Chapter 20
We ride into Montrace weeks later to great fanfare. The Queen’s spell of forgetting must have broken when Kai and I defeated her at her own game. Everyone welcomes us home as if the wicked, cruel version of the prince never happened.
It’s as unsettling as losing my scars.
“Gwen!”
“Nana?” I scan the crowd, trying to locate her. She calls my name a second time and I finally spot her on the rampart walls. I slip off my horse and push through the throng, up the stairs, ignoring the protests of the armored guards, and throw myself into her arms.
“You’re alive,” she sobs. Guilt crashes down on me. I’m her only family, and like a sullen child, I ran off and left her alone.
“I’m back, Nana.” For how long?
She takes me by the shoulders and peers up at my face. There are new lines framing her eyes and her gray hair has turned almost entirely white. She’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
“You look so different,” she says. The note of confusion in her voice cuts right through me.
“My scars are gone.”
“What scars?”
Apparently the memory of the snow bees’ attack has been erased along with everything else. I suppose the revisionist history will claim the king and his three eldest sons died nobly in battle. “Never mind.”
“You look so mature and capable. You’re the spitting image of your mother, but you have more confidence than she ever displayed.” Nana doesn’t try to disguise the note of bitterness that creeps into her tone. “The trousers, though…” She sighs. “Come, let’s get you properly dressed.”
In our tiny garret apartment, I change into the same old gown I used to wear while working in the kitchens. Even three years later, it’s faintly redolent of onions.
“Nana?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t go back to the kitchens.” I stare out at the yard below, past the empty spot where the window box I tended with Kai used to sit, before he destroyed it.
“You’re planning to leave, aren’t you?” she says quietly.
“I can’t stay here.”
“Oh, Gwen. I’m sorry Kai didn’t deserve you.”
She hugs me again. Her frailty alarms me. “I’m not leaving you, Nana.” Not yet. I will have to find a way to deal with watching Kai assume his rightful place in the world, while I flounder to find mine. At least for a while.
“Montrace is my home. I can’t go with you.” Nana sniffles.
I sigh. “Let’s not argue about this already.”
Her embrace tightens. “I am so glad to have you back.”
My grandmother releases me when there is a knock at the door. On the other side is a messenger from the Queen. “Her Majesty requests the pleasure of your company. She sends this as a token of her regard.”
He places a large box on the rickety table, bows, and leaves.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Nana asks.
“Another dress, I’m sure,” I say dryly. After spending so much time in trousers, they no longer feel quite natural to wear. “Just like old times, except now she trusts me to dress myself, apparently.”
“You might not be curious, but I am.” Nana fetches her sharpest paring knife and slices through the string. “Gwen. Look at this!”
She takes out a shimmering silk gown of deep green with gold embroidery. I can’t help but gasp. “That is quite extravagant.”
“There’s a note. It says, ‘As a gesture of my appreciation for returning my son to me, please accept this gown. You and your grandmother must join us for the banquet this evening.”
Beneath the dress for me, in a layer of tissue paper, is a second one made of blue velvet. Nana’s eyes light up when she sees it. She strokes the soft fabric reverently.
As painful as it will be to watch Kai formally step into his role as king, there is no avoiding it.
Not without abandoning and embarrassing Nana all over again.
I must seal away my feelings and feign joy for Kai while I figure out where to go next, and how I can convince my grandmother to leave the home she has known for more than half her life.
“The emerald will offset your hair beautifully,” Nana says. Something in my expression must snag her attention. She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “These gowns are worth a small fortune. We can enjoy them tonight and sell them tomorrow. It is a generous gift.”
A dress is not the reward I wanted. Nonetheless, I strip off my clothes and start changing into it. At least Kai didn’t send undergarments. That would have tipped off Nana that I have squandered my virtue.
I cannot bring myself to regret it.
As with my first banquet, all eyes are upon me when I stride into the room. Unlike the first time, they are not scornful. A reverent hush falls over the room, which unnerves me even more than being openly despised.
Kai greets me midway down the red carpet. I slip my gloved hand into his elbow and let him lead me to the head table. I am given a place of honor beside him, and Nana is seated at the other end of the table. She looks bewildered and overwhelmed. I cast her an encouraging smile.
Lady Ashworth simpers over me as if we’re best friends. Although she’s remarried, her gaze lingers covetously upon Kai. I ignore her as politely as I can.
The Queen Regent drones on about forging new alliances. The sumptuous feast turns to ash on my tongue.
I know what that means. Aisendelle is mentioned. Caldrithonia, too.
She says something about land. I suppose that is to be my reward: a patch of land where I can live out the rest of my brokenhearted days in peace.
I ought to be grateful. It’s a more generous reward than I expected. But it’s still not what I wanted.
When I can endure no more admiring accolades and the attention becomes too much to bear, I slip away and make my escape into the garden where The Snow Queen stole Kai away in her sleigh.
Out here, the ornamental trees have taken on shades of russet and gold.
Autumn has come to the land of eternal summer.
I trace the veins in a golden leaf absently.
Montrace has changed. So have I. Kai, too. Nothing will ever be the same as it was before the fae witch touched our lives. I mourn what I lost. Innocence, yes. But mostly, hope.
Boots scuff on stone. Whirling, I find Kai coming down the steps.
“You’re not leaving?” he says.
