Chapter 25 Ban #2
And now I’m back. In the capital city I loathe, as something curious enough to catch the Queen’s attention.
“Perhaps you mean to make a mockery of me by stealing my spell,” the Queen snarls, and I try to lean back when she sends thick snow at me. It doesn’t hurt, but beneath the snow is ice that shatters on impact and stings my skin. “For this freeze to never keep, one must forgive the frozen sleep.”
“What? I don’t—I’ve never heard that before.”
“My frozen sleep,” she snaps. “The one I’ll be damned to since you stole my magic. I asked the spirits here to give me what I desire: a break from the curse. To freeze forever in a frozen sleep? It’s the cruelest fate I can imagine.”
Licking my dry lips, I try to think of anything I know about Queen Snedronningen, but it’s very little. Her appearance as the new queen was a surprise to everyone, and little is known about the deal made between her father and Andor. “You… you’re going to freeze to death? A being of snow?”
She huffs, shaking her head to look away. “I never should have trusted them. The spellwork is shoddy. You are not worthy of my magic’s work.”
“I don’t want to die for your mistaken spell,” I tell her, pity leaking into my voice. “I was content with death. I was ready to accept my fate. You want the magic? I’m not the one to tell you how it found me.”
“Content with death?” she asks, scoffing before she rigidly moves her long white hair across her shoulder. The small movement looks like it causes her a great deal of pain. “I’ll never accept my frozen sleep.”
Before I can come up with something witty to say in return, the door opens. In walks the King, carrying a sword and looking disheveled as though he just woke up. “My queen, what are you doing down here?”
“I couldn’t wait for you,” she growls. “My magic is rotting in this boy. Kill him! I need to break this cursed spell.”
King Andor looks me over, skepticism heavy in his gaze. “You think a mistaken mage can correct the wrongs brought upon you, my Sned?”
She practically hisses at him. “You wish to protect our daughter’s magic, so another must take her place. I need the magic to be free of this, Andor. Pick your poison.”
The King’s gaze hardens, and I can’t imagine what they’ve discussed to solidify his decision with an idle threat. I’ve met Neve, and she’s kinder than either of them. As he turns, I see my fate reflected in his eyes. He’s going to do what he must to protect his daughter.
The sword falls as he forms an icicle in his hand, dragging the sharp tip across my bare skin. “Tell us then, how you came to hold the power of frost, dear boy.”
I cry out when he stabs me, the sudden pain enough to have me questioning anything I’ve known about the royals thus far. If he’s already chosen to take his wife’s words at face value, there’s no chance they plan on letting me leave.
This is the first time someone’s tortured me, and I choke back a cry before the words come tumbling out. I have no idea why fate decided to screw me, but I was better off lying with the dead at the bottom of the cliffs. “I don’t know!”
“To break her curse,” I say, speaking over Neve, who is in the middle of ranting.
I don’t mean to cut her off, but the words tumble free.
“‘For this freeze to never keep, one must forgive the frozen sleep.’ The Snow Queen had to sacrifice someone to break her own curse. She asked the moon for this?”
I have Neve’s full attention now as well, her blue eyes lasered in on me.
Slowly, Glacia’s unreadable expression stretches to a smile.
“This is true, mage. The magic brought across the seas from Ander Son’s Way conflicted with the magic we Icebound have always held dear.
Our jobs to help siphon the dead became convoluted when the earthbound ruler focused on his wife's demands instead of his destiny as King.”
“My father lost his way?” Neve asks, pain flickering in her eyes.
“Your father’s focus aligned with the needs of one, instead of the needs of many.
” Glacia sweeps her arms wide, and I swear the temperature drops again.
Now I can see Neve’s breath, too. “Glacia and Frost have always coexisted together. Two parts of the magical end. Spirits to lead on the souls of the dearly departed. The cold tundra of the north was always too rigid and reclusive for even the most weathered traveler to withstand. Aside from the Glacia royal lineage for many years, no one else carried the magic of the Icebound in life. My brother and I could manage the souls of the tortured together, bringing them into the lands too harsh for the living to come to terms with their passing before moving on. As two, we could share the burden of forever. As one, I struggle alone.”
“You have the same burden that we do as Reapers,” I say slowly, the pieces sliding into place. “Helping souls pass over before they can become warped by their own mortality.”
For the first time, passion flares in Glacia’s eyes. Anger. “Reapers are new. A creation made from dreams to stop the madness of someone the Dreammaker once knew well. You are not the originals; you are the exceptions. Beings put in place to right a wrong started by the living.”
Neve glances at me, and I don’t know what she’s hoping to find. “The wrong?”
Glacia gestures to the frozen girl on the wall, and tentatively, we peer at her together.
“Perhaps, had the whispers of another not entered her ears in such a fragile time, Queen Snedronningen would not have gone to such drastic lengths to stop her frozen sleep. She would not sacrifice her daughter’s youth to slow the inevitable.
She has used her magic in vain one too many times because of the whispers of others. ”
Staring at the woman, who can’t be much more than a teenager, I have no idea what she’s talking about. But it’s Neve who voices the question. “Who is she?”
