Читать онлайн «Fireblood»

Автор Элли Блейк

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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Little, Brown and Company

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First Edition: September 2017

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ISBNs: 978-0-316-27332-9 (hardcover), 978-0-316-27327-5 (ebook)

E3-20170724-JV-NF

Contents

Cover

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Acknowledgments

Navigation

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

FOR MY MOM, NANCY, WHO TAUGHT ME TO LOVE WORDS

ONE

I CIRCLED THE FROSTBLOOD WARRIOR, my boots kicking up dust from the drought-dry earth. One little mistake, one little lapse in focus, would mean defeat.

His left fist twitched before his right came out with a cyclone of frost.

But I knew all his favorite tricks, his feints and false moves. I twisted to the right, throwing a plume of fire from my palms.

My vision clouded. A sudden memory took me: my hands, red with fire, stretched toward the icy throne of Fors—the timeless symbol of Frostblood rule—its wicked, gleaming shards mocking my paltry fire. I couldn’t melt it. I couldn’t defeat the curse inside it.

But then another’s frost joined my fire, not extinguishing but creating a blinding blue flame that poured toward the throne, softening its edges, dulling the sharp points, making the ice weep in defeat. I could hear King Rasmus’s delighted laugh as the Minax broke free from the throne’s dying heart, as the shadow creature crept against my skin, seeking entry, promising the joy of a thousand sunbursts and the absence of pain or weakness ever, ever again.

I snapped back to the present, stumbling as an icy blast hit me in the chest. I rolled and regained my feet, but my sight remained foggy, the memory far too real. The skin near my ear where the Minax had marked me burned, and I cried out.