No, she thought. This isn’t how it ends. I’m the Queen of Rothen. And I don’t die like this. Rune does not die like this. An inexplicable sensation took hold of her, then. It began in her heart and spread outward, an icy chill. As if the mountains and the frozen rivers and the snow were all inside her, flowing through her veins, filling her up from head to foot. The sensation heightened, almost blinding her, vibrating through her skin. A prickling cold, coalescing at one single point — her hands. Crackling and glinting against the snowfall, its blade extending with the speed of a flash freeze,
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