Chapter 30 - A Frigid Choice
Callan
The last threads of my sanity went with her as she walked away.
The warmth of her body still lingered on my skin where I’d held her against me, and I touched my fingers to my lips.
Something had shattered inside me when we’d kissed, breaking open in my chest to bleed into my soul.
Something I’d never felt before. Instead of melting the last of the walls around my heart, she’d shattered the ice into a million tiny fragments I would now be forced to put back together.
I didn’t want her to go.
The ache she left me with was far greater than any wound I’d ever endured in battle. But I refused to not honor our agreement. She’d created a suppression gem, therefore I would give her freedom and see her returned to Kaldaira.
My mind wouldn’t stop feeding me memory after memory of her warm brown eyes, her surprised expression. Her coy little smile she couldn’t help whenever I surprised her. The determination in her glare when I’d held a sword to her throat.
The sound of fragile ice smacking the ground jarred me from my thoughts.
There, in front of my throne, was a spot on the floor where whatever it was had left a shiny mark.
I stepped closer, and this time, I watched a glittering drip of water fall from the ceiling and shatter across the ice.
My fortress was melting like the armor around my heart.
I swallowed my sadness as I turned to leave. I would try to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about how soft her lips were. The way her fingers felt on my face. She was leaving, and I could already feel the agony of it woven through my ribs.
I wanted her to stay. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to.
––––––––
Late morning light played across the floor of my throne room.
My fortress was silent—empty like my chest. My mind was locked in an endless loop of concern.
The feeling I should have taken Wrenora to the border myself battled with the reality that she was never safe at my side.
I hadn’t gone to see her off. I knew I wouldn’t have let her leave if I had. I would have insisted she stay.
It had been a few hours since she’d left, and the uneasy feeling building in my bones grew until it was uncomfortable.
I sat on my throne in the silence, alone.
Always alone. This was how it was to be.
I’d had a tiny peek of life eight years ago, and now I had to figure out a way to live without it again.
Because even though I could touch someone, that didn’t mean anyone would want to touch me—the monstrous, banished, frozen prince.
A creeping feeling that something was dreadfully wrong bubbled up inside me.
I was about to ask Cassmira to fly me over the route Wrenora had likely taken, but as I stood to finally go after her, shadows moved down the hall outside my throne room.
The wisplights should have illuminated my guards’ uniforms. These people were in black.
Time stretched as I reached for my blade, slowly wrapping my fingers around the handle. From the hall, two fighters stepped into the throne room, weapons drawn. How had they gotten into my fortress? Two more followed like wraiths in the dark, and I drew my sword.
But there was no ice blade.
There was nothing at all.
The familiar cold of my magic didn’t come. Nor the swirling snowflakes that followed. I blinked hard a few times. I stood in the middle of my throne room holding nothing but a useless sword handle as I faced the fighters with their weapons drawn.
Real weapons made of steel.
“The problem with suppression gems, Your Highness, is that they suppress your magic.” Magdala stepped in behind them, her blue eyes blazing, a coy smile across her lips. “All of your magic.”
I slid the handle back into place, swallowing my anger. Deep anger that carved a gaping hole in my confidence. I curled my fingers around the sapphire resting on my chest and yanked, but the chain was too strong to break and too short to tug over my head. I fumbled for the clasp.
“Don’t bother. It’s the same metal as the shackles, plated with silver. Unbreakable.” She took a few slow, calculated steps toward me. “The clasp is my own design. It can be closed but never opened again without a substantial amount of heat. Something you would never go near.”
She’d betrayed me.
The one person I truly thought I could trust.
My mind was a shallow grave, nothing but rushed thoughts and unsubstantiated accusations. Had Magdala been behind all the attacks? Was she in league with my father? Or was she acting alone? And why? Why would she turn on me?
The hair rose on the back of my neck as rage boiled in my veins. How long had she been planning this? She’d been the one who gave me the sapphire mounted on a chain to wear, knowing that as long as the metal touched my skin, I would be like every other magicless elf.
