It’s unnerving. Spirits are meant to leave the world behind, even the Icebound. To keep them here for personal needs is… unsavory. It sort of reminds me of Dima and Barty, but I would call what they have more of an agreement than enslavement.
After visiting Neve in her room, I retreated to the shadows, unobserved. She doesn’t sleep, walking around the guest-room and muttering to herself. I leave to monitor the restof the palace when it’s clear she’s not going to leave her new suite.
Ronnie sleeps the night away, but peering through her room and the adjacent spaces doesn’t provide anything I don’t already know.
Before sunrise, I leave the castle. As much as I want to loiter and see how the two queens interact, I have things to handle around the land. I shouldn’t even stay near the castle with the number of dead I’m certain have congregated in the rural parts of the Frostlands, but Neve is my draw. I don’t want to leave when she’s just awoken, all her former allies dead or turned into enemies.
To be fair, she wants me dead, as well.
Sighing, I head to the outskirts of the kingdom where the peasants live, the streets no longer familiar to me after all these years.
While sweeping through to reap the dead, I let my mind wander. Neve was truly surprised by my Reaper status, so I assume the royals didn’t have an intricate working of death anymore than the rest of us did. Ray and Zarev haven’t said if either of their princesses knows much about their status. Reapers are new, but at the same time, the concept ofreapingcannot be. The world was not overrun by the dead when the four of us shifted, so the Shadow Man was doing his work before we rose.
Sitting on the palace roof, I dig out my seeing stone to reach out to my friends for the first time in a longwhile.
The stone glows for several minutes before I get a response, which is sort of what I expected. I’m still surprised he answers. “Ban.”
“Lucius,” I reply, smirking into the stone. His sightless eyes stare back, a cruel gift the Mad Queen bestowed upon him. “How’s that librarian of yours at research?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his head cocking to one side. Lucius and I look similar, his light blond hair closer to my white than either Zarev or Raymundo. It’s funny how we live on opposite sides of Mystica, yet our looks are the closest. Of course, my hair used to be dark until I received my ice magic.
“Ban, you know she’s a ghost.”
Ah, yes, the ghost of Thornton Palace. Lucius's live-in living dead. I’ve never seen her, but he’s mentioned her enough times for me to get the general idea. She’s not a spirit in the traditional sense, but I don’t know how to label her. “Yeah, her. Think she can look into something for me?”
“Bellarose doesn’t really take direction,” he grumbles, and I almost laugh. He’s getting bested by a ghost. I’m almost not sure how he can call himself a Reaper. “Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story, friend. I’m hoping to do a bit of research.”
“You want to learn something?” he asks, surprised. A smirk tugs at his lips. “Has it been so long you’ve forgotten how to read?”
“Ha,” I reply dryly, shaking my head. “Your library is probably the most intact thing in Mystica. I need to do a little digging into the royal bloodlines of the Frostlands.”
His head tilts to the side, brows furrowing together. It makes the scars on his cheeks shift, lifting the hearts just a little. “They don’t have a royal library? All royals have a library, Ban. Even a hall of accords, something to track the passage of time.”
“I’m aware. But I’ve wandered through the palace plenty of times, and I have yet to see a library.”
“Hmm. I suppose with a hundred years on the throne, the Snow Queen might have made some changes.”
My back straightens. Even when I was snooping for answers about where the damn needle was, nowhere I lookedand no one I listened to had such a refined timeline of events. Rumors of Ronnie’s long rule are old news and the order of events is muddled. Even the nobles’ homes I searched through, looking for the needle, weren’t that informed. “You’re sure it’s a century.”
“Well, that’s about how old you are, right, Ban?” he asks. I may not have gone into details about my knowledge of the royals of the Frostlands in the past, but I have mentioned it. My friends are well aware of my age. “You’ve brought up King Andor here and there. I studied my parents’ records in great detail. Andor died about a hundred years ago. You were alive then and the Ice Queen rumors began at the same time. It makes sense.”
“Yet I can’t find a library of documentation out here.”
Lucius shrugs, moving back until I can see the folded tips of his wings. I’m surprised to see them at all. Usually, when we speak, they aren’t in sight at all, and I don’t think he’s flown in a long time. I’m not sure he can anymore. “Thornton is a small land ruled by me. I can control what disappears with time and what doesn’t. The Frostlands is full of deceit. Perhaps the interim queen isn’t sharing the truth.”
I don’t bother to correct Lucius about the Dowager Queen crap I keep hearing.Interimsounds so much better. “You have no idea.”
“There’s nothing new about the Frostlands’ records on my end,” Lucius goes on. “No new rulers, no new outsiders. That is a land paused in time. Snedronningen has had a century to change the land into a kingdom of her own design. History may not have a place in her tomorrow.”
“You think she destroyed records of the past,” I groan.
“I think it takes one generation to wipe clean the recording of time,” Lucius says carefully. “She’s had four to turn the Frostlands into her utopia, to let the past be forgotten. She doesn’t reach outside the walls of her own kingdom, and tradewith the Frostlands is all but gone. The borders are closed, the people trapped, except for Icicle Pass. If she wishes to rewrite history, it would be the perfect time and place to do it.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. I doubt she will quietly step back and allow Neve to take the title of Queen after hiding her away. I ruined Ronnie’s plans, and until the Ice Queen trusts me, she isn’t going to listen to a word I say. Which she needs to if we plan to fix the deceit of the Snow Queen.
“I take it you won’t ask the ghost, then?” I sigh.
