Chapter 7 – Neve
NEVE
High above me, balanced on a rickety ladder, Thyra tossed a book.
I caught the soft leather-bound tome one-handed, and took a handful of steps to place it on the table where Duran, Clemencia, and Anna scoured page after page.
“This shelf is clear. Coming down.” My twin’s silver wings, a shade darker than my own, fluttered gracefully as she descended.
The library at Valrun Castle wasn’t large, and precious few books were on the top uppermost shelves, but we’d been checking each and every one for information on shadow magic.
“The stacks are getting high over here,” Duran called out. “We would appreciate some help before adding more to the piles.”
We only had a few hours until we left for Myrr. After that, I didn’t trust anyone staying behind to research the Shadow Fae.
“If only there was some sort of magic to find isolated words within a text,” Clemencia muttered. “That would make this far easier.”
You knew it was bad when the two most studious of your friends were complaining about reading.
“How many mentions?” Thyra took the seat across from Duran. I settled in next to her and pulled a book from one stack.
“Only five worth investigating further.” Duran placed his hand on the stack to his left. “Shadow Fae take up multiple paragraphs in these books. The rest only had a mention or two. Nothing that isn’t common knowledge.”
“You’re aware that Myrr has a wonderfully enormous and supposedly lovely library, right?” Clem spoke without bothering to lift her gaze from her text. Her thin finger trailed across a line, helping her to keep her place. “They might have entire shelves dedicated to Shadow Fae or their magic.”
“They might,” I agreed. “They equally might not. And what if the one line Thyra and I need is here, in one of these books?”
“We can’t risk it,” my twin said. “We have to figure out how to use this magic safely.”
We were certain that, eventually, the Shadow King would make himself known.
And while he would be met with suspicion, at least he had mastery over his power.
Mastery and a tale about Sassa Falk—his mate and our ancestor—that would throw more ire on our family line.
Add to that the support of King Magnus, and I had a feeling that the Shadow King would find acceptance sooner or later.
Thyra and I did not know how to use our magic, and our father was famous not just for being a king, but an unstable one. We had to keep it together. Whichever one of us took the throne could not be seen as a Cold Queen. A dangerous queen.
Our group fell into the silence of skimming dusty texts and flipping pages.
After some time, my vision blurred with the words, but I blinked heavily and soldiered on.
The work might be dry and, mostly, boring, but things could be far worse.
The smell of old books surrounded us. We were warm, and there wasn’t a monster in sight.
A significant improvement over our circumstances of two days prior.
“Here’s an entire chapter!” Anna took a scrap of paper, slipped it in place, and shut the book with a snap. She handed it to Clemencia. “To the useful stack it goes.”
“That author is the same person who wrote two other books with large Shadow Fae segments.” Clemencia’s face brightened with recognition. “If you see this name, pay extra careful attention.” She flipped the book around to show everyone.
I memorized the name and began to skim once more. I was closing in on yet another end to a chapter when a motion among the freestanding shelves beyond caught my attention. Lord Riis appeared, his long red hair tangled and a pungent reek of fish coming off him.
When the Lord of Tongues reached our table, he bowed. “Princesses. Friends.”
“Hello there. Where did you come from?” I asked with a teasing smile. “You smell of the docks in Avaldenn.”
“I was with Vale as he fed the gryphons. Some of the fish juice may have splashed on my pant leg.”
“I’m afraid there is a faint whiff of fish about.” I chuckled, an effort to soften how my twin was glaring at the spymaster. “Is all going well out there?”
“Indeed.” He swallowed and an unplaceable look flashed across his face before disappearing so quickly I questioned if I saw it. “I came here to speak with you.”
“Go on then.” I leaned back in the chair.
“Actually, I had hoped to talk with you and Thyra. Alone.” Vale’s father peered around. “Is there a more private space?”
“The library is small enough that you’d be heard no matter what corner we crammed ourselves into,” Thyra answered, her tone perfunctory though it softened as she turned to those helping us search through books. “Do you three mind giving us the room?”
“I won’t take long,” Lord Riis assured them. “Wait next door? I can tell you when I leave.”
The others grabbed the tomes they were skimming and left the room, the door shutting behind them.
“Take a seat,” I said as that same look rippled across his features again. The faint pursing of the lips, the tightening of his throat alerted me that something was very off. “What’s going on, Leyv?”
He let out a long exhale. “I have something to tell the two of you. Something that Inga wishes for me to divulge.”
The queen. Was she going to hand over information that would make defeating her husband easier? Vale’s mother and I were not close, but he loved her. As did Saga.
What was more, Queen Inga didn’t love her husband. Their marriage was purely political. Between the love for her children and the dislike for her husband, I could see the whisperer queen giving us information we might use to great effect.
I placed my elbows on the table. “I’m listening.”
“As am I.” Thyra leaned back in her chair.
Lord Riis cleared his throat. “You’re aware that the queen was a handmaiden, even a sort of friend, to your mother?”
“Yes.” Emilia, the human slave I’d met in the hidden bowels of Frostveil Castle, had said as much.
Thyra nodded, too. She might not have been in the castle since we lived there, but my twin had connections, and she had gathered a lot of knowledge about the place over the turns.
“Well . . .” he trailed off and looked away.
“Can you please stop with the dramatics?” Thyra hissed.
“Thyra!” I placed a hand on her forearm. “He loves her and, well, I don’t know what’s going on, but clearly it’s not good.”
“It’s not.” Lord Riis swallowed. “The queen harbors great remorse over her actions of the past. I hope you both will be able to see this.”
