Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  CLASH OF ICE AND RUIN

  Frost and Fire, Book Three

  Val Saintcrowe

  CLASH OF ICE AND RUIN

  © copyright 2023 by Val Saintcrowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  BANYAN THRICEBORN WAS at the east entrance to the South Ridge Academy, watching as her former mate Odion Naxim climbed onto an ice dragon along with Colonel Rabi and flew away.

  “We never did find the colonel’s body,” said Slate Nightwing, at her back. He was looking over her shoulder. She’d be mated to Slate in a month, maybe less. His dragon was going to go into heat, and it would happen. Agnis above, her dragon wanted it. Erach had never wanted to be mated to Odion’s dragon anyway. Erach would be happier with Slate’s dragon, Yilia. Maybe this was the way it should have been all along.

  “I didn’t even go looking for the colonel,” said Banyan. Odd, really. If she had an archnemesis, it would be Colonel Rabi, the former head of the Academy, who’d tortured her and Odion both, all in service of making them better soldiers. We all have to make sacrifices for the war effort, he’d say, with that awful smile of his. She’d always hated the colonel, and yet she’d never made sure he was actually dead. “It doesn’t surprise me that he couldn’t kill himself.” They’d found him with his dead mate in his arms. They’d both been bitten by ice monsters and both known they’d turn. The general had done herself in, but the colonel hadn’t. He’d begged Banyan to kill him. “I should have done it.”

  “Killed him, you mean?” Slate shrugged. “Great God Tan, I should have done it myself. I went looking for you, getting Yilia to trace you and Erach. I just left him there, and then, everything was so horrible, I sort of forgot about him. But is he really the thing we need to be focusing on right now?”

  Banyan stepped inside and shut the door. “We’ve been lax with security. We assumed that because the Frost needs to alter the temperature, the ice monsters couldn’t attack without an announcement of their arrival in the form of ice clouds.” When dragon turned, they became ice monsters, capable of breathing out icy clouds that blocked out the sun and and lowered the temperature. Enough of that and the Frost could turn any area cold enough for attack. “But he was just here, standing in the warmth, as if it didn’t even bother him. We don’t know nearly enough about them, Slate.”

  “We don’t,” agreed Slate.

  She started walking down the hallway. “We need guards on every door, at every window. We need patrols, riders on dragons circling the school at all times. We need to take down all the trees surrounding the place so that we have good sight lines. And we need to go out and capture some of them and lock them up and observe them. We need to figure out if we can cure the ones who’ve turned or if there’s any way to kill them that we haven’t thought of. We need—”

  “You want me to be writing this down or something? Am I your secretary?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “No, of course not. Sorry.” She lapsed into silence.

  Slate fell into step with her. “We’re not going to talk about it, princess?”

  “Talk about him, you mean?” Her voice cracked. “What is there to say?”

  Slate let out a noisy breath.

  They walked in silence for some time. They climbed a set of stairs. At the top, they turned a corner to go into the wing where their room was located.

  Slate started talking again. “He wants to fight you. You want to fight him. You’re both enjoying yourselves.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want people to die. He doesn’t either.” She considered. “Of course, he probably doesn’t even think of it as death anymore. He said that, didn’t he? ‘I’m not dead.’ You heard him talk about the Family. Once the Frost gets you, turns you, it’s in your head. He’s…” Her lower lip trembled. Odion was gone. She knew this. She’d already killed one man who’d been intimate with her, one man who’d been taken by the Frost. Now, she was going to have to kill Odion, too, and Odion was more to her than Deke had ever been. Odion was her perfect match, her rival, her mate.

  They were supposed to fight the Frost together.

  It was never supposed to be her versus him.

  But even thinking that, well, she wondered. Maybe this was the only way it could ever have worked out. And Slate wasn’t entirely wrong, because something rose in her at the idea of fighting Odion. She remembered the first time she’d been forced to face him in the glider arena, when it had only been a game, and the way she’d felt a little excited at the thought, because it would be fun to have a worthy opponent.

  This was war.

  This wasn’t fun.

  And yet…

  Slate took her by the shoulder. “Hey. I get it.”

  She stopped and faced him in the hallway. “What?”

  “You think I don’t understand liking it, princess?” said Slate. “There’s a reason that sitting at headquarters before everything went sideways made me crazy, after all. I like to fight. I like to fly. I like to burn shit. Everyone who’s ever been a rider likes that.”

  “Do you really get it?”

  “The truth is, we just fucked up,” said Slate, turning to walk away from her. “We should have killed him. It’s what he would have wanted.”

  She hurried to catch up with him. “No, it is not. He specifically said that if he was turned, he didn’t want to be killed.”