“I…yes. I’m tired from the journey,” I fib. How can I tell him that it breaks my heart to see him bedecked like the king he is? That the kindness in his eyes only saddens me?
I can’t. Yet I am incapable of living a lie now. I don’t know if I ever could. I wanted more than friendship then, and I still want it now. But the only time he was willing to touch me was when he was under The Snow Queen’s spell. Now, he has a future here. I don’t.
I can’t help but think that some of his darkness has transferred to me.
A permanent stain upon my soul. I wish he would push me up against a wall and kiss me the way he did in the garden, before the fae witch stole him.
I wish he would invite me to his room and take me to bed the way he did at the Ice Palace.
This Kai is too noble, too much of a return to my childhood friend to want me now.
“But I’ll see you in the morning?” he says.
I start to answer, but halfway through, it changes. “I…don’t know, Kai. I can’t bear to watch you wed another woman. I can’t stay and witness that. I’m sorry.”
“Another woman?” His brow quirks up. “Who said anything about another woman?”
“Your mother spoke of alliances. Land. I’m not stupid, Kai. I knew it was hopeless for me to love you before The Snow Queen stole you. In some ways, I thank her for her interference, because it brought me closer to you than would otherwise have been possible.
“I’ll always love you. No matter where I am in the world or how many years pass, you will live in my heart forever. Yet I accept now what I wasn’t able to before. You do not belong to me, and you never will.”
He freezes as though he’s turned into one of The Snow Queen’s living statues. My heart thunders loudly in my ears. Say something. Tell me you want me to stay. That you love me.
He won’t. He can’t. His life is not his own.
“Is that what’s been bothering you?” he asks airlessly. “Ever since we left the ice palace I wondered whether I had said or done something to make you so cold and distant.”
“Me?” I squeak.
“I didn’t think I was the one pushing you away.
” He rakes his fingers through his hair, ruffling the perfect styling.
My heart trips over the way it falls over his brow, the imperfection only highlighting his sharply handsome features.
“What kind of ingrate would I be if I rewarded you for freeing me by abandoning you?”
“But we need alliances…” I trail off.
“I will have to attend to important negotiations in due time. I managed to piss off every kingdom on the continent while the fae witch had her hooks in me.” He scuffs the ground ruefully.
“Thanks to you, we have an alliance with the Northern Territories through Princess Christabel. You not only gave me a way to redeem my name. You held out hope when everyone else abandoned me. If not for you, I wouldn’t have a kingdom to return to.
The last thing I want is for you to leave. ”
The vulnerability in him cracks my heart open like a bursting dam.
“You mean it?”
“With my entire heart.” He caresses my cheek.
“When I was at my worst, you still saw good in me. When I was lost, you came to find me. When I had given up in despair, you convinced me to keep trying, and together, we won. Without you, I would still be trapped in the witch’s palace.
There is no queen I would rather have at my side than you. ”
He drops to one knee. “Marry me. Please. I’m begging you to stay here and rule Montrace with me.”
I don’t know what to think. This moment is everything I wished for on the day of his Ascension ceremony.
But I’m not that innocent girl anymore. I can fend for myself. I can protect him. I was stronger and smarter than I ever knew before I left this castle.
I’m also harder. I miss the soft girl who gave her heart away so easily. I wince at the memory of my own desperation to be loved.
If there is one thing I have learned in my travels, it’s that my heart is too wild to be contained behind safe walls. The sanctuary I needed when I was young now feels as much like a prison as the ice palace did.
I don’t need a castle. I need a home.
A lover, not a friend.
A partner, not a king.
Can he be those things?
There is no sign of the wicked, hardened man who gazed into the depths of my soul and gave me what I desired but could not speak.
“Kai. Get up. I’m not even a lady. No one would countenance this union. I’m flattered and deeply honored, but we both know a king marries for political alliances, not love.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “The land my mother spoke of at dinner is a bribe, essentially, to get your grandfather to accept you as his legitimate granddaughter. Your mother was a lady, and if he agrees, you’ll be one, too. Thus making you eligible to be my bride. That is, if you want it.”
“I want you, Kai.” The words rush past my lips.
“I want you without this.” I jingle the gold chain dangling from his shoulder, a mark of military rank.
“I know it sounds strange, and wrong, but I want the version of you who burned for me, even when you despised me for making you feel that way.
I want the man who dared to pursue me onto a balcony knowing everyone was watching, not caring in the slightest what they thought of us.
“I want your passion as much as your respect. I want your flaws along with all the goodness in your heart. What would kill me by inches is to stand at your side, share your bed—share your life—while knowing there’s a part of you hidden away from me.
I want what The Snow Queen saw in you. Your coldness.
Your darkness. Everything. If you cannot give me that, then I can’t stay here.
I won’t settle for having only the parts of you that you feel are worth showing me. ”
Silence falls over us like a blanket of deep snow. I don’t know if what I said makes sense to him or not. A rational part of me wonders why anyone would want those parts of himself. But one thing the Queen’s mirror shard did, was to let me see the whole truth of Kai’s heart—along with my own.
I need his flaws. I can’t hide my own, and I don’t want to even if I could. My outward scars are gone, but the inward ones will always be there. I need him to understand that I’ll always be Gwendolyn the scullery maid, no matter how many titles he bestows upon me.
I’m still his Gwen. Does he understand that?