I’m the fucking queen. I’m supposed to be the most lethal person in the land. I won’t let him stop me, not when I can and will defeat him.
For Father.
“You killed King Andor,” I say, praising myself for the confidence in my voice. “My father. You stole him from me. I’ll take your life as repayment.”
Something passes through his blue eyes, but he nods before I can continue. “I look forward to it, Neve.”
Stepping forward, I’m fully prepared to keep fighting him until I can carve a safe path home. What must Mother think? I’ve been gone an unknown amount of time, and I don’t trust that Ban’s words carry the truth.
Instead, my knees crash into the ground. Ban blurs in front of me, the adrenaline rush abandoning me. As I feel my eyes closing, the terror of being sucked into an endless sleep again hits me. The last thing I see before my eyes shut is the ice mage taking a step forward.
Chapter 8 Ban
Damned fool.
Once Neve collapses, her anger fading as exhaustion hits, I step closer and assess the Queen. She’s pretty resilient for a woman who’s been asleep for one hundred years, but as Legs predicted in the Butterfly Garden, fatigue hit her quickly. I doubt Neve getting into a fight and vaulting off the mountain was what Legs had in mind when we spoke, however.
When I step over to her, I check her out for any cuts or bruises. She’s remarkably skilled, a far cry from the woman with terrified eyes who I saw in the palace dungeons. Supposedly she fell into the frozen sleep shortly after the events of that night, yet the Queen I just fought is a force to be reckoned with. What changed in those few short days to make her such an exceptional foe?
I thought calling the shadows out would be jarring enough to still her hand and get her to listen to reason. Neve is emotionally driven; I knew that from the first time I met her.
“You always fought for what you believed in so passionately,” I say with a sigh, reaching into the shadows for the rest of my supplies. Legs gave me a salve to apply to her hand, the point where Ronnie more than likely repeated the curse over and over again to keep her daughter under. Now that Neve is awake, the curse has been broken. I have the needle, so I’m not entirely sure what the Snow Queen used for all these years.
Neve twitches in her sleep, whimpering as she dreams. I imagine, so soon after waking from a one-hundred-year spell, she has to harbor some fears about closing her eyes again. Hopefully this won’t keep her out long, and if nothing else, it’ll give me the chance to help the Queen down the mountain without watching her struggle on her own. Whether or not she could ever admit it, she needs a good deal of rest and healing after lying dormant for so long.
The sun is mostly gone by the time I’ve applied the salve. I sit beside the sleeping queen and survey the land. For all the unrest out here and Neve being caught in limbo, I’m surprised I don’t see more Icebound. Perhaps the Snow Queen’s evil kept them away.
At least for now, it’s one less thing to worry about.
Studying the Queen, I’m stunned by how similar she looks to the last time I saw her. Same short, dark hair. Same tension between her brows, even when asleep. Her gown is close to what she wore that night she found us in the dungeon, and her face is clear of any makeup just as it was last time.
She’s beautiful; an untouched gem that time can’t change.
“Rest, Neve,” I say, stretching out my legs before crossing them at the ankle. My black blood still pumps from the high of being in a real fight, and I need to cool down and collect my emotions before I let anything get out of hand. I’ve had a long time to learn to control and master my ice. The shadows are another thing I’ve learned to finesse. I have to spend a bit of time relaxing for things to be manageable again, so I may as well bask in the cold with the Queen.
When I first died, I thought my ice was a curse. Now I rely on it more than I would ever admit to, letting my staff send little dustings of snow along the path as the moon appears in the dimming sky.
The moon.A friend I barely know, but is always there. I don’t know whether any of Ronnie’s musings held merit or not, but some, like the Snow Queen, believe my curse is gifted from the moon itself.
“Think anyone's missed me?” I say, glancing toward the glowing crescent. Tonight is cloudless, letting me see the moon directly. My silent companion in the night says nothing, which isn’t that unusual. “Have you, old friend?”
There's no response, there never is. I'm not certain, even all these years later, that there is anyone up there who might hear me. The only things I have to go on are my ice powers and the moon illuminating the sky the night I first died. When I fell from the pass, I accepted my fate and my death.
Forces outside my control seemed to have other plans.
“I suppose you won't tell me anything anyway.” I sigh, turning toward Neve as a breeze blows past. It upsets her hair, and I find myself brushing it behind her ears as she rests. I almost believe I’m talking to her when I continue, “Will you allow the Icebound spirits to wreak havoc again tonight?”
There’s still no response from above, but given the cold dreariness of the land I expect to cross at least one Icebound later. I told Lucius about them once, and he seemed alarmed that I had been handling them alone, but when you get down to the details, they aren’t any different from the souls we’re reaping now.
They are just older, colder, and tormented by loneliness and regret. Sometimes, I wonder if they’re what spirits used to become before my Hell Brothers and I became the Reapers. We don’t have anything to go on about who took care of channeling the dead into the next life before we were assigned our roles.
I’ve gotten very good at handling them since I first died. Even before I was a Reaper. Sometimes the presence of theIcebound is good, because it shows the spirits a fate worse than death or splintering.
“I wonder if you could see them in your dreams,” I go on, keeping my gaze on Neve. “If the Icebound ever tried to speak with you. Would you try to stop your mother then?”
Thinking back to the first time I spoke with the Ice Queen, I wonder if she ever put together who I was. I was a wholly different person when I was alive.
“The princess doesn’t need to hear a peasant boy’s woes,” the guard says, shaking his head at me. Today we’re allowed to go in and seek an audience with the royals, sharing what we so desperately need with King Andor and the Snow Queen, hoping for pity.
