“Your Majesty.” He swallowed. “We can’t hold the line another night. The men?—”
“The men will hold,” I said, willing it to be true. “Reinforcements will be here in three days, and more rations to go with it.”
He hesitated. “I don’t know if they have three days.”
I swung my gaze to him sharply.
“Their morale is weaker than their swords, Your Majesty,” he was quick to add.
“I’ll speak to them,” I said, turning my horse away from the razed village. “Let them rally behind their love for their kingdom.”
It was all we had left.
My tent stood apart from the rest, large enough to remind everyone who I was supposed to be. The canvas was embroidered with the crest of Autumn—a stag crowned in gold leaf, though the threads had dulled, brittle with cold. Inside, a fire warmed the space, but it did nothing to chase away the Winter queen’s brutal bite.
I sat at my campaign desk, staring at a map of what used to be our northern provinces. Every mountainside village below the Concordian Ridge was marked in red. Every line of defense already gone.
All we had was this camp. At least until the new additions arrived in a few more days. More Autumn soldiers; our strongest fae. The legions who hadn’t yet been required to donate their power to my father’s vanity. And The Withered. Or a small contingent of them, anyway. The few whohad agreed to work with me toward our common goal, though its outcome remained to be seen. As did our fragile alliance.
Even Lemuel did not know of that partnership.
“Majesty?”
The flap opened, letting in a gust of snow, and a soldier bent nearly double with it. His armor was rimed with frost. His cheeks were flushed pink with windburn.
“Report,” I said.
“An emissary arrived from the north.”
“The north?” I echoed, frowning.
“The queen requests an audience.”
I looked up. “Heliconia?”
The man nodded once. “At the ridge. Alone.”
The wordalonecarried no comfort. Heliconia didn’t need an army to make a point.
I stood, brushing frost from my cloak. “Ready my horse.”
The soldier bowed low and hurried stiffly out.
The ridge overlooked what used to be farmland—now a wasteland of cracked ice and shattered fences. She was waiting there, as promised, at the center of it all.
I’d seen her once before. Years ago, when she’d come to my father’s court. To woo him to her side. His ego hadn’t allowed a true alliance. I’d glimpsed her then. Young, vibrant, eyes glinting with a hunger that might have been mistaken for passion or even kindness. But that version of her was gone.
Now, Heliconia stood in a furred cloak the color of a winter storm, her skin pale as carved marble. Thick brown hair hung loose and wild where the wind caught it. She was attractive, but not beautiful. Not with such a hard mouth and eyes that stayed half-narrowed, as if everything she saw disappointed her. Too much cruelty had carved itself into her face, and the rest of her seemed to wear it like a crown.
Frost curled outward from her boots, spreading across thefrozen ground in delicate veins. Something in me recoiled at the power that rolled off her.
Like one of the gods.
I batted the thought away.
She was mortal, same as all of us.
“Your Majesty,” she said as I approached. Her smile was thin, sweet, sharp. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
