Zarev’s glare nearly burns a hole into the side of my head, and I can’t look at him. There’s only one time a giant has been near both of us, and it was the night Jacob died. Didn’t Z mention something about seeing a giant before they arrived here?
“A giant,” Zarev says dryly, his voice getting a little louder. “Huh? You’ve never said much about giants up here, Ban. Though it seems like there are a lot of things you opted to leave out over the years. Kind of like the two queens. The thing you forgot to mention is you knew both personally, including the psychotic one I kept hearing about.”
I grit my teeth. He would choose now to make digs. “It was complicated.”
“So complicated you couldn’t tell any of us?” Z snaps, and I glare up at him again. “This happened because you couldn’t ask for help. We would have made the time to come here and assist the Queen.”
“Her name is Neve,” I reply in a whisper.
“Neve, then.” Zarev waved his hands in aggravation. “We would have helped if you ever decided to tell us anything that was going on! You kept your secrets close to your heart; you always have. You’re nearly as bad as Lucius.”
“You wouldn’t understand–” I begin.
A flurry of snow near the front of the cave cuts me off, nearly blowing out the flames of our fire.
Icebound.My eyes are locked on the figure approaching us, a lone individual just as he was the first night we spoke.
His cold, unforgiving eyes settle on me before shifting to Neve, who still lies unmoving beside me. She’s breathing, but that’s all. Her wounds aren’t getting worse, but they aren’t getting better, either. “How is my daughter?”
“Neve is still holding on,” I snap, glaring at King Andor. He claims he isn’t a king in the afterlife, but does someone ever stop being a ruler? Despite the solid, almost blue look of his appearance that matches the horns, the rest of him is largely unchanged. “Nothing to report”
Hetilts his head, sad eyes peering down at her. “The ice?”
“It holds!” Odette calls, hurrying over. Where Zarev is wary of the Icebound, Odette is overly curious. “Ban did a good job fusing the ice to the bones and reattaching everything.”
Andor nods to her before glaring at me again. “Yet the Queen doesn’t wake. Is your ice too weak to hold?”
“You said if she did not wake after a few days, you had another idea,” Zarev interrupts, speaking before I can. It’s probably a wise choice; I’m in no mood to have Andor speaking down to me in death just like he once did in life.
Andor doesn’t seem to be giving up on the hope that Neve will wake. He says there is a story his daughter needs to hear, specifically from him, if given the chance. He needs her awake to share, so first the frozen sleep and now her injuries are keeping him from talking with her.
Or, so he claims.
I don’t know how much to believe. But after he asked me, in detail, how my body fared after being tortured in the palace dungeons all those years ago, I decided he was the real deal. When Zarev probed, I told him it wasn’t a lie. But it’s not something I’m willing to relive at the moment.
The King isn’t like a usual spirit, nor is he like the Icebound that Ronnie controlled. He has a solid body, but if I look at him for too long, he seems to fade and disappear. The horns keep him from blending in, but he isn’t translucent comparatively to most spirits I’ve met.
And he certainly isn’t mad. I’d learned the Icebound are tortured or distraught spirits who cannot pass on. I can’t really get a read on him, but he seems resigned to his fate. Not comfortable, but maybe adjusted? I told Z and Odette about this when we first left the frozen kingdom to seek shelter in the cave, afraid of what might happen if we stayed there while Neve heals.
Slowly, Andor nods. “Yes, there is another idea. Suggested to me by the Spirit of Winter.”
I straighten, shooting Zarev a look that he mirrors. “The Spirit of Winter?” I ask.
Andor’s eyes harden. “Yes. There used to be two, blessed by the moon who cared for the spirits who guided the dead as they passed into the next life. There is only one. Glacia. And many years ago, there was Frost.” His eyes glare at me so hard, they may as well pop out of his translucent head. “Jack Frost, if I remember the stories properly.”
I lean back as though the spirit struck me.Jack Frost.The name threatens to throw me into the past, to a time when I lay dying at the bottom of a cliff.
It’s not the time to get stuck thinking about that now.
“Frost and Glacia,” Odette says, filling the silence when I don’t. “Frost and Glacia… Isn’t the Frostlands’ Royal Family called Glacia?”
Andor smiles, turning to acknowledge Odette. She’s hugging herself again, now that she’s stepped away from the fire. “That’s correct. Neve is the true Queen of the Frostlands. A true Glacia, born from the royal blood, the ancestors of the first Icebound who would help trapped spirits pass on. She was meant to interact with the Icebound. It is her birthright.”
When I glance at Zarev, he looks as uncertain as I feel when I speak. “A queen was meant to speak with the dead? Even if your family used to handle the dead, we haven’t seen or heard of anything like that in the ten years we’ve been Reapers.”
Andor clicks his tongue, looking between the two of us. “Reapers were not always the guards of Death. You help spirits pass on before they can fester, twist, and become something worse. Wraiths, isn’t that right? Twisted spirits who cannot move on?”
If I didn’t know better, I would think Andor was eavesdropping before he stepped in here.
