“It has left us inquitethe predicament.”
Ger had spent enough time around the Sorceress that he’d begun to hear the implication beneath the sweet, melodic chime of her words. He wondered if anyone else heard it now; that hint of disdain.Irresponsible,she seemed to say.Foolish.
Ger may have had little affection for Selma as the withholding mother of his dearest friend—but hehadrespected her as his steadfast, benevolent queen. They all had. Imagined or not, the slight to her memory rankled him, stiffened his spine. At the ensuing silence, he slowly raised his head.
Though nodding, Edward was carefully checked out, staring at the shimmering frosted pillar nearest to him. Doran was smirking. But Bertha’s lips were a tight line, and Norris frowned down at his feet; neither of them spoke a word.
“The Cold Council has the power to name an heir,” Avette said. Not an observation or even a reminder, but a gentle prompt.
Still, they said nothing. Norris slowly raised his eyes from his feet, frown flickering like he struggled to flatten it as he met the Sorceress’s eye. Ger tugged at the front of his armour; his chest was tight, and every burning cold breath was thinner than the last.
Avette loosed one long, beleaguered sigh. It was a sigh of exhaustion; the sigh a queen might heave after years of labouring under the weight of her crown.
A crown Avette did not yet wear.
Movement caught the edge of Ger’s eye, and he realised the weary sigh had not been Avette’s at all, but Aera’s; a thin gust of wind that barely ruffled the Sorceress’s white skirts. It was the only warning the Councillors had before the ceiling began to reach for them, talons of ice creeping toward their heads. Norris skidded back, dragging Bertha with him, both of them bleating in panic when they slammed into the immovable wall that was Captain Doran. He glanced down at them, narrow lips slashing wide in a dark grin, his hand curving around the handle of his sheathed blade.
Ger’s own hand twitched at his side, brushing the hilt of his sword in its scabbard.
Protector.
He could have drawn it. He could have charged Doran or beat back the creeping ice with a well-placed swing. Heshouldhave; the man he’d been even a week ago would not have stood for this, would not have stood by.
I am a protector.
But the Ger of today had seen how such defiance was rewarded; the Ger of today could barely move for that knowledge, for the heart that galloped in his chest so fast that his floundering lungs could not keep up. The hot rush of his blood sang in his ears, head swimming so violently he could barely see straight. Even if he could, he wouldn’t watch. Hecouldn’twatch.
But the Sorceress could.
She looked on vacantly, detached and almost bored as she blinked her long dark eyelashes and tilted her head. She didn’t trouble to raise her voice; not above their terrified gasps nor the whisper of Aera’s winds, a soothing hush to the creak of the ice that wreathed itself in increasingly jagged layers.
“The Council,” Avette repeated, “must name an heir.”
Had Bertha not fallen to kneel beneath the cruel reach of the ice, Ger’s lurch beneath his own weak knees couldn’t have gone unnoticed. As it was, it earned him only a snort as he righted himself, then a quick elbow to the ribs from the nearest gard, that stupid, brutal giant, Benan.
“Try not to pass out, Pup,” Benan sneered. “Best is yet to come.”
Ger barely heard him. His focus had narrowed to the cool hilt of his sword at his fingertips, and hemadehimself recall the day he’d gotten it. The chorus that had rung through his head; the words he still whispered to himself in those rare yet terrifying moments when his breath would thin to make room for his frantic heart.
I am a Gard of Eisalaan.
I am a protector, and I am protected.
“We will,” Bertha whimpered.
She crouched so low beneath the jagged stalactite that her elbows had come to rest on the frosted ground. Norris, at her side, had pressed his forehead to the frosted floor. They could’ve been a devout pair at the altar of the Goddess, were it not for their mirror expressions of sheer terror.
“We will name Selma’s Heir,” Bertha said again, louder now, straining to be heard over the ominous creak of the ice. Her voicesplintered at the edge of every word, high and pleading. “We must. Of course, we must.”
The creaking ceased; the wind died.
At a gentle gesture from his queen, Doran yanked the councillors out from beneath the stalactites, a little rougher than necessary; sullen as a child made to tidy up their playthings. A petulant scowl tugged at his brow as he watched them scramble to their feet.
“We will,” Norris panted. He nodded shakily. “It’s our duty.”
Avette only smiled.
“Wonderful.”
