“Is this what the Summer Princess taught you?” he sneers. “Have you forgotten everything I beat into you—discipline, control, and excellence—because you tasted a different court’s magic?”
I grit my teeth, focusing my power into a more concentrated attack—a spear of ice that shoots toward him with deadly speed.
He sidesteps it, but I graze his arm, pushing him back.
His smile vanishes as he rights himself. “Love makes you weak,” he says, his voice dripping with venom. “Yourwifeis a liability. A burning chain around your neck. She will melt everything that made you strong.”
He glances at Sapphire in her viewing box, and I make the mistake of following his gaze.
It’s all the opening he needs.
Ice erupts in a circle around him, shooting outward in deadly spikes.
I dodge most of them, but one pierces my shoulder, pain shooting down my arm.
I don’t make a sound. I don’t even flinch.
“Your mother was weak, too,” he says with a sickly amused laugh, and I draw my sword, charging before he can continue.
His blade meets mine with a crash that sends shock waves through the arena. Ice against ice, king against prince, father against son.
“She believed in mercy. In compassion,” he hisses, each word punctuated by a strike that forces me back. “And what did it get her, other than a frozen heart?”
I block out his words, fighting back with everything I have. Ice forms at my command, turning into weapons, shields, and barriers. I’m quick, using my grace to counter his brute force, but for every successful blow I land, he counters with two more.
The crowd watches in silence, the only sounds the clash of our blades and the crackle of magic. From the corner of my eye, I see Sapphire leaning forward, her knuckles white as she grips the railing of the viewing box.
“You think you won because you married her?” My father laughs, deflecting another of my attacks. “Your little fairy-taleromance will shatter under the weight of reality. When it’s done, you’ll be alone. You already learned it once, with your mother. And look what she did? She left us. She leftyou,”he continues, each word breaking whatever remained of the wreckage her death left around my heart.“She saw how her softness was making you weak, and she chose to die rather than stay. This perverse marriage to the Summer Princess is no different. It will break you all over again. And this time, you won’t survive it.”
His words hammer into the deepest parts of my soul, and then the tip of his blade is catching my side, cutting through flesh and knocking me to the ground.
A scream pushes at the back of my throat, but I force it down, refusing to give him the satisfaction of it. Instead, I jump to my feet and strengthen my shield. The cut along my side throbs, sharp and deep as it heals, the blood already freezing on my skin.
The pain is nothing compared to the agony twisting inside my chest.
You will always be alone.
I throw more magic into my shield, making it larger, thicker, andharder.
“No one will ever truly care about you,” he snarls, stalking forward. “Not even your precious Summer Princess. She might cling to her fantasy, but you and I both know the truth.” His voice drops to a softer, more vicious tone. “I made you what you are. Ice, through and through. Cold. Hard.Empty.”
He laughs, sharp and cruel as he hurls more ice daggers at me that I block at the last second.
“No one loves a heart that’s been frozen solid, chiseled into something sharp and hollow,” he continues, shards of ice bursting from the ground, forcing me to dodge them to avoid being speared or knocked to my feet. “They survive it. They bleed for it. They fear it. And then they leave. Because all icedoes is crack and break. And when it’s over, you’ll be left alone, drowning in the shattered pieces of it.”
He rushes at me with his sword.
As I block his attacks, my time with him while I was growing up roars through my mind like an avalanche.
I’m thirteen, kneeling in the snow on the training ground after a humiliating defeat in front of the court.
My father loomed over me, his eyes filled with disgust.
“Emotion has no place in you,” he said, his voice a whip across my skin. “Swallow it. Freeze it. Or it will tear you apart.”
Me at fifteen, standing amid the carnage of my first border skirmish. Blood on my hands. Horror in my chest. My sword shook.
“Fear makes you slow,” my father said from beside me. “Slow gets you killed. Bury it.”