Was she in league with the uprising? Didn’t she know she could have come to me? I would have gladly given them my support if it meant removing my father from the throne.
Why?
“You seem surprised.” She took two more steps, the fighters following at a distance. “You were so certain for so long it was your father trying to kill you, you never bothered to consider all the others who might want you dead?”
I took a breath to answer, but the words were stuck in my throat. I’d known Magdala my entire life. We’d been friends, lovers. She’d been my most trusted advisor since the war. The only person I’d felt comfortable enough to talk to.
“And the sad thing is, I can tell you have no idea why.”
I clenched my jaw, trying and failing to find the right words.
She was right. I had no idea.
“Poor Prince Callan. So lonesome. So broken. So lost and selfish and entitled.”
I straightened my posture, trying to relax my shoulders. I might not have a weapon or my magic, but I wasn’t defenseless. I hadn’t spent countless hours training to be helpless.
“You have no regard for life. If it is not your own, it is meaningless. And not just human life. You see everyone this way. Do you even care that you’ve lost guards to the assassination attempts?
” She stepped closer. “That thousands of our people threw themselves at the humans when negotiation would have worked just as well. Even me. Something to fuck then send away.”
I flinched. She was right. As a prince, I had been raised to think my life had more value than others. And even after I knew the truth, it changed nothing. A piece of me still saw everyone else as less. There to serve me in their assigned task.
But Magdala? She had not just been a simple fuck. I’d been angry when my father insisted I marry. I knew I wouldn’t have a choice. Marriage for royalty was never a choice—it was a duty. She’d been special to me, even if it wasn’t the kind of love she wanted.
“You didn’t even fight for me. You just did what Daddy Dearest told you to do.
” Her voice changed to something far more harsh, a tone I’d never heard her use before.
“He tells you to marry a stranger, you abandon your first love. He tells you to leave, you forsake your home and your precious mother. He tells you to go to war, you put on your armor. He tells you to kill humans, you kill thousands. You don’t question. You don’t push back. You—”
“You have no idea what you speak of,” I spat, anger running hot in my veins.
“I do know, because I’ve watched it all.” Her glare was a fiery blade as it cut through me. “He is a monster, but you?” She shook her head. “You are the living, breathing puppet. Groomed to hate, kill, and destroy just as he has. You never question his orders. You never think for yourself.”
I squeezed my eyes closed. I had told her.
I thought she’d understood. But I was wrong.
She’d seen what everyone else had seen. The rumors, the vitriol, the frozen wall I’d erected around myself.
Not the broken man who hated himself for following those orders.
For wishing he could be something else. Every day, wishing he could go back and do it all again.
I hated my father. And the regret that I hadn’t killed him every time I’d had a chance was burning a hole in my chest next to my anger that she hadn’t listened to a single word I’d said to her.
I should have proven my hatred, shown everyone how I truly felt. Instead, I’d taken a deep breath and built the walls around me even taller. Nothing I said now could change the way Magdala—or anyone else for that matter—would think of me. I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to sway them.
“You see humans as tools. Things to use up and throw away. Like poor Wrenora and your precious suppression gem.” She took two more steps, putting her within reaching distance.
“You used her up then sent her away, pretending you were doing her such a favor by granting her freedom when it was because of you she was a thrall in the first place.”
Another step closer.
“You never once stopped to ask yourself if the humans you enslaved—that you murdered—had families, lovers, lives beyond the war. If they’d been forced to fight for their tyrannical father. You just assumed they were worthless because they had round ears and short lives.”
Four more fighters slipped into the throne room through the side entrance panel, known only to myself and Magdala.
She’d covered all the bases. She’d probably planned this for months, the only kink in her plans was quite possibly a human woman who’d softened the shell around my heart and made me more vulnerable.
“We were so close once,” Magdala said as she reached for my face.
I leaned back out of instinct. Her fingers were cool, easing over my cheek before she traced her thumb across my lips.
“The palace in Dyga was infiltrated two days ago,” she said as she twirled a lock of my hair around her index finger. “You are the only elf harder to kill than your father.”