Chapter 15 Yvlle and the Ice Doll #2
“Oh! Your Highness,” said Edmea, curtsying. She could hardly bear to tear her gaze away from the mirror. “I’m sorry you have to glance at such hideousness. I can assure you I have no intention of becoming … that.”
In the reflection, Edmea was older. Much older. Her pink hair had dulled to a mere blush. Her neck was loose and her face was crinkled. And yet in this reflection, she was smiling and her eyes twinkled with liveliness.
“I find her lovely,” said Arris.
Edmea looked stunned. “You do?”
He nodded.
“Sometimes I think that even if my mother had the chance to grow old she would have refused for the sake of beauty,” said Edmea.
She spoke archly, but Arris could sense the pain under her voice. She was looking at him as she spoke, but when he glanced in the mirror, he saw a glimpse of a different version of her. A little girl with rosebud hair standing in a pool of gowns, laughing as someone dropped a scarf over her head.
Edmea shook herself.
“You know, for all my mother’s beauty, she was famously cold,” she said. She glanced at Arris from beneath her lashes and his heart beat a little faster. Whatever softness had stolen over her expression now hardened to elegant iciness. “You will find that I am quite the opposite, Your Highness.”
She curtsied and Arris, smiling, continued down the row of mirrors.
He thought there would be more conversations with the contestants but not everyone wished to reflect on things.
Whatever Orinthia saw in the mirror made her storm toward him and kiss him so hard he nearly stumbled.
But she was shoved out of the way by the bejeweled Zoraya, who had tears in her eyes as she said:
“I need you to know that what I saw in the mirror convinced me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be,” she said. “And by the end of this tournament, you’ll know it too.”
She stroked her finger along his cheek, and Arris—still a bit dazed from Orinthia’s icy kiss—leaned forward rather hopefully but Zoraya only winked and walked off.
In the distance, the dinner gong rang, and Arris began to make his way to the entrance of the Ozorald Cave.
Along the way, he found that some of the contestants had left him messages on the mirrors.
One message, by the siren Cordelia, was so daring that the mirror was still steaming.
“I was hoping to speak to you alone,” said someone behind him.
Arris turned and his heart skipped a beat.
Talvi, of the Aatos Mountains, stood there with her hands clasped.
She was exquisite. He had always thought the Aatos Mountain girls to be icy beauties, but Talvi’s loveliness was the delicate wonder of frost and soft snowfall.
He thought of her song about Enzo’s sea witch consort who had loved him and then cursed him when her love was not returned.
All his life, his ancestors had cursed the sea witch for setting the precedent of carving out hearts and shortening the life expectancy of Enzo’s male descendants, but Arris had always felt bad for her.
How much pain must she have known to inflict such damage on her own line?
“Your song was beautiful,” said Arris.
Talvi smiled. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“It was quite the bold choice to sing the woes of the woman who essentially cursed me,” said Arris, before adding: “I’m glad you did.”
Talvi smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. There’s something I was hoping to show you…”
Talvi reached into the folds of her strange dress, which resembled falling snow. As she was withdrawing her hand from a pocket, there was a blur of shadows to her right—
Yvlle stepped out of the shadows and grabbed Talvi’s wrist: “Drop your weapon.”
“Really, Yvlle!” said Arris, annoyed.
Talvi did not flinch, nor did she gasp. She leveled Yvlle with a cold stare. In Talvi’s hand was a slender book.
Yvlle scowled. “I stand mistaken.”
“Did you?” asked Talvi, rubbing the spot on her wrist where Yvlle had grabbed her. “Knowledge is a formidable tool. Perhaps you were right in your assessment, though brutish in your approach.”
“I believe you owe her an apology,” said Arris.
“Do I need to apologize for looking out for my brother’s welfare?” asked Yvlle. “What is that, anyway?”
“It’s a rare tome from my mothers’ library. They have a whole collection on the poems and dialects of clouds, the majority belonging to cumulonimbus, for they are the loudest,” said Talvi.
