Ice Like Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

throat, and already I can feel parts of myself sigh at the familiarity of yelling at Sir.
    But no scream comes. Because over the ridge rushes one of the Cordellan soldiers charged with guarding the entrance to the mine.
    “A miner!” he announces over the square to cries for details. “Coming up the shaft!”
    Relief springs in my gut. The magic—it gave them endurance and strength. Maybe it let one of them escape to run desperately fast up the mine shaft.
    Sir pushes through the crowd, letting me follow a beat behind.
    When we make it to the ridge, the hill on the other side curves down before splitting around a path lined with boulders. The path leads to a cave that seems like any other—dark and fathomless. Sir and I sprint for it, and a trail of people—Conall and Garrigan, Theron, a few Cordellan soldiers—gathers behind us. As I focus on the entrance, I beg the darkness to relinquish the miner, for news that the cave-in wasn’t a cave-in, but something else—
    Just as we reach the entrance, the miner stumbles out and falls to his knees. He’s so covered with grime that his ivory skin and hair are gray, and he hacks a funnel of dust into the sunlight. I drop before him, my hands on his shoulders.No thought, no chance to reconsider—the magic swells in my chest, a surge of frost that coats every vein as it rushes down my arms and slams into the miner’s body, clearing his lungs, healing the bruises along his limbs.
    All the air drains from me, leaving me to pant from the unexpected use of magic as the tension on the man’s face alleviates. Does he realize I used magic on him?
    “A wall collapsed, my queen,” he coughs. “Weren’t expecting it, not there, but—”
    Theron falls to the ground beside me, his attention boring into the miner in a frantic pull of pure, aching need.
    “We . . . found it,” the miner says like even he can’t believe his own news. He blinks at me, and I try with everything I have left to breathe, just breathe, keep breathing.
    “We found it, my queen. The magic chasm.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
Meira
    HANNAH? I TRY, and my magic sparks the slightest flash of cold. Tell me he’s wrong.
    But the emotion that radiates from her is the opposite of what I expected: amazement. Awe. The same winded shock that descends over everyone else.
    We were so close, she gasps. The Tadil, all this time—we were so close . . .
    Her words fade, but I know what she means.
    Before Angra overtook Winter.
    The miner shoves to his feet, wordlessly leading me on. Sir lets me stumble after him without protest, trudging along behind me as if he’s being dragged into the mine against his will. We’re trailed by Theron, Garrigan, Conall, and a handful of Cordellan soldiers.
    The morning sun lights the first few paces inside the mine shaft, but farther in, when the ground starts to slantaround serrated rock walls, everything is coated in darkness. The miner picks up a single lit lantern, most likely the one he carried as he ran out to us, and the rest of us take a few from a pile, strike flames to life, and follow him.
    The cave flashes into view, tools littering a corridor two arm lengths wide and little more than a full man’s height tall. Silence ensnares us the moment we enter the tunnel, the only noise the muted shuffling of our feet as we take cautious steps into the shadows.
    Fingers brush my wrist, a delicate touch that grows bolder when I pull up a weak smile for Theron. He doesn’t say anything, though I can tell by the way his mouth pops open that he wants to. What is there to say, though, beyond murmurings of disbelief?
    I squeeze his fingers and tug him forward, leading him into the darkness.
    More shafts open along the way, but the miner at the front of our group leads us past them all, plunging into the deepest tunnel in the Klaryns. The air smells of ancient, musty grime, coating my