Not that I’ve ever gotten it right in the past, but perhaps…under duress… I snort, envisioning myself asking the Faerie to stand still while Iattemptto sketch the complex grid of lines and swoops.
I suddenly think that this is why my parents kept me away: not because of the mate-prophecy, but because they somehow intuited I’d do something to ruin diplomatic relations with Glace, blunderer-extraordinaire that I am. May my meet-rude not lead to war.
The urgency to leave the Ice Kingdom finally guides my bleeding fingertip to the white wainscoting. Before pressing my palm to the lock glyph, I gather my boots against my chest and tuck in my elbows.
I don’t bump into anyone. The Faerie didn’t trick me.
I emerge inside an alcove, right next to a giant glass sphere filled with suspended flames that splashes soft beams onto the oil portrait of a white-haired Faerie. One who greatly resembles Konstantin Korol. His father, perhaps?
Their resemblance is so uncanny that it takes me a moment to detach my gaze from the painting. When I do, though, a gulp makes the bruise on my neck smart.
No wonder the Glacin King was perplexed as to how I entered his chambers.
4
ISLA
The hallway is crawling with Faerie and sprite sentries.
Technically, the sprites fly, but the rest of them prowl the long blue runner flecked with tufted snowflakes, or stand very still, with their backs plastered to giant, lustrous pilasters that seem carved from ice. The recessed wall behind me also looks scooped out of a snowbank, but a graze reveals it’s stone. I suppose that no amount of magic could keep an ice castle from melting.
Really not the time to ponder the architecture of Konstantin’s castle,I think.
Will there be a good time, though? Perhaps while everyone is at the Jubilee, I could take a covert tour.
Though I’m no criminal—at least, not in a premeditative manner—a tremor darts up my spine when one of the guards bracketing the alcove across from me glances my way. My anxiety disperses after I ascertain that my glamour endures.
I start to creep forward but come to a standstill when a sprite hisses, “Crow incoming.”
My heart hurdles into my throat. Could the miniscule winged being have detected me?
When faces pivot in the opposite direction, I blow out a breath. How serendipitous that…
I back up. Slam into something hard and hot and…oh…shit. I whirl and watch in horror as the luminous sphere wobbles on its shallow pedestal. I smack my palms against the scorching surface to steady it, and Holy Mother of Crows…
Though not quite as agonizing as the time I tried to cook breakfast for my parents and handled a cast-iron skillet without heat-proof gloves, blisters still bubble on my palms. But the burns become the least of my problems when I spy the bloody smear on the lucent surface.
Pulse blaring, I swipe my sleeve against the glass, succeeding only in spreading the stain and singeing another patch of skin. I suddenly abhor these decorative orbs with all my might. Especially when my name detonates between my skull.
I tuck my chin into my neck and clinch my lids.And this is when, Isla Ríhbiadh is reduced to a puny black bird.
Isla?my father grits out once more.You’re in—the soft crack of a neck, or of knuckles, stokes my anxiety—Glace?
Without recalling my invisibility, I turn to face him. He might not be able to see me, but I have no doubt he knows exactly where I stand.
Hinges suddenly groan. I assume he called my mother through their mind link, but it’s the door beside him that opens.
“I’m ready for that word you wanted before the festivities, Ríhbiadh,” Konstantin says, his pale fingers fastening platinum buttons up a jacket that gleams like the surface of our Lucin canals at first light.
My father pays his fellow monarch no mind, but I do. I focus on him instead of on the man currently heaving smoke like a chimney in the midst of winter. Though Konstantin’s wiped off the blood, his bottom lip, nose, and ears remain visibly battered.
“Vizosh! Your face!” The quick snatch of air that accompanies a sprite’s outcry redirects my father’s glower. “I’ll fetch the royal healer immediately.”
Konstantin dismisses his guard’s suggestion with a flick of his fingers and a quiet, “I’m fine, Borat.”
As he smooths his jacket sleeves, tugging on the cuffs of the black shirt beneath, my father inspects him from pointed ears to smooth chin.
“What the bloody skies happened to you, Korol?”
