Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
LARA
I t’s the morning of the day before Prince Jonyk and his entourage are scheduled to arrive, and Starfrost Manor is almost ready for the Ice Prince’s arrival.
The ballroom with the metallic wings on the wall has been cleaned and polished until it’s almost painfully clean, and we’re all spending the day putting the final touches on the decorations.
Fintan brings in armloads of alien flowers. Ice-white blooms that look like frozen roses, others with delicate petals that look like lacy fabric draped across the tabletops, stems with dangling heads like snowdrops, sprays of spiky white petals, clusters of tightly closed buds, and more, all exotic and cold, acclimated to this frozen realm. Clusters of red berries punctuate the white bouquets. If greenery draped the halls of the manor, the whole affair would have a Christmas holiday feel to it.
But not a single touch of green can be found anywhere in Starfrost Manor—as if even the evergreen color would detract from the purity of the iciness .
Adefina, Kila and I are in the kitchen rolling out cinnamon-scented dough for the non-Ice Court’s food.
Outside, Fintan is slaughtering a moose, slicing the meat into thin red filets. Later, Adefina and I will go out to spice the raw meat, preparing it for the Ice Court’s consumption, along with other icy concoctions.
The door to the main house swings open, and two Icecaix housemaids enter—Ramira to fetch Ivrael’s breakfast tray, Oriana there to watch in case she can glean any good gossip about the deviant behaviors of the Starcaix working in the kitchen with the human. And possibly to provoke us into a response that will anger the duke enough to… I’m not sure what, actually. Punish us, maybe? Have us hanged in the courtyard?
I curl my forefinger around Kila’s waist as she hovers in the air before me. She’s the most volatile of the Starcaix in the household, and I won’t allow her to do anything that might lead the two housemaids to harm her.
Oriana sees the motion and snickers, then falls back to let Ramira step forward, usually a sign they believe they have something to brag about.
Ramira preens, her nose tilting up in the air, and gives me a smug look. “I’ve heard none but His Lordship’s favorites have been assigned to serve Prince Jonyk’s entourage.”
“And the prettiest,” Oriana adds. “He doesn’t want His Highness offended by anything base or foul.”
“Like a filthy human kitchen drudge. After all, no Ice Prince would tolerate ashes in his food,” Ramira says, and the two of them cover their mouths with their hands and titter.
Adefina passes the morning tray to Ramira, giving it an extra shove as she hands it off so it hits the Icecaix housemaid hard in the stomach, and Ramira staggers back a step.
“Oops. Excuse me,” Adefina sings out. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention to where you were standing.”
While Ramira is distracted by Adefina, Kila wriggles out of my hold to flit over the back of the maid’s neck, and sunlight shimmers across a dusting of glittering motes floating down through the air.
But by the time Ramira raises her hand to the back of her neck and glances up suspiciously, Kila is standing on my shoulder again, her hands on her hips, head tilted.
Ramira regards us narrowly. “You’d best be careful, human.” She says the last word with a disgusted sneer. “His Lordship will turn you out if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, God. I can only hope,” I mutter.
Ramira’s expression turns shocked, as if she cannot imagine anyone wanting to be anywhere but trapped in this frozen hell. And to be fair, she probably can’t.
With matching flounces, the two housemaids turn and head back into the main house.
“That probably wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” I say, my glance taking in both Adefina and Kila.
Kila snickers. “She’ll be itching like crazy in about a click.”
Adefina shrugs, unconcerned. “It would take more than the likes of those two to worry me.”
As the cook heads back to work, it occurs to me that I’ve never asked her how she ended up here. Is she a prisoner like Kila and I are, bought by Ivrael for some unfathomable reason? Or is she here of her own volition?
I’m about to open my mouth to quiz her on it when she shoos me away with a tea towel. “You have work to do,” she reminds me, and my chance to ask her is gone.
As I head out to take care of the fireplaces in the duke’s chambers, it occurs to me that if my plan to go to the firelords actually works, there are a lot of things I’ll never get the chance to find out.
Not least of all why, exactly, the duke bought me in the first place. Why he’s kept me here working in his home, Cinderella-style, for almost a year.
I tell myself I don’t care, don’t need to know.
