“I died at twenty-six,” I explain. “That was about a century ago, so I’m about one-twenty-six. Ray is technically close to forty, or something like that. He stopped aging ten years ago, like the rest of us. Although I stopped before that. I don’t know whether that should really change my age or not.”
Odette stares at me silently, and even though this conversation should be her informing me, I think I accidentally broke her brain. At least for the moment. “Maybe I should speak with Ray.”
She shakes her head, brows drawing together. “Ray is with Thomas and Rapunzel right now. She’s healing him again.”
Shit, again doesn’t sound good. How much healing can he take before it stops working? Pursing my lips, I try to find something comforting to say. Unfortunately, that’s never been my strong suit.
Odette saves me the trouble. “Let me get this straight. The Queen—the Snow Queen—she was alive a century ago. So is the Queen who was put under the spell her, or–”
“Her daughter,” I clarify. “Neve Glacia.”
“Oh! I vaguely recall her name.” Odette taps her chin thoughtfully. “Yes, Neve. Only child of the royals, if I remember right. She’s powerful, too. Same sort of winter magic as her parents, but strong like her mother’s magic.”
“More ice than snow-based,” I grumble.
Odette nods. “Of course. I guess that goes with the frozen sleep. Wait—that’s what the needle was for, or something to do with that?”
“Correct.”
She hesitates, looking at something I can’t see before she begins moving. The background shifts behind her, and she’s tilted the stone partway above her head, so I can’t quite see what she is doing as she moves.
“Ray!”
I cringe. As much as Arrows is fun to talk to, if he’s with his ailing brother, that’s where he should stay. I don’t want to interrupt because of a weird fixation about the past.
Odette moves around a little more before I see her face again, and part of Raymundo’s. “Tell Ban about your plan.”
When she turns the stone to Ray, he looks godawful. I suddenly understand why Zarev’s been my only contact since the tavern burned. There are bags beneath Ray’s eyes and stubble across his face. He never looks that unkempt.
Swiping a hand across his face, he looks between the two of us. “Now?”
“Yes,now,” Odette emphasizes. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few days since I last saw them. Ray has aged five years since then, and it only increases my worry about Thomas. “He’s doing a bit of research himself.”
That gets Ray’s attention, and his eyes widen at me. “You’re reading?”
“Why is everyone so damn surprised by that?” I groan. “I’m just trying to understand more of what’s going on in the Frostlands.”
“And we need to understand the beanstalk,” Odette adds, speaking before Ray can. “The work going into building the new tavern is happening really fast since Lucius sent money, and myparents sent aid. Dahlia is a little…uncomfortable with it all, but it’s her design.”
My eyes widen. That doesn’t feel like a few days’ work. When we want to, the four of us can work extremely fast. Between Lucius sending money and Odette’s family sending aid, the tavern will probably be rebuilt in a matter of days. The emotional scars will be the next hurdle.
“Anyway,” she continues, “We need to investigate the beanstalk. Yesterday a huge log fell out of the sky. Zarev says it looks like a club.”
That’sinteresting. I take a peek at Ray, but his expression is unreadable.
Don’t start dreaming your father is somewhere waiting to be found in the clouds, Arrows. He left the world long ago, passing into the next life. It’s a fool's hope.
“We’re still figuring out the specifics,” Odette goes on. “Tom needs Rapunzel here, and getting things going for the tavern and Ray’s family is the top priority. One Reaper should probably remain here–”
“I can’t leave my brother,” Ray hisses, his voice pained.
“And I wouldn’t expect you to,” Odette agrees, patting his shoulder. “But we have to see if there’s a threat up there, and Zarev was talking to Legs who mentioned something about a–”
“Pool of Truth,” I breathe, remembering what Legs said when I stopped in the garden. That feels like ages ago. “I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Well,” Odette says, wiggling her eyebrows, “I learned that Zarev had asecondcopy of Through the Looking Glass, the book of Ray’s that got damaged during the flood in the caves. We fanned through, found the Pool of Truth, and he reached out to Legs. That’s the other reason we have some investigating to do up there.”
A looking glass. My only experience with one was the hidden looking glass beneath Swan Lake, and I didn’t enjoy it much. “How does that have anything to do with me?”
