Chapter 13
“Are you hungry?” Cassian asked, his reflection gliding into a section of the palace I hadn’t explored yet.
It was hard to keep up with him with my heavy boots and half-frozen limbs. He seemed to notice my slow pace, turning back to wait for me so I didn’t get lost. My stomach growled in response to his question, thinking back to the last scrap of food I’d eaten well over twelve hours ago.
“Very much so,” I admitted, my thoughts wandering back to the stacks of supplies Lea had supposedly swiped from the castle. “I don’t require much, and I wouldn’t want to cut into your rations too much.”
“Nonsense,” he said, his image jumping between walls in a dizzying manner. “It’s not as if all this food is doing any good sitting around frozen.”
His hand wrapped around a crystal door handle, pulling it open to reveal a pantry that was larger than most of the houses in Averglas’s capital.
The stacks of food I’d seen in Lea’s home were hardly a fraction of what there was.
Bags of grain were piled up to the lofty ceiling, and rows of frozen fish were frozen in blocks of ice that looked like a market display, along with other frozen meats that looked truly worthy of a royal table.
I stepped further inside, my jaw dropping even more as I spotted an entire wall made up of neatly organized fruits, vegetables, jugs of milk, and even some eggs—though I wasn’t certain that those had frozen well since many of them appeared to have exploded inside the ice.
“Where did you get all this?” I asked, my mouth still agape and my stomach roaring with excitement. This was easily enough food to feed the entire kingdom.
“Here and there,” Cassian said, as he casually defrosted some apples. “I can’t eat food in my current state, so I’ve been collecting anything the villagers have left behind in case they needed it later.”
“Wait. This came from the villagers?”
“Well, not directly,” he explained as he built me up a chilled plate.
“As I mentioned earlier, my ice has been a little challenging to control as of late...” He paused, like he too had been rendered frozen for a moment before he resumed his task.
“By my own fault, many farmers’ fields and fishing streams were frozen over, and the villagers fled the areas instead of coming back to reclaim their goods.
It felt like such a pity to let them go to waste, so I used my ice to gather up all the good food left behind and made sure it was properly stored.
I suppose I’ve been hoping that they’d come ask their king for help one day, and then I could finally prove myself as a proper provider.
” He finished the plate of cut fruit, cured meat, and a bit of bread that still looked a tad too frozen to chew.
“At least today, I can provide something for you. I apologize for not offering you a meal sooner.”
His lips curved into a small but proud smile. It was a sweet expression, but also one that served as an impressive mask over the pain that was cracking through his frosty facade. Like his ice, he was polished and perfect, but when met with warmth, he started to crack.
He’s not a monster... He’s just lonely.
“You’ve been saving this for them?” I took another look around at the impressive display, finally understanding why Cassian complained about Lea breaking his windows, but didn’t say a word about her taking food.
“Of course, that’s what any good king should do when his people are facing a dreadful winter,” he said, his tone drifting into that cracked version of himself once more.
“At least...I hope it was the right thing. I can’t say that I’ve had a good track record for being a good ruler.
” He looked down at his hands, his powerful, dangerous hands.
.. “Maybe this was just my foolish way of trying to make up for my mistakes.”
I stepped past the plate, meeting him at the wall that seemed to be put up in more ways than one. He looked up from his hands, still holding them close to himself like he was afraid of what he might touch next.
“How did you get like this?” I asked, my eyes meeting his reflection as calmly as if it were my own. “You said there was a curse, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, his hands lowering like they were too heavy to hold at this moment.
“Though I suppose my true curse started from birth. I was born with ice magic, despite not having any sorcerers in my bloodline. It was first seen as a useful skill, but as I grew, I learned that my power was tied to my emotions.”
He raised a hand, and an ice stool formed behind me right beside the plate he’d crafted.
“Please, eat,” he urged me with a gentle smile that made my stomach flutter. “I’ll answer your questions, but I can’t stand to see you hungry for a moment longer.”
I didn’t want to step away from him. Even with my stomach pulling me toward the plate, I couldn’t help but feel like this was his way to put up another wall of ice between us. How long had it been since someone had been close to him?
I guess it’s hard to be approachable when you’re always so cold.
“Very well.” I did as he asked, taking a seat on the stiff chair that I feared I might stick to later. Everything was still pretty much frozen solid, but I was able to pop some frozen peas and blueberries into my mouth that were still easy to chew.
“Unfortunately, I can’t make fires, so a hot meal isn’t really something I can provide,” he said, looking almost embarrassed as he watched me poke around the plate. “But I’ve been told that frozen fruit often tastes like candy.”
