“Inga had access to not only Queen Revna, but to King Harald before the White Bear’s Rebellion.”
My eyes widened.
“She used her magic to attack the king as Magnus commanded. Under threat of her own life, of course. Inga would never have?—”
“Leyv, are you saying that . . . by the dead gods.” My hands flew to my mouth as the pieces shuffled into place. The timeline crystallized.
“Inga poisoned your father’s mind. Bit by bit. Day by day. She turned him into the Cold King that the realm despises.” The words were rushing from him, as though if he said them fast enough, they’d hurt less. “And when she left the castle, her hold was unbreakable.”
“Not even our mother could help him,” my voice broke, and Thyra stiffened.
Long ago, I read a little of the queen’s diary. Before she became queen, my mother had been on track to become a Master Healer. She’d believed that she could have healed her husband from his madness, if only she’d completed her training.
But no. My mother would never have succeeded in healing the king. Not with a whisperer hiding nearby, attacking his mind. Turning Harald Falk on himself. On his people. His kingdom.
“Look at me, Lord Riis,” I demanded.
He lifted his gaze. Shame ran heavy along his every feature.
“How long have you known this?”
“As it was happening.”
An orc might have punched me in the belly with one of their meaty hands, and it would have had less of an impact. My heart raced, and every part of me clenched, as if bracing for something worse to come. And yet somehow, I managed to tower over him.
He was a male I’d trusted for many moons now. The first one to suspect who I was at court. Vale’s father. Someone I cared for.
And he’d betrayed me. He’d known what his lover was doing and allowed her to destroymy family. Frost formed on my fingers and began to bloom around the room. I struggled to call my power back, to gain control, and managed, though just barely.
“Why is she admitting this?” Thyra’s voice rang out in the empty library, as hard as ice, whereas I felt like a flurry of snow—going in every which direction.
“Inga has regretted her actions for a very long time,” Lord Riis repeated, “but she had our sons to think of. Now, she sees the way things are going and knows that Neve is important to Vale. She thought that, given their love, Neve deserved the truth. She didn’t know about you, Thyra, but she’d think the same of you.”
“Leave.” I straightened. My entire body felt so cold, as though I’d explode in a storm of ice at any moment.
“Please, Neve.” Lord Riis leaned closer, his gaze beseeching. “I should have told you when I learned who you were, but I love Inga with everything that I am. I could not bear to?—”
“I said leave! I don’t want to see your face!” I spun away, my chest heaving as breath became very difficult to come by.
A chair scraped against the floor, and heavy footsteps walked toward the door. When it shut, I exhaled.
“I have to say,” Thyra came to stand by me, “I imagined a lot of treachery at court during our parents’ last days, but I never suspected this.” A tear trailed down her cheek. “Nor did I think I’d be crying over our family now, all these turns after they died, but?—”
“He wasn’t insane or cruel.” I took her hand and found it was as cold as mine.
“It was all a lie,” she agreed.
Our father wasn’t perfect. We’d heard the stories of the harem he kept before he’d met our mother, and other tales revealed him to be as flawed as any other fae. But he wasn’t the monster that history would write him as either. “Magnus told his wife to make our father do those things so he might gain support among the other nobles.And it worked.Our family is dead because of King Magnus’s plan.”
It all stemmed from the male on the throne. From the king’s hatred of our family—of the father who had never claimed him, our uncle, Prince Calder Falk. A memory of the skeletal prince, clinging to life in the dank and stinking eastern dungeons of Frostveil, made me scowl. If he’d shown his son the slightest bit of love, would any of this have happened?
I’d never have an answer. No one could change the past. Not even the dead gods. And if they possessed such magic, I doubted that they’d try. Those gods were long gone, dead. Or hiding among the stars like cowards. In the here and now they didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Lord Riis had betrayed me, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive him. Or at the very least, see him in the same light I once had.
More chilling was my second thought. One that would very much affect my mate.
If I was not mistaken, Queen Inga had tasked Lord Riis with giving us this information because she didn’t believe she could hold Rhistel in her thrall for much longer.