  “He was trying to get you to kill him before the monsters came and took him away, and he bargained himself away for your safety, and we should have killed him.”

  They were back to their bedroom. Slate threw open the door and went inside.

  She came after him and slammed the door. “No way. Are you insane? Kill Odion? I could never.”

  “Right, well me either,” said Slate, rounding on her. “But why is that, princess?”

  “Because I love him.”

  “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “You think I’m lying?” She folded her arms over her chest.

  “Not lying, maybe, but just…” Slate shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know what love even is.”

  Uncomfortably, she thought of Odion, last year, standing in her room when she’d been assigned to a bask in the glider corps, trying to explain to her that she and him were different, that only someone like Deke, who wasn’t like them, could love her the way she really deserved.

  People like us, we don’t love like that.

  “I know what love is,” she said. But hadn’t she and Odion opened themselves up to Slate precisely because of this? Because Slate had a warmth to him that they didn’t have, because Slate could feel possessiveness in a way they couldn’t, because Slate could be… normal in some way that they couldn’t.

  He was supposed to complete them, be the third aspect to a triangle that would make them entirely human. Slate was supposed to make it all work.

  And now everything was entirely unworkable and she and Slate were sleeping in the same bed and never touching each other.

  “So,” said Slate, “what is love?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She threw up her hands and stalked past him. She climbed into bed. “You can’t ask me point blank like that. No one can just talk about love on the spot. It’s too complex a thing to talk about. But I care about him, and I could never hurt him, and I put him above other things.”

  “Do you.” Slate’s voice was hard. “Like what do you put him above?”

  “Everything.”

  “You put him above liking it? You like him more or fighting more?”

  “Look, if I wanted more than anything else to win the war against the Frost, I would have killed him just now—”

  “I didn’t say winning, I said fighting.”

  She flopped back onto the bed and pulled the covers over her head. “It’s the same thing. He is fighting. He’s always been fighting. We were only ever supposed to be together because we’d be so good together against the Frost. They put us together because our love would save the Trinal Kingdoms. Loving him and loving fighting, it’s the same thing. When I love him, it’s entwined in loving… whatever that is. Loving being the best, loving being someone who matters, loving being the f
ucking savior of humanity. I don’t know. What do you want? You want me to pretend I don’t feel that way? Because Odion would get it. And that’s why I love him.”

  Slate was quiet.

  She rolled over and curled up on the pillow, squeezing her eyes shut. “Loved him. Loved. Because he’s dead, and whatever is wearing his body and using his personality isn’t him. And you’re right. We do have to kill him.”

  She felt the weight of Slate climbing onto the bed next to her, but she simply tensed and curled up on herself harder.

  “I can’t,” said Slate.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t kill him,” said Slate.

  “Well, I can’t either.”

  “Because you want to fight him.”

  “No,” she whispered. It was only partly that. “Because I don’t want to be alive in a world where he doesn’t exist. Because who am I without him to define me? I only mean something because I’m better than Odion, because I’m wanted by Odion, because… without him, I’m not even real.”

  “Yes, you are,” said Slate. “You matter, and I… I’m the one who doesn’t exist, princess.”

  “You exist.”

  “Why?”

  She licked her lips. “What do you mean, ‘Why?’ What kind of question is that?”

  “Because I fuck you, then?” His hand was on her back, his big, large hand. “Because I make you surrender? Because I’m the one safe place where you don’t have to be the best, where you can submit?”

  She rolled over, searching his gaze. “That’s why we want you, Slate, it’s not why you exist.”

  “Everyone needs a reason to live, though, right? We’re alive to fight the fucking Frost, but I’m just a footsoldier, and you’re supposed to be the mastermind, you two are both supposed to be that. So I’m here, keeping you sane by letting you get fucked when you need it, and…” He sighed heavily, gazing up at the ceiling. “Want me to fuck you now?”

  She swallowed, lying next to him, and she didn’t say anything.

  Abruptly, he propped himself up and looked down at her. “You want to get yourself off first?” He raised his eyebrows at her, a shock of his dark red hair falling into one of his reptilian eyes. “I don’t mind. Play with your pretty pussy for me, princess. And then I’m going to fuck it.”

  “You don’t even want me,” she said. “You want him.”

  “I love him,” said Slate. “But I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Him wanting you made me want you. Fuck, I might even love you, too. I don’t feel like we’ve had enough time to—”

  “No.”

  “No?” He eyed her.

  She lifted her chin. “Someone said something about making me submit.” Her voice was breathy.

  “Right,” said Slate. “That’s what you want.”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Please.”