He was right. The frozen blueberries were sweeter than I expected, their bright flavors blissful on my tongue even though my teeth were aching from the cold.
“It’s delicious,” I said, my heart growing with his proud smile. “Thank you, Cassian. I’m only sorry that you can’t join me.”
“So long as it’s being enjoyed by someone, I’m more than satisfied,” he said, his light eyes fixated on me like I was the most wonderful thing he’d seen in weeks.
“Now tell me about this curse of yours,” I prodded. My mind felt much sharper now that I was getting some food. “I understand that you were born with your ice gifts, but how does that translate into you being trapped in reflections?”
“Ah.” He ran a hand through his perfect hair, the strands still refusing to move even a hair out of place. “I’m afraid that’s where the true curse comes in. The curse of being related to Blamore.”
I nearly choked on a frozen pea. “Blamore cursed you?”
“Charming little rascal, isn’t he?” He laughed dryly.
“But yes, it was only a month or so ago that he handed me an enchanted mirror that somehow trapped me in its reflection. By the time I figured out what was happening, the mirror broke and my consciousness was freed from the mirror and scattered into every reflection it could find.”
A mirror?
The frozen bites of food felt like rocks in my stomach, after that. I stared down at my reflection in the ice plate, my memories flashing back to the cold blue eyes I’d once seen in a gifted mirror.
A mirror that I’d shattered.
“Shattering the mirror is what put you here?” I swallowed hard.
“Yes,” he said with a heavy breath. “That mirror was a portal of sorts, but one that still acted as a door. I’ve thought about it all a great deal since that moment, and I believe that the only way for me to escape this curse is by stepping back through the glass I was imprisoned in.
But with it being broken, I fear that there’s no hope of ever repairing all the scattered shards. ”
A horrible shiver ran through me, one that curdled my stomach and tightened my throat. Blamore trapped him in a mirror, but I trapped him in the ice when I broke his only way out... Did Blamore know that I would break the mirror? Was this all his sick way of dethroning his brother?
No, Blamore was terrified when he saw Cassian’s image reappear.
“Why place you in the mirror at all?” I asked, finally managing to look at the king I’d helped destroy.
“I believe his goal was to imprison my magic,” he said with a twitch of his hands.
“I wasn’t in the mirror long, but I remember feeling powerless once I was inside.
After it broke, my magic seemed to fracture with it.
It feels like I’m controlling different parts of a broken whole, unable to make them work together as I had once before.
Between the curse and the new challenges my magic presented me, my emotions began to spiral. ”
“And everything got colder,” I breathed.
“I’m afraid so.” He dipped his head. “The entire kingdom seemed to cut me off after that moment. They covered every mirror, hid from every possible reflection, and isolated me in every way they could. As you can imagine, the pain of that solitude has only made things worse.”
Alone, cold, and heartbroken... Where had I heard that before?
If only someone had gifted him a match.
My heart splintered for him, both from the guilt of my role in his imprisonment and the unfairness of his solitude. Blamore painted him as such an unfeeling monster, but all I could see was a man in desperate need of some warmth.
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand...” I thought aloud. “You said you were cursed only about a month ago, but I hadn’t heard of you at all before I arrived. No one spoke of you long before you were cursed.”
“They didn’t?” He knit his brows together. “Not even a mention?”
“I’d only heard of Blamore when I accepted his proposal.”
“That...that can’t be right.” He scratched his chin, and the movement made me wonder how he would look with a trimmed beard. “I approved your engagement, after all. That’s how I recognized your name when you introduced yourself.”
He did?
I had only thought he eavesdropped around Averglas to hear my name, but I suppose he wouldn’t have heard anything unless spoken to.
How could an entire kingdom fail to acknowledge they had a king? Especially a king like Cassian.
“Blamore must have been planning your downfall for longer than we realized,” I explained, my voice tender as I saw the realization stain Cassian’s pale face. “I don’t know what he did, but I know there has to be an explanation for why everyone feared you long before you were cursed.”
The room got colder, and Cassian’s image seemed to shrink somehow, his reflection growing foggy like someone needed to polish the glass on a window.
“I see,” he said quietly. “I thought they were angry at me for my storms, but I suppose they never liked me at all, did they?”
The powerful king sounded as fragile as a snowflake, his faded image drawing me closer until I was inches away from his cracking ice.
“They hated the snow king,” I said, pressing a hand to where his looked so cold and alone. “They didn’t know about you.”