And part of me already knows—at least part of it .
At least, I think I do.
F or almost two full Trasqo months—what the Caix call double moon-cycles—after Ivrael had retrieved me from the graveyard, Adefina didn’t allow me to go anywhere alone, always sending one of the housemaids or Fintan or even Kila, still the newest member of the household, with me.
Until the morning I realized Adefina was having trouble with her magic—the same morning I began to realize there was more to my presence in Starfrost Manor than Ivrael’s need for a kitchen drudge.
I had scraped out the fireplace and glanced at the pile of new wood Fintan had already neatly stacked by the fireplace when I woke up that morning. “You know, I can go get firewood all by myself.”
Adefina gave me a sidelong look. “How can I be certain you’re not going to run away?”
“I don’t plan to try that again,” I lied smoothly. “Those cemetery monsters of yours taught me my lesson.”
“Not my cemetery monsters,” Adefina muttered. “The Starcaix know how to keep our dead asleep in the ground where they belong.”
I snorted and went back to getting the fire going again as Adefina began putting together Ivrael’s morning tray. After a moment, though, she huffed out an irritated sigh.
“Not again,” she muttered, passing her hands over the morning’s bread a second and then a third time. The warming spell flickered and died, leaving the loaves cold and hard.
She shot a worried glance at the kitchen door before trying once more.
This time the spell held, but I could see the strain in her face, beads of sweat dotted across her forehead.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She forced a smile. “Just tired, child. The magic takes more effort these days.” She arranged the bread on the duke’s breakfast tray, her hands trembling slightly. “Time was I could warm fifty loaves with a single gesture. Now three feels like lifting boulders.”
I wanted to ask more, but another look at the exhaustion in her expression convinced me to wait until another time, and I turned back to the fire—a task I could complete without any magic at all.
As soon as the cook’s attention was diverted, Kila flitted over to my shoulder, where she promptly took a seat and leaned in to whisper directly into my ear. “That was a non-truth.”
“What was?”
“What you said to Adefina. You do intend to run away again.”
I shrugged, careful not to dislodge the raya. “Maybe.”
Her wings’ high-pitched noise managed to convey agitation as she buzzed off my shoulder and around to look me in the face. “I’d heard that humans often lie. I never really believed it.”
“Starcaix don’t?”
Her nose wrinkled. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? You mean if you get caught?”
Her frown deepened, and she hovered in the air with her fists balled up on her hips, elbows akimbo. “No. It can break the world.”
Struggling to wrap my head around what she was saying, I finished lighting the fire, then dropped down to sit on the hearth, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. “I think you’d better start from the beginning.”
By now, we’d stopped trying to lower our voices.
The door swung open, and Ramira entered, her pretty mouth twisted in a snarl as her gaze took us all in, finally landing on my position seated by the fire.
“So glad to see you’re all busy working,” she said in a snide voice. Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Adefina. “Khrint says he already told you His Lordship’s requested his luncheon in his rooms today. Is his tray ready yet?”
Without a word, Adefina picked it up and handed it to Ramira.
Her face already red with the heat, the Icecaix housemaid backed out of the kitchen, again glaring at me as she went .
“Why does she hate you so much?” Kila asked.
“No clue. Because she’s an unhappy bitch?”
Kila snickered, and I went back to the topic that actually interested me. “What do you mean, lying can break the world? Is that really what you believe?”
“It’s a fact,” Adefina said, wiping her hands on a towel and joining our conversation. “It’s happened before, the world breaking.”
“Lying is supposedly taboo on this planet,” a voice said from the doorway, and I glanced up to find Fintan bringing in an armload of firewood.
“Let me get some tea,” Adefina offered and hung the towel on a hook. I moved to help her with the tea, a hot Starcaix drink that tasted a little earthy and a touch floral, with a hint of fruit and a slight bitter undertaste. In many ways, it was remarkably like Earth tea—enough so that I often drank it when I found myself feeling homesick.
Moments later, we all moved to the small table in the corner where we sometimes had tea in the afternoon, taking a rare moment to sit before beginning to prepare the three different dinners—for the duke and any guests, for the Icecaix servants, and for the Starcaix servants.