“Who knows? First you have to tell us what she did.” Thyra growled, and the spymaster and my sister exchanged heated glares.
Lord Riis folded first, the fullness of his gaze landed on me.
“The kingdom at large knows that Inga is an excellent mind reader, but she is much, much more. She’s the strongest whisperer this kingdom has seen since the time when those with her magic were permitted to live long, full lives. ” He looked at my twin. “That power—”
“I am aware of such magic,” Thyra interrupted coldly.
She’d known of the queen’s whispering powers since Ratha told her after interrogating Vale the first time.
Ratha had known for decades, and Thyra was the first person she’d told.
My twin had never brought up using this information against the queen.
Perhaps because she considered King Magnus the real enemy.
“Fae with that forbidden magic can read and control minds,” Thyra added. “They’re far more dangerous.”
“Right.” Lord Riis spoke slowly, perhaps shocked at the depth of Thyra’s knowledge.
If that was the case, he didn’t question it.
“Inga not only has impressive control over her power, but she knows how to use it so that no one detects she’s in their heads—from her studies on other whisperers, very few can do that. ”
“So?” Thyra asked.
“Inga had access to not only Queen Revna, but to King Harald before the White Bear’s Rebellion.”
My eyes widened.
“She used her magic to attack the king as Magnus commanded. Under threat of her own life, of course. Inga would never have—”
“Leyv, are you saying that . . . by the dead gods.” My hands flew to my mouth as the pieces shuffled into place. The timeline crystallized.
“Inga poisoned your father’s mind. Bit by bit. Day by day. She turned him into the Cold King that the realm despises.” The words were rushing from him, as though if he said them fast enough, they’d hurt less. “And when she left the castle, her hold was unbreakable.”
“Not even our mother could help him,” my voice broke, and Thyra stiffened.
Long ago, I read a little of the queen’s diary. Before she became queen, my mother had been on track to become a Master Healer. She’d believed that she could have healed her husband from his madness, if only she’d completed her training.
But no. My mother would never have succeeded in healing the king. Not with a whisperer hiding nearby, attacking his mind. Turning Harald Falk on himself. On his people. His kingdom.
“Look at me, Lord Riis,” I demanded.
He lifted his gaze. Shame ran heavy along his every feature.
“How long have you known this?”
“As it was happening.”
An orc might have punched me in the belly with one of their meaty hands, and it would have had less of an impact. My heart raced, and every part of me clenched, as if bracing for something worse to come. And yet somehow, I managed to tower over him.
He was a male I’d trusted for many moons now. The first one to suspect who I was at court. Vale’s father. Someone I cared for.
And he’d betrayed me. He’d known what his lover was doing and allowed her to destroy my family. Frost formed on my fingers and began to bloom around the room. I struggled to call my power back, to gain control, and managed, though just barely.
“Why is she admitting this?” Thyra’s voice rang out in the empty library, as hard as ice, whereas I felt like a flurry of snow—going in every which direction.
“Inga has regretted her actions for a very long time,” Lord Riis repeated, “but she had our sons to think of. Now, she sees the way things are going and knows that Neve is important to Vale. She thought that, given their love, Neve deserved the truth. She didn’t know about you, Thyra, but she’d think the same of you. ”
“Leave.” I straightened. My entire body felt so cold, as though I’d explode in a storm of ice at any moment.
“Please, Neve.” Lord Riis leaned closer, his gaze beseeching. “I should have told you when I learned who you were, but I love Inga with everything that I am. I could not bear to—”
“I said leave! I don’t want to see your face!” I spun away, my chest heaving as breath became very difficult to come by.
A chair scraped against the floor, and heavy footsteps walked toward the door. When it shut, I exhaled.
“I have to say,” Thyra came to stand by me, “I imagined a lot of treachery at court during our parents’ last days, but I never suspected this.” A tear trailed down her cheek. “Nor did I think I’d be crying over our family now, all these turns after they died, but—”
“He wasn’t insane or cruel.” I took her hand and found it was as cold as mine.
“It was all a lie,” she agreed.
Our father wasn’t perfect. We’d heard the stories of the harem he kept before he’d met our mother, and other tales revealed him to be as flawed as any other fae.
But he wasn’t the monster that history would write him as either.
“Magnus told his wife to make our father do those things so he might gain support among the other nobles. And it worked. Our family is dead because of King Magnus’s plan. ”
It all stemmed from the male on the throne.
From the king’s hatred of our family—of the father who had never claimed him, our uncle, Prince Calder Falk.
A memory of the skeletal prince, clinging to life in the dank and stinking eastern dungeons of Frostveil, made me scowl.
If he’d shown his son the slightest bit of love, would any of this have happened?
I’d never have an answer. No one could change the past. Not even the dead gods. And if they possessed such magic, I doubted that they’d try. Those gods were long gone, dead. Or hiding among the stars like cowards. In the here and now they didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Lord Riis had betrayed me, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive him. Or at the very least, see him in the same light I once had.
More chilling was my second thought. One that would very much affect my mate.
If I was not mistaken, Queen Inga had tasked Lord Riis with giving us this information because she didn’t believe she could hold Rhistel in her thrall for much longer.
The heir to Winter’s Realm would, eventually, break free. And when that happened, I was certain Rhistel would seek revenge on his mother. Likely, he’d take her life.
As much as I despised both Lord Riis and Queen Inga, they were my mate’s parents. He loved them. And I loved Vale.
“You still trust him?” Thyra whispered, tearing through that horrible realization.
I looked away, unable to answer.