Chapter 15
Three days.
We hiked that damn glacier for three days before reaching the elven border. Each day was the same, and the view never changed. Ice, ice, and more ice. My eyes burned from the unending white.
Other than the pulse-rattling climb up the vertical ice face in the wee hours after leaving the cave, it’d been a relatively flat journey. Boring, but flat.
I kept waiting for a kingdom to grow on the horizon—for the barren plateau to give way to some sort of path or city or even just a tree in the distance.
So I was justifiably confused when the two elves stopped in the middle of what, to me, looked like the exact same stretch of crystalline white we’d been walking through for three days.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked, kicking at the snow. A puff of it rose up, caught in the wind, and blew back in my face. Freyja smirked, but didn’t move her gaze from whatever it was in the distance.
“For the sun to reach the highest point in the sky,” Gunnar replied patiently. “Then the kingdom will be revealed.”
It sounded made-up.
My eyes found the sun: blanched and weak, barely yellow, in this colorless wasteland.
“Here.” He knelt in a fresh layer of powder from the storm that’d been raging the night before—that had kept me up until the crack of dawn, turning my hair into icicles.
With gloved hands, he shoveled the snow aside until he reached the bottom: a layer of glistening, grayish-green stone. He ran his fingers along a deep groove.
I tipped my head. “So that’s what’s underneath.”
Still squatting, he kicked his chin in the other direction. “There’s the citadel, over there.”
Heart leaping in my chest, I peered into the horizon.
Nothing.
“Wow, I can’t believe it,” I deadpanned. “More ice and snow.” I wanted to cry, my legs ached so badly. I’m pretty sure I had frostbite in unspeakable places. And I vowed to never eat another peanut butter-flavored protein bar again. “Am I missing something here?”
More eye rolls. More smirks.
Spindrifts danced over the frozen tundra, shrouding the world in whorls of bluish white.
Unlike the frigid air of the blizzards we’d endured, this settled over my skin and clothes in a soft layer, bringing with it the smell of damp soil after a storm. After a numbing few days in the cold, I’d forgotten that sensation even existed.
I breathed it in, iciness stinging my nostrils.
Wind gusted around me as I stepped over the parted snow, whispers threading through my hair, tossing the few unbound strands across my face. The second my boots hit the ground, all I could see was light. I blinked against it—the sun bouncing off the glacier, I figured.
I shielded my brows and squinted up towards…mountains.
My jaw dropped.
Not just mountains—sleek, spiraled roofs. Sparkling blue towers. Curtain walls. Battlements. Arrow slits.
In the blink of an eye, an entire structure seemed to have magically carved itself out of the ice in front of the snowy peaks. The castle.
I rubbed my eyes with my palms, just to be sure I wasn’t seeing things.
Nope, the fortress was still there, even with the spots now dotting my vision.
“You coming, angel?” Freyja tossed over her shoulder, already paces away. Gunnar was a speck in the distance.
Borrowed crampons crunching in the snow, I raced to catch up, still not used to the footwear.
Beneath all the layers, heat broke out across my skin.
After multiple days of nonstop wind and rain, it felt weird to be sweating. Even weirder to feel something other than mind-numbing boredom and pangs of hunger: stirs of excitement. I slipped off my backpack and tugged off my sweater, tying it around my waist.
The walk must have taken the better half of the day. My legs were screaming; my stomach, grumbling, my eyes and any visible skin, stinging.
Finally, we approached the castle grounds.
Two enormous columns of ice flanked the opening of an outer wall—as if keeping watch. Just beyond it, the pathway ended abruptly. The castle glistened on the other side of a moat.
A crack thundered on the air. The left column had started shaking then lifted the lower block of its build, which happened to be in the shape of a foot. It crashed onto the ground, snow flurrying beneath its frozen toes.
My gaze flew up the chiseled ice that made up its ankle, its knee, its leg, my eyes widening at the jagged pieces making up its torso, chest, shoulders, neck, and finally, its diamond-shaped head. Pupils blinked to life, little sapphires beaming beneath frosted brows.
Shriveling in the shadow of this glacial behemoth, I almost forgot about the other one—almost. But then it too withdrew from the wall, the ice cracking and grumbling as it stretched its joints after who knew how long.
Both lumbered forward and, in a powerful movement much swifter than I expected, clinked their spears together and thrust them to the ground, forming an X across the path.
“Who goes there?” the giant directly in front of me bellowed.
I shrank into myself.
Gunnar held his fist against his heart. “Gunnar Stelpths, third son of Rohan and Romedyr, Eye of the Queen.”
“And I,” Freyja said, stepping forward and mirroring Gunnar’s gestures. “Freyja Argon, first daughter of Odin and Hildur, Eye of the Queen.”
“There are three,” the guardian on the left rasped, as if his vocal cords had been frozen and were finally thawing. “Name yourself.”
I would have, but the syllables caught in my throat.
Freyja’s gray eyes narrowed on me. I could practically hear her thoughts commanding me to speak.
“Now would be a good time,” she muttered. “Their preferred method of punishment is stomping.”
“R-River,” I squeaked. “First, um, first daughter of Corbin and Mira Harlow.”
See? I was no one interesting.
Freyja raised an eyebrow at me. “Your title?”
Was hoping no one would catch that.
I tapped my foot in time with my racing heart. Keeping it generic, like angel, felt like the best option—at least, until I knew the elves could be fully trusted.
But then I made the mortal mistake of dropping my gaze, which went straight to the ice monster’s foot—the same foot that would rather stomp me to smithereens, that had dark brown, almost red flecks along its sole—and it just came tumbling out of me. “Angel of Water.”
Gunnar and Freyja went lethally still.
Bringing my hands behind my back, I feverishly picked at my cuticles, raising my chin in false hubris. Hopefully they didn’t see through it.
Hopefully they didn’t hear each twist of my gut, each frantic pound of my pulse.
Hopefully they hadn’t sworn allegiance to Chthonia.
Guess I’d find out soon enough.
The weapons clanged and I flinched, but the guardians only lumbered to the side, their spears pointed to the sky, not my heart.
Behind them, the drawbridge lowered with a groan. They were allowing us to pass. My breath caught in my chest.
“Welcome to Lokahryggur, also known as Hamarinn, Kingdom of the Huldufólk.”
With their massive, sculptured bodies no longer blocking the way, it was a straight shot across the bridge to the pristine inner courtyard, sweeping birch trees peeking through the portcullis.
The elves bowed their heads in reply and marched across the frozen wood. With an ungraceful dip that probably looked more like half a squat, I skittered after them.
Gunnar shot me a knowing smile.
He didn’t seem like my mortal enemy. But then again, for all I knew, he could be walking me to the guillotine right now.
A shudder worked its way up my spine.
I paused on the threshold, the air dense in my lungs, energy thick and piercing. There, a rustle in the frost-tipped grass; a trickle in the frozen river; a crumble of the rockface.
My gaze swept the area. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
Hairs rising on the back of my neck, I continued on.
Just because I didn’t see them didn’t mean vigilant eyes weren’t watching.