As soon as we were all settled with steaming cups in front of us—and a thimbleful of tea for Kila—I continued the conversation. “Okay. So you’re saying lying broke your world before. Like…broke it with magic? How?”
“It’s the Caix creation myth,” Fintan said. “Don’t believe them when they say they don’t lie.”
“That’s a lie?” I asked with a grin.
“It is not!” Kila said.
“It most definitely is,” Fintan said solemnly.
“Ooh, tell the story, Adefina,” Kila urged the cook.
“The magic of Trasq came from the first King Caix,” Adefina said, her hands wrapped around her teacup as if drawing warmth from it and her voice taking on the cadence of a fairy tale. “Before him, our people had no powers at all.”
“Unless you count the ability to travel between worlds,” Kila interjected. “But that wasn’t magic—that was technology.”
I leaned forward, fascinated despite myself. “So what happened?”
“King Caix created a device,” Adefina continued. “A crown forged from rare metals found only in the deepest mines of Trasq. He used his own blood to bind it with the planet’s energies, believing he could grant his people the ability to shape reality through their words and will.”
“But something went wrong?” I asked, noting the shadow that crossed her face.
“The crown worked—too well, perhaps.” She sighed. “When he used it in the ritual, it split our people into two distinct groups. The Icecaix gained dominion over snow, ice, cold, and all creatures that thrive in frost. The Starcaix...” She gestured to herself and Kila. “We received power over the warmer lands and their inhabitants.”
“We’re connected to our sun-star,” Kila added proudly. “That’s why they call us Starcaix.”
“What does that have to do with lying?” I asked.
“King Caix had sworn to all his people that there was no danger in activating the device,” Adefina said. “But from the very beginning, he was lying about what he planned.”
I tilted my head to one side, considering. “Being split into having control over warm or cold lands doesn’t seem like such a terrible side effect.”
“But that wasn’t the problem,” Fintan said quietly. “Tell her about the other change.”
Adefina nodded slowly. “The crown altered something fundamental in our nature. Our spirits remain eternally bound to Trasq through the magic King Caix created.”
“When they say he broke the world,” Fintan added, “they mean he broke their ability to ever escape this world.”
“Our bodies may fail,” Adefina said, “but from that day forward, no Caix has ever truly died.”
A chill ran down my spine as I remembered the undead king in the cemetery. “This crown,” I said carefully, “what did it look like? ”
“Legend says it was made of gold and silver,” Kila replied, “with a great blue stone over the brow that pulsed with living energy.”
My hands began to shake, and I set down my teacup before I could drop it. “And what happened to it?”
“It was lost,” Adefina said. “Some say it was stolen by the firelords during the first great war. Others believe King Caix himself hid it away when he realized what his creation had done to our people.” She tilted her head, studying my face. “Why do you ask?”
I barely heard her question, my mind racing as pieces clicked into place. The cemetery hadn’t been a random place I’d stumbled into while trying to escape. Somehow, Ivrael had known I would go there—known I would encounter the undead king and his crown.
The question was, why?
“Lara?” Kila’s tiny hand touched my cheek. “Are you well? You’ve gone quite pale.”
I forced a smile, though my heart was pounding. “I’m fine. Just...thinking about how different your world is from mine.”
Adefina’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t press. Instead, she began gathering the tea things, signaling the end of our break. But as I rose to help her, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d stumbled onto something important—something that might explain why Ivrael had really bought me from Roland.
Since that conversation, my dreams have been haunted by images of the crowned king in the Caix cemetery—and the growing certainty that nothing about my presence in that graveyard was as accidental as I’d first believed.
I haven’t been willing to ask Ivrael. Not only because I was afraid to know the answer, but because in the end, I decided it didn’t matter. His plan couldn’t be anything good, if for only one reason.
Heroes don’t buy other people.
But now, I once again find myself wondering what Ivrael plans to do once he has Izzy, too.
I’m certain it has something to do with the undead king in that cemetery, the crown he wears on his head, and the magic the king conjured for his people so long ago.
The King of the Dead who, when I turned back to look for him behind the gate as Ivrael led me away, was nowhere to be seen.
I don’t know what it could have to do with me and Izzy. And I don’t care.
No matter what Ivrael’s planning, I will be long gone by the time he tries to put it into action.