Chapter 30 Neve
I give Odette a strange look, glancing between the three of them. “No, the Sandman. He’s the Dreammaker I have mentioned.”
“No,” Zarev replies, his orange-red eyes cutting to me. “Perhaps that’s the name you know him by, but we know him as another. That’s the Shadow Man.” He holds up his arm, and I can barely see the shadows leaking off him in the dim light. “He’s the one who gave us these powers in lieu of death.”
Frowning, I look to Ban for confirmation. It looks like he’s seen a ghost. I don’t wait to see what my mage has to say. “Hans wasn’t violent. I don’t think he had any ability to play God with Death. He was the Sandman. He helped with dreams.”
“The Icebound mentioned him, Neve,” Ban reminds him, his cool eyes settling on me. “Do not pretend you know a lot about him, when the spirits know things you do not.”
“It’s not like any of you know him either,” I reply, lifting my chin. “This Shadow Man of yours? It sounds like you know nothing of his origins before speaking with me.”
“We still don’t,” Odette points out. “Sand, shadows… How did he become one and the same?”
I hesitate, because there’s no clear answer.
I knew Hans looked a little strange when I first saw him, a little dead, but I didn’t trouble myself with that.
He was supposed to be in my dreams as the Sandman, right?
It made sense in my head, especially when I still wasn’t sure how long ago I was cursed.
Now? Questions pop up too quickly, begging for answers I don’t have.
“Your Shadow Man sounds dead,” I repeat, looking between the three of them. “Now that you have a face for the prince, let’s see if we can find a death date for Hans. That should put to rest your concerns that he may interfere with the living.”
“He spoke to you,” Ban points out. “What do you make of that? Whether he’s living or dead doesn’t seem to particularly matter.”
Shrugging, I throw my hands up. “I don’t know. It makes as much sense to me as the Icebound spirits Mother had following her around.”
“Yes,” Ban says, his voice lowering. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Kael or Nyra since I killed her.”
“Maybe they were cast back with the other Icebound once their summoner was killed?”
“No,” Ban says, keeping his eyes on me. “I saw at least one other. Ronnie had several. If she could drag spirits of the Icebound into snowy forms and control them, there should be something left behind if they disappeared with her. Even if it’s just empty clothes in a snowpile.”
Honestly, I don’t know what the expectation is here. I was prepared to figure out what to do with the Icebound next, not to worry about where they went without my mother. It didn’t even occur to me to speak with Glacia about it when we were in the mountains.
Would Glacia know?
“We can do more research,” Odette says, holding up her mittened hands. “Maybe there’s information somewhere about controlling an Icebound. Let’s go back-”
A cracking sound overhead silences her, and the two Reapers immediately have the shadows in their hands. My palms freeze over, my gaze narrowing as I lift the container and stare at the ceiling.
Above us, between the icy stone, something twists and pushes, trying to work its way through the ceiling. My brows pinch as I grip the pixie dust tighter. “What is that?”
“Doesn’t look like ice,” Zarev says, his voice tense. Beside him, Odette draws a blade, and he seems preoccupied watching her. I saw him hand her a weapon earlier when they came down here, and his concern about her wielding the knife isn’t comforting.
“It isn’t,” I hiss, glancing toward Ban. His lips have thinned, and he’s studying the ceiling intently. Another crack forms, and he reaches toward me. I step closer, letting the light fall off the paintings.
Another moment later, he’s grabbing me like Zarev grabs Odette, and the ceiling gives way. We dive into the shadows as it comes crashing down, the paintings we just found disappearing into the rubble.
Ban holds tightly onto me as the shadows envelop us. The ice in my hands disappears as we stare around at the chaos. Being able to slip into the dark has never been so handy before.
What’s lying on the ground in front of us, twisting and wiggling and bending at odd angles, makes no sense to me.
The creatures have long, vine-like features and bulbous heads that remind me of the flowers that sometimes used to bloom here.
It’s the wrong season for that, but here they are all the same.
These plants also seem to be about the size of an average person; bigger than I am, but at least a head smaller than Ban.
I can’t talk to Ban like this, and tugging on his tunic does me no good. He’s staring at the creatures, shooting a look across the way to Zarev, who seems just as troubled by the sight. I don’t know what the particular issue is until one of those things speaks.