“A ghost from the past. Someone you will have to contend with in the future, Queen. When you are ready to bring together the magic again, you will see the path ahead. It is the road your forefathers traveled, and you will do the same. With more power than those who came before you.”
Neve holds out her hands, stepping forward again. “I can’t do what you expect of me, Spirit. I am not the ruler my father was. I don’t have anyone to teach me.”
“Some magic is taught,” Glacia allows with a slight shrug. “Some is felt.”
“I can’t feel a way to help that girl! I can’t unfreeze people, if that’s the noble act you hope I will learn. I’ve tried. I cannot do it. I only cause death.”
Glacia’s unreadable eyes peer between us again. “My time here is over, Queen. In a century much has changed. People no longer look to the Spirits of Winter to pass in peace. Grim Reapers carry the burden now, as the Dreammaker did before.”
“Who is the Dreammaker?” Neve begs.
“Another name you know him by,” Glacia explains, her folded hands coming to rest in front of her.
“The Sandman, I believe. His name is known to you as one, to the Spirit of Frost, another. Pieces torn apart, altered by time. There is a countdown you cannot see that the dead are aware of. Each clock goes with you, Queen. Tick tock.”
Her final words startle me, but before I can ask anything, Glacia begins to fade. Unlike when Andor did so moments ago, the temperature begins to drop severely when she goes. I gasp, looking at my hands to find they are turning blue.
“It’s too cold, Neve,” I gasp. “We’re not meant to linger where only the dead can touch.”
“You do!” she hisses.
“No, I linger in-between to help souls pass on.” My gaze roves around the cavern, the cold sinking in deeper until my teeth begin to click together.
The light in the cave is fading without Glacia’s glow.
“This, this is something more. The Icebound are older than the Reapers, as she said. The Spirits of Winter are eternal.”
Neve’s eyes finally snag on mine, hurt and confusion warring in her gaze. “W-we can’t leave her here.”
Her teeth chatter like mine, her arms looping around me as I look toward the woman on the wall. She’s still frozen, caked in frost, a silent specter to our conversation with the winter spirit. “She can’t come with unless we unfreeze her.”
“I don’t know how! You do it. You have ice magic, too.”
“That’s not something I’ve ever been able t-to do.” I wrap my arm around Neve, dragging her toward me. “We need the shadows and to be outside of this cave. I don’t think we’re welcome anymore.”
“I know,” Neve replies, leaning into me. Even though there’s a cold ache in my hands, I can tell her skin is frigid. She’s starting to turn blue, and if we don’t leave soon, I don’t think we’ll leave at all. “What did Glacia mean at the end? Tick tock?”
“I think she’s counting down to something–”
I cut myself off, my attention catching on the wall the girl is frozen to. Keeping Neve close, I drag us into the shadows and hop over to that side of the room.
Even here in the dark, where Death should reign supreme, the cold licks at us. Glacia wasn’t exaggerating when she spoke of our place as an exception. This is the kind of magic I don’t think we could combat even if all four of us Reapers came here together.
She’s not meant to be challenged. She’s meant to be Death itself, something older and more powerful than we are. We should go—the cold is penetrating through my magic, but my eyes search the wall to see if there’s a hint of something here.
Tick tock. Like the Mad Queen says. Those white rabbits… they’ve said it, too.
I drop the shadows, the cold hitting us hard enough that Neve gasps. “There.”
“There, where?” she asks, and I point to the woman’s chest. Wrapped around her neck, frozen in place, sits a heavy chain. At the base sits a clockface, frozen in time.
“I-it’s a timepiece,” I explain. “We need to get it.”
“We can’t do that without freezing!”
I attempt to anyway, trying to bend the ice despite telling Neve I can’t. I don’t know how to, but I give it a go anyway. It feels too important to leave behind.
My magic doesn’t bend the ice; it does nothing at all. Pressing my fingers to the solid, frozen surface, it doesn’t even let me sink my hand in.
Neve tries beside me, pushing into the ice, but it yields no results. We share a twin glance, knowing that we can’t waste any more time here.
“W-we have to go,” I say as I cloak us in the shadows once more. If the ice won’t give, we’ll have to come back. For the two of us to feel the cold in here, it must be unbearably frigid. We need to get out before we go too far and can’t escape.
Neve clings to my neck, making it easier to hop through the shadows. My magic seems to resist, dragging the process out longer than usual to escape back to the outside of the mountain. Each time I hop through the darkness, it feels like invisible hands push us back a step.
The dead are here, the Icebound who linger behind us. I don’t think they want us to leave.
By the time we break through the side of the mountain, I’m exhausted, and we slump together on the side of the cliff. The blizzard is gone, the dark of night lingering above us.
Neve sits on the ground beside me, trying to catch her breath. Realistically, it’s still bitterly cold, but compared to the subzero temperatures in the mountain cavern, this feels downright balmy.
She lies down in the powder, and I find I’m too tired to do much else but copy her. I’m drifting toward blessed sleep myself when Neve’s voice floats through the air.
“What now?”