Chapter 18 - Frigid King #2
I tensed again, drawing Wrenora’s wide eyes.
She’d stayed perfectly still—immaculately silent the entire time, but now, her gaze burned into me.
I could almost hear the questions slipping from her lips.
For all she knew, I’d gone willingly into battle against her people.
When in truth, I no more wanted to fight the humans than I wanted to be trapped in a cage of my own magic.
“You have failed your son and your kingdom. The least you can do now is leave him be.”
My father didn’t move for a long time, and I thought perhaps the entire exchange was over.
That he’d leave us to dine before I whisked Wrenora from this place.
But it was far too much to ask. The fact that my mother would side with me over him was perhaps too humiliating for the great King Fidrin Vostbain of the elves.
He lunged, ripping icicles from the frozen air around us and thrusting them toward Wrenora.
I didn’t have time to consider the safest way to protect her.
Instead, I reacted, pouring my own magic out like a wall of ice, absorbing the razor-sharp projectiles with ease.
I immediately ripped the shield to the side, shredding it into a storm of powdery snow that melted into the air.
“Fidrin.” My mother pulled Wrenora into her arms protectively.
The scorn, the absolute visceral anger in my mother’s voice was enough for me to hesitate to do anything further. He slid to the side, drawing an ice blade and leveling it at my throat.
“You have chosen to side with a human.” His voice was dark with fury. “You pathetic, traitorous monster.”
My hand didn’t move, though I wanted to draw my blade. I wouldn’t take the bait. I wasn’t a traitor. I was desperate to find a solution to controlling my magic, and if that meant freeing a human mage to do it, I would.
“She’s an imbuing mage, Father.” I tipped my chin up, letting his blade have a clear path to my throat. “I have no allegiance to a human, only to the magic she possesses.”
He hesitated, his sword dropping a few inches before he lowered it entirely.
“I would not have brought a human here if I didn’t have a dire need—a suppression gem to control my magic and perhaps destroy the winter blight. I needed her shackles removed, and since you do not allow your queen to leave your palace, I had to bring the human to her.”
He let his blade dissipate into the air, sheathing the hilt at his side, his eyes tracking across the room to my mother who still held Wrenora tight to her chest.
“I will excuse this...violation. One hour.” He pointed at my mother before he leveled his glare at me again. “Be gone from this place and never return.”
His words sank deep into my soul. No exceptions.
No waiting until he called me home. I was banished.
I might never see my mother again after I left this time.
Is this what I wanted? I still had an opportunity to hand the thrall woman over to him.
There’d be other imbuing mages. I could find the other frost elves and plead for their help.
Was the slim possibility of being able to have a normal life worth never seeing my mother again?
I glanced at Wrenora, her eyes still wide with terror. She understood what just happened—the clarity of my decision reflected back at me in that look.
She pulled from my mother’s arms and took an unwise step toward my father.
“Your Grace, please don’t do thi—”
Her fingers grazed his before he snatched his hand away, turning toward her with blinding speed. His sword was in his hand in an instant, swinging over his head in a wide arc.
It seemed to happen in slow motion. I was moving out of instinct alone, drawing my blade with my left hand instead of my right.
I threw myself between my father and Wrenora, the blade pressing back against my forearm as I blocked.
The force of the blow propelled me into Wrenora and my mother.
Both women went careening to the ground, but I managed to keep my footing as I thrust my father’s sword away.
It clattered across the floor as I held mine across my body.
And there I stood, frozen in place, glaring at my father who stood with both his hands in the air in surrender.
A cold reality gripped me. I could kill him.
No one would punish me. My father had been a tyrant for as long as I could remember, driving his people into the frozen earth beneath his feet.
The frost elves had been eliminated one by one, assassinated out of fear of our power.
Fear of another king like him. The same fear my father harbored for me.
Not to mention the winter blight he’d done exactly zero things to try to solve.
I was too powerful. I could make his fear real. I could prove he was right in sending me away, fearing I would betray him.
Like he betrayed his own father.
But I wouldn’t. I took a deep breath and let it out, long and slow, before I relaxed, sheathing my sword.
“We leave now. But know this, Father...” I used every last scrap of my bravery as I pointed at him, electric anger coursing through my veins. “Your days are numbered like the snow in spring.”
I turned, thankful I’d left my gloves on, because I reached for Wrenora’s arm and snatched her from the ground where she remained sprawled beside my mother in an ocean of satin.