“Fascinating!” said Arris. “I’ve read quite a bit of cloud poetry and I’m always delighted by the cleverness of the noctilucent and the bawdiness of the cirrus.”
Talvi’s eyes widened. “You are well-read, Your Majesty.”
“I try,” said Arris.
“This is a poem by a nimbostratus,” said Talvi. “As you know, it is considered the rarest of cloud speech, for they are often the shyest. It was recorded hundreds of years ago and was considered a rarity for its focus on the sea witch consort of Enzo. I thought you might find it interesting.”
“I’m honored you would think of me,” said Arris, taking the book lightly in his hands.
“Although I am most sympathetic to the plight of the sea witch, the one who is most obsessed with that question is actually my sister. I sometimes wonder if half of her tinkering in her shadowy studies is to bring the sea witch back to life.”
Yvlle was staring hungrily at the book. Arris had no doubt his twin would take it from him the moment Talvi’s back was turned. Perhaps it was petty, but he relished rifling through the icy pages—and inhaling the minty sap of the spruce ink—before Yvlle could get her hands on it.
“Is that so?” asked Talvi.
“I have a number of scholarly interests,” said Yvlle, curt.
“Odd,” said Talvi. “Scholarship is a delicate art and requires a patient temperament.”
Yvlle tilted her head. Yvlle was tall, nearly as tall as Arris, and she towered over the diminutive snow maiden. “Are you suggesting I lack such a temperament?”
“Well, you certainly exhibited a lack of patience in your hostile search of my person,” said Talvi.
“I would hardly call that a search,” said Yvlle.
Talvi faced her fully. “What scholarly assessment led you to believe I was hiding a weapon?”
“You know, I think this is the most excellent-smelling book I have ever come across,” said Arris. “Anyone else want a sniff?”
“It was your dress,” said Yvlle.
Arris shrugged. “I will take that as a no.”
“My dress?” said Talvi.
Yvlle gestured at the skirts of Talvi’s gown. Around the bodice, the white fabric sheered away so that it resembled snow falling outside one’s window. As with true snowfall, there were patches of translucence, and when Talvi had walked off the stage, Arris had glimpsed a bit of her ivory legs.
Apparently he was not the only one.
“It caught my attention,” said Yvlle, before adding: “It could be hiding anything.”
Talvi laughed. “All my dress is hiding, Princess, are my legs. I invite you to study them more closely in my retreat, as I imagine I now hear the second chime of the dinner gong. I take my leave of you both,” she said, curtsying to Arris before lifting her chin at Yvlle.
“If you wish to search the dress, I am sorry to tell you that when it is not on my person, it is merely a pile of snow. I hope you’re not too disappointed. ”
And with that, she sauntered off. Perhaps it was Arris’s imagination, but the gown seemed a little more formfitting than it had been earlier. As if proving that there was nothing else she could be hiding.
It was certainly an alluring dress.
Arris glanced between Talvi’s retreating form and the stormy look on Yvlle’s face. Then he looked down at the book.
“It really does smell wonderful,” he said.
“Do not pick that one,” Yvlle muttered. “I can’t imagine having to stare at that smug face every day across the breakfast table.”
“Well, that’s a shame. I think she’s lovely.”
“She looks like a doll,” said Yvlle. “I’ve always hated dolls.”
“Really?” said Arris. “Because when we were twelve, I remember you practicing kissing on one of them—”
“Give me that,” said Yvlle, snatching the book.
“Talvi was right, you are extraordinarily hostile,” said Arris.
His sister glared at him and stalked off.
“I love you too, my darling sibling,” he said.
Yvlle continued muttering.
Alone in the Ozorald Cave, Arris let the day wash over him. What he wanted was quiet, but before he could enjoy any peace, he wished for confirmation of his own instincts. Some of the contestants’ smiles had struck him as artificial. Others seemed … tender. Honest. Who was lying? Who spoke true?
Demelza would know, but Arris had not seen her since her time on the stage. He thought she might have been hiding and listening and would make herself known any moment now … but he was alone. Which left him only one choice:
He must go to her.