“Finds the Queen, crush her sweet,” one of the plants says, using some sort of rhyming, broken speech. It sounds like the creature isn’t necessarily meant to talk, the words gargling in its throat instead of coming easily. “Check the dead, check the dead!”
There are roughly ten plants, the others echoing the words the first one spat out. I don’t know how to distinguish one from another; they all look about the same size, same coloring, same everything. Like flowers picked from the same patch.
Odette is pointing with Zarev, the two going unnoticed, like us, in the shadows.
They disappear, and Ban immediately chases after them.
Following someone else in the shadows is different from standing outside of them.
We can make out the two easily, and even when Zarev uses the hopping power, we can still technically see them; they just fade a little bit more.
We move back across the room, the strange plant creatures moving on feet made of vines, practically dragging themselves across the floor. The sound of them muttering to each other in that broken speech makes the hair on the back of my neck rise, and I don’t regret that we’re in the shadows.
Zarev and Odette pop over beside the table we were at, and the Princess flies out of the shadows to collect what she left there. We didn’t pick anything up since, at the time, there wasn’t exactly a rush to have everything on hand. We didn’t even move that far from the work table.
Zarev steps out, too, as the mumbling plants grow louder, large, flowery heads turning to them. “A living! A living! We must take the living.”
Odette says something to Zarev, and I turn to Ban instead and shove his chest. He looks unmoved, unwilling to step out of the shadows and help.
Sure, Zarev seems powerful. He could probably keep the monsters back while Odette collects what we need, but I absolutely despise sitting on the sidelines. After a moment, Ban sighs silently, moves us closer to the table, and the shadows drop.
“Put these in the shadows!” Odette yells, chucking the book at Zarev. I hold up my hands, the creepy flowers moving toward us faster than they should.
Beside me, I see Ban’s staff in my peripheral vision. The ten or so plants rolling toward us look ghastly in the dim light, but I’m pretty confident this is manageable. “Let me.”
“Whatever you say, Your Majesty.”
A little part of me preens at the fact he’s listening.
I’ve met plenty of people in my past who wouldn’t listen to me, not in the face of a fight.
But getting to use my magic and not hold back is something I haven’t gotten to do a lot.
Ice and power are itching beneath my hands, untapped since the fight with Mother.
With all the frustrations in life right now, I just want to let it go.
Stomping my foot against the cold ground, the three of them become background noise as I toss the pixie dust container in Ban’s direction. Ice pulses against my hands, and whatever the creatures are trying to say falls on deaf ears.
With my palms facing skyward, I force ice from the ground upward, frosting the plants as they wither toward us on their viny feet. Each one freezes with a strange, gurgled scream, and it only takes a few moments for ice to cover every single one of them.
A low whistle draws my attention in the silence, and I spin around as Odette begins to clap. “You may be the superior ice mage. Ban, I’ve never seen you do things like that.”
“Neve is better,” he replies, and my eyes swivel toward him. There’s pride in his gaze that makes my insides feel funny, like I’m unsure how to accept it. He’s no longer holding the staff, just balancing the container of pixie dust on his palm. “I always knew you would be.”
“Gods, you two have to stop,” Zarev groans, rolling his eyes. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Are we not going to talk about the way your back lit up?” Odette asks, undeterred. “That was absolutely amazing and beautiful to see!”
“My back?”
Ban holds up a hand, frost following the path he swipes through open air. “When you use your ice magic, the frost I left in your skin glows. We can see it even through the dark material of your dress. And I can feel it, like an echo of my own magic.”
“Gross,” Zarev says, and I swear, he’s so homesick for whoever Rapunzel is that he’s turning bitter. “Can we go now?”
From the table, it looks like Odette has grabbed everything that I would have. Nodding, she’s already gripping his arm again, shooting him a look as they glare at each other. “Where?”
“The docks,” Ban says, wrapping his arm around me. “Zarev and I talked about this, but we didn’t get to look yet. There’s the possibility a second ship docked, so that the soldiers left here could have their own resources after Davina left. It’s worth looking into.”
Grimly, I nod. “Let’s go.”
~~~
Seeing the plants definitely unsettled us, but we don’t say anything more about them as we flee the castle. It feels wrong to disappear from my kingdom, and more than once through the shadows I find myself tugging on Ban, delaying us.