“And Avette?”
The Queen understood what he was asking, and bowed her head.
“That very day. I’m so sorry.”
Dead.
And the Queen wassorry, for his loss, for his pain, a pain he did not feel.
He should have felt something.
He felt nothing.
Nothing but the determined panic that had gripped and buoyed him all the way from the Laune to the brutes at the palace gates. The fear for the Merrow he had left behind, huddled and shivering, hidden in the barren clearing that had once been a deep, lush forest.
“There must be a way.”
“A way?”
“A way to end the curse. The everwinter.”
The Queen’s smile was tight, sadness and determination warring at her fine features.
“The Frost is no curse, Your Majesty. Though of course, I am sympathetic to your ordeal. I do understand why it might seem that way to you and yours, really I do.”
Kai could only stare. “To me and mine? Your country has beenfrozenfor six hundred years.”
“And we have thrived.”
No.
No, no, no, no,no.
“My home is beneath the Laune,” he said hoarsely. “You said you wanted to help.”
“And I do. I want to help the Merrow find their place in this world, and I will do everything in my power to make it so. But we have built our economy on the magic of the Frost, right on the surface of the Laune. Without it, Eisalaan would fall to ruin.”
Kai was on his feet before he could stop himself.
“Andwithit, my Kingdom is lost to the depths.”
He hurled the words at her, straining not to roar them, but even at that, a rustle sounded in the hall, a burly sentry opening the door to peer inside.
The Queen calmly waved him away again. When the door clicked shut, she raised her eyes to Kai. The rage that coursed through him was familiar, the friend that had kept him company through centuries of endless dark. He gave in to it. Let it flood him now, let his shoulders heave with it.
“Please sit down, Your Majesty.”
When he did not, she sighed a tired sigh and stood, gripping her seat for support. She could not match him for height, but somehow she managed to meet his eye as though she towered over him. She spoke to him in a firm, clipped tone that cut him down to size.
A true Beira; he could see it now.
“Allow me to speak to you as one ruler to another. You are young. Your reign was brief before the Frost but, by my ancestor’s account, you are a good King and a better man. Avette seemed a brilliant woman and I would like to believe she would not allow herself to be blinded by love.
“So, live up to her word. Be the man she believed you to be. Save those you can save. Do not drag your surviving people through a war they cannot win, for some shadow of a hope that your lost Kingdom survived six hundred years under the full, frozen weight of the Laune.”
Solemn silence followed, and Kai let it close around him. He was shaken to his core, his cherished rage suddenly suffocated.
He did not trust himself to answer, but when she reached for his hand, he let her take it.