  “W-what about…?” Slate looked up at the ceiling. “Everyone keeps mentioning this Javor person but you don’t ever—”

  “Let’s never say his name,” she interrupted. The name Javor went through her like a spill of dark ink in clear water. It made her want to choke. “I just… I want to struggle and I want to say no, and I want you to…”

  It was quiet.

  He lowered his gaze to her, and she could see that his cock was tenting his trousers, which he’d put on before they’d gone into the hallway to chase Odion. He was very hard.

  She reached out and fondled him through his clothes.

  He let out a little wheeze. He didn’t stop her.

  “You’re angry with me, anyway, right?” she said. “Because I don’t love him the way you love him.”

  “Because he wants you more, even though I’m the one who actually loves him. Because he has some connection with you that he doesn’t have with me—”

  “He has some connection with you that he doesn’t have with me,” she snapped, squeezing his erection very hard.

  He gasped, tilting back his head, exposing the length of his neck to her. “Shit, princess, that’s good.”

  “You want to punish me,” she said. “And I want punished. So?”

  He shoved her hand off of his crotch and pinned her wrists above her head.

  She grinned up at him, a feral grin.

  He used his knees to push her thighs wider apart and settled between them. He gazed into her eyes.

  She tried to kiss him.

  He let her nip his lips and then pulled away. He let go of her wrists. “Undo my trousers, princess,” he said in a rough voice.

  She did it. She took him out. He was long and hard and pulsing, the skin here dark green, decorated with a starburst of red scales around the head of him. She ran her fingers over the pattern of the scales.

  He shivered. His nipples tightened. Abruptly, he adjusted himself, putting his knees around her thighs. “Roll over, princess.”

  She did that too, and he was moving her night dress out of the way, baring her bottom, baring her pressed-together legs. She had a rush of shivery fear, that he was going to fuck her there. She’d watched him fuck Odion there once, and she had to admit she was curious about it, but she was frightened in equal measure. If he tried it now, she thought she’d stop him.

  He didn’t, though. He picked up a pillow from the top of the bed, and wormed it under her body, bunching it under her mound.

  She let out a little cry at the sensation of it. She hadn’t realized that would feel so good.

  “You like that?” he breathed in her ear.

  She moaned her answer, and then he was inside her somehow. She didn’t even feel like it should work. He was holding her legs together with his legs, and there was certainly no path for him to even fit in.

  But it was fantastic.

  Her entire body felt compressed and stimulated, all of her sensitive places. The pillow did it, her own thighs did it, and his cock wormed its way in there and battered and stretched and rubbed her and she toppled off into some kind of warm, pink world of nothing but pleasure.

  He grunted into her, fucking her hard, and she moaned and sobbed and said his name over and over and over.

  He pulled out and spattered his release all over the curve of her ass and then told her to finish herself off in that position, something she did pretty quickly, touching her clit while Slate lay right next to her and whispered hoarsely in her ear. “Thinking about him?”

  “I’m…” She whimpered. Slate knew she needed a little bit of fantasy to get off, not a lot, not always, but just a little heightened bit of something to tip her over the edge.

  “Thinking about him and me? What’s he doing to me? What am I doing to him?”

  She hadn’t been thinking about that, but now she was. She moaned, “You’re inside him, and he’s so hard.”

  “Fuck, princess,” he growled in her ear. “You think about that and come. I want to watch you lose it. Don’t stop until you fall apart, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Slate, yes,” she moaned, and she ascended a mountain of sweetness that built and built until it was too much and she clenched like mad, crying out her pleasure, face down on the bed. It had been quite a while since she’d had an orgasm.

  Slate rolled over onto his back when she was done.

  She pushed up on her elbows.

  He sighed. “Shit.” He mopped up his ejaculate with his trousers. “Sorry.”

  “It’s… it’s fine.” She looked down at him. “Are we…?”

  “No,” said Slate.

  “Right,” she said and lay down on her back next to him. “Well, good night, then.”

  “Yeah, night, princess. Sleep well,” he bit out, as if he was angry.

  She pulled the covers up to her chin. She supposed they weren’t going to cuddle afterwards.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE STUDENTS WERE all coming back to the school within a week. Well, not all of the students. Banyan and the Quorum—what was left of the Quorum, which was four people, one of which was General Wilt who was running both the school and the war—decided that there was no need to recruit an undercadet class this year, and that anyone who hadn’t bonded a dragon yet should be told to stay home if they wanted. If they arrived at school, they would bond.

  This wouldn’t be a year of learning so much as it would be a year of defense.

  The Frost was coming, and they all knew it.

  It was going to be war, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.