, I thought I could protect her—by keeping her ignorant and pushing her away.
But she had known all along, because she was meant to. The novel contained many flashbacks to my childhood. After the last chapter I read, there could have been countless more. Every moment we treasured a scene for the readers’ entertainment. The fairy in the lake. Our kiss beside the waterfall. Our days and nights together. The sword in the cave.
What if this was not the end of the novel? A loaded rifle sitting conspicuously on stage since the first act, waiting to be fired.
Suitors numbered starting from zero, not from one. A knife concealed behind the author’s back from the very beginning, now pointed at my heart.
I needed to speak with Selene and the countess immediately.
It may already be too late.
Still, I had to try.
