Chapter 41 – Neve
Chapter 41
NEVE
I awoke alone, in an enormous bed, a cold fire bubbling under my skin.
“What in the nine kingdoms?” I whispered, sitting up and rubbing my arms for a moment before my vision cleared from sleep and the scene before me set in. “Oh, no!”
In the weak morning light, frost crawled across the room like a spider. Icicles dripped from the canopy, and there were fat snowflakes on my blanket.
Worst of all, the diligent lady-in-waiting and friend, Clemencia, stood at the edge of the room, watching me with wide eyes.
“Clem,” I breathed.
“I came in here because I heard you shout in your sleep.”
I had? I didn’t recall a nightmare. Then again, perhaps I’d been yelling about whatever was happening in my room .
“I found this.” She waved her hand wildly to encompass the room, her voice smaller than seconds before, her teeth chattering from the chill. “So please, what’s going on, Princess Neve?”
“I—” My insides seized.
My throat tightened because this time, I recognized the signs of what was about to happen. All my life I’d wished for this day, the day my magic appeared, and I learned what it was. Now that the day was here, I only wanted it to never show.
But, like last night, I had no control over my magic. It pushed to come out of me and this morning, it bubbled out of me like a brew in a cauldron set over a roaring flame.
“Princess Neve.” Clemencia came closer, her steps small and hesitant. “Are you hurting? I can go get the healer.”
I shook my head because a healer was the last thing I needed. No, I required someone who might know how to restrain my magic. Somehow, though my throat felt coated in frost, I croaked. “Get Vale.”
She whirled and ran to the door, slipping on the ice on the floor before catching herself and flinging the door open. “Help! The princess needs help! Get Prince Vale!”
A nearby door opened.
“What’s wrong with her?” Anna’s voice, still groggy from sleep, hit my ear and a moment later, she appeared in the doorway. She’d put me in the room between hers and Clemencia’s, and my oldest friend hadn’t left my side until . . . Well, I supposed until I fell asleep because I did not remember when she left.
“Her magic is appearing!” Clemencia shouted. “Help! It’s being violent with my lady!”
“What!” Anna shrieked, and though I still felt like a glacier was crushing me, I could still make out Anna’s distinct footfalls, the way her clubbed foot dragged ever so slightly as she ran to the bed.
“Neve.” Anna’s voice trembled at my name. “Are you hurting?”
I raised my hand, showing her how blue my skin had turned before a flurry of snow burst all around me. I yelped, and Anna reared back.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Anna murmured. Dimly, I heard Clemencia, still yelling for help, but as a fresh wave of cold rushed through me, the room fell away.
I stood in a forest, before a tree with purple leaves. A Drassil tree.
Vaguely, I knew I wasn’t really in the forest. If I concentrated hard enough, which I could only do in fleeting seconds, I still felt the bed beneath me, heard an echo of someone talking. Anna? Clemencia?
But the tree looked so real. As though if I reached out to touch it, I’d feel the bark rough against my fingertips.
Was I dying? Was my magic killing me and this was some hallucination to make it less painful? Because though I still felt like I was freezing, it was working.
Perhaps this led to the afterlife. If so, it wasn’t so bad. Sort of peaceful.
For a moment, it stayed that way. But when the tree’s leaves danced and a faint light emanated from it, I sensed that was about to change.
“Hello?” I asked, feeling foolish but also justified. The Drassils had spoken to me before. Why not guide me into the afterlife too?
Isolde, that familiar female voice, the same one that spoke when I’d saved Anna. You must go back.
I pushed aside the fact that now the tree, or maybe the Faetia, was acknowledging my bloodline. “Back where?”
To Winter’s Realm. To those you love.
I sucked in a breath. So I really was dying?
“How?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to follow through. Here it was pleasant and peaceful and in that room in Riis Tower it was . . . Well, anything but peaceful.
You decide to take your place in the world. You claim your life.
“I never wanted the life I have.”
It is yours all the same. You go back. You claim your name, then decide if you want the rest.
“And what if I don’t? What if I want to leave and go south with Anna? What if I want to forget about my mistakes?”
You cannot.
I swallowed. “Why? Is this the price I must pay?”
The voice didn’t answer, and for a moment, I feared our conversation had finished until they spoke again.
The price is unpaid. Until you claim yourself, it will remain so.
“I’ll hurt people.”
Like Vale. My magic perplexed him, and I’d already hurt him with my actions. But all of that would be nothing to what he’d think when he learned of my bloodline. “I don’t want to do that.”
Think of those who will suffer if you do not. The fae of winter.
A deep breath sank into my lungs. For the first time, I saw what, perhaps, others would have seen so long ago. Claiming my name, my ancestry, would come with more problems. Huge problems. It would mean many fae would wish to kill me.
But I could also help others—those who had been like me.
Perhaps even the slaves in the Blood Court. Heat built inside me as purpose thundered in my heart.
If you think of them, you are worthy of the crown, my daughter.
Daughter. My heart rate ramped up. The voice I’d been hearing, the voice that spoke when I saved Anna. It was my mother’s voice?
My hands began to tremble with the revelation that, yes, my mother had been a healer. She’d been there that night and helped me save Anna. Stars, how could I have been so stupid?
“Mother? I wish I could see you.”
No sooner had I said the words than the air in front of me shimmered. A female shape materialized out of the shimmering and where once nothing stood, a faerie watched me. A crowned faerie.
A queen with eyes of blue I’d seen in paintings.
A sob wrenched its way up my throat, and the image of my mother gave a sad smile.
“Why haven’t you done this before?” I lifted a hand and gestured to her form. She wasn’t solid, and yet seeing her, almost lifelike, was more than I’d ever dared to hope for.
“Communication comes at a great cost. Just as it does when I speak to you without a body. Speaking to you this way, I will deplete faster. Turn back to stardust faster.” She spoke normally, though her voice was the same as when she’d had no body. “But you need me more than ever before so I will stay as long as I can.”
I wouldn’t lie and say it was enough. It would never be enough, but it would have to be for now. “I’m so scared. Of so much.”
That smile returned, sad and longing and understanding. “I would be worried if you were not. Much is to be done to bring the kingdom back from the brink. But remember this, my love—fear is normal. Fear is a reaction. Courage, however, is a choice.”
A pretty line, but much more difficult to act on than to say.
“I want to help others,” I admitted. “Those who have no power most of all. But how?”
“No one knows how to lead, not really. Not until they do it.”
I wasn’t sure how true that was, but any question flew from my mind as my mother’s form began to disappear. First her feet, then legs and arms and body. It happened so fast that within seconds I was trembling and committing her face to memory.
“Are you gone?” I whispered, wishing I’d asked a million more questions. That I’d been faster.
For a little longer .
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t you tell me my given name? Who you were?”
You were not ready. Not in heart, soul, or mind. I would have only put you in more danger.
“But I am now?”
Yes, my love. You are ready now. I am sure of it. First, you must go west. Back to where it began.
West, to Guldtown? To confront Roar? I’d already wanted to do so. Nothing would stop me now.
“Mother?”
Go, Isolde, before it is too late. Make your family proud.
“I don’t know how,” I said.
You will figure it out. You . . .
Her words died, and the cold inside me intensified. My heart raced.
I stood on a precipice. If I didn’t return now, if I didn’t fight back the cold clouding my veins, I’d never return at all.
So I made a choice.