I wait until she’s taken a breath before I move. She’s still on edge, and if I set her off again, she might resort to throwing ice once more. Twisting my wrists, the shadows bend to my will, dragging out exactly what I need.
Her eyes narrow as she studies the items in my hands: a spinning needle and a book. “Is this a joke to you?”
Without a word, I toss the two items at her. She almost lets them hit the snow before her hand slashes horizontally, creating a shelf of ice that keeps them from touching the powder. Her eyes harden as she glares at me.
Flexing my fingers, I turn and force my shadows into the stone.
Neve gasps as an image takes form, and I wait until she can see the full picture before I say anything. “I had a lot of timeto teach myself tricks since I was cursed by the moon. I used to be able to make little puppets out of ice to play in the shadows. It’s the same principle, except I don’t have to use anything except my magic to make the shadows move now.”
She is by my side in an instant, and I’m surprised by how quickly she moved. “It’s like a shadow puppet show, without the puppets.”
“Exactly.”
As I twist the shadows around until the image looks how I want, Neve’s breath hisses out beside me. She’s deathly silent when I speak. “A hundred years ago, the Ice Queen was struck down by a villager who wanted the kingdom to fall.”
Neve glares at me, but I ignore her, twisting the shadows. The picture I create, first depicting a long mountain and a single girl, moves until it’s similar to the cabin I found her in. The bed, the windows, the cliffside, it’s all there. My magic helps me get the images to appear almost exactly as I see them, so there’s no guesswork on Neve’s end about what I’m showing her.
“I don’t remember a villager,” she hisses.
“Just watch,” I reply, nodding to the boulder. When she finally looks back, I pick up the tale. “A small cabin, lost in the mountains, hid a secret frozen in time. The Queen sleeps for years on end, waiting for someone to break her spell.”
“And what was the spell?” Neve breathes.
“To break the frozen sleep,” I tell her. Changing the imagery again, I depict the palace dungeon. It’s harder to show a white slate like that, but the chains and little room are distinguishable enough. Crafting three figures, one bound in chains and two with crowns, I know this is where I’m probably going to lose her. “A spell not meant for her.”
Neve grabs my arm, digging her nails in. “Stop.”
If she really wanted me to stop, the ice would be back.
“I won’t show you the part you don’t wish to see,” I explain, and she must have picked up on what the image is. The dungeon will always be a visceral memory in my mind. I was barely coming into my ice and snow magic, and the King and Queen expected things from me that I couldn’t give. “You see, the frozen sleep is a curse passed from the Snow Queen–”
“I know that part,” Neve interrupts, her voice tense.
“Shh,” I tell her, glancing her way. She’s so stiff, her grip on my arm like a vise; she might change her mind and strike out at me after all. “The curse could be stopped, if she had enough magic to counteract it.”
“Magic?” Neve grumbles, staring at the scene. I move the shadows, bringing in a fourth figure, and I can feel her gaze burning into me again. “That didn’t happen. They didn’t say anything about magic.”
“No,” I tell her tightly. “I put that together later.”
On the boulder, she watches as I move the four figures, until there are two on each side. Neve and me, and her parents, standing opposite.
“Ban–”
Instead of focusing on the moment I grabbed her hand, coupled her magic with mine, and threw it back at her parents, I direct my attention to the couple instead. I don’t think Neve’s registered how her parents stood, or the moments leading up to her father’s death, when I wasn’t close enough to strike him. She was always too focused on me at that moment.
“Before the Ice Queen went to sleep,” I explain, “the Snow Queen ensured her eternal rule.”
I move the figures like I remember, their magic shooting in streaks from shadowy fingertips. But where Andor’s magic sailed toward us to counteract mine, Ronnie’s magic sailed someplace else.
Neve hisses when I show her mother striking her father in the back, and the scene immediately shifts. I was never in the dungeon after that, so I don’t know exactly what happened next.
The Ice Queen destroys the shadows before I can continue, her ice crackling across the surface of the boulder as I let the darkness fall away. Turning, I’m prepared for her fury. It was always bound to happen. A large part of me still doubts she’s going to believe me.
The tears in her eyes are not unexpected.
“Why?” she hisses. “Why lie?”
I hold up my hands, and she steps away. “Do you really believe it’s a lie?”
