Chapter 10 Ban
All is not well in the palace of ice.
I knew that Ronnie had some… interesting approaches to her leadership. I sort of remember what things were like when Andor was around, but it wasn’t a whole lot better than it is now. The difference is Ronnie relies so heavily on her magic it's become part of her lifestyle.
The Icebound spirits are new. Usually, the floating entities stay far from the palace, but she’s managed to encase at least two within her snow magic, using them like marionettes.
Most times when I see an Icebound, there are distinguishable qualities that set them apart from a regular spirit, such as horns, wings, or an enormous size.
Features I can only attribute to the changes a soul experiences when they linger and become Icebound.
Ronnie’s two henchmen seem to do her bidding without question. After observing the two for a day, it’s clear that they don’t have any will of their own.
It’s unnerving. Spirits are meant to leave the world behind, even the Icebound. To keep them here for personal needs is… unsavory. It sort of reminds me of Dima and Barty, but I would call what they have more of an agreement than enslavement.
After visiting Neve in her room, I retreated to the shadows, unobserved. She doesn’t sleep, walking around the guest-room and muttering to herself. I leave to monitor the rest of the palace when it’s clear she’s not going to leave her new suite.
Ronnie sleeps the night away, but peering through her room and the adjacent spaces doesn’t provide anything I don’t already know.
Before sunrise, I leave the castle. As much as I want to loiter and see how the two queens interact, I have things to handle around the land.
I shouldn’t even stay near the castle with the number of dead I’m certain have congregated in the rural parts of the Frostlands, but Neve is my draw.
I don’t want to leave when she’s just awoken, all her former allies dead or turned into enemies.
To be fair, she wants me dead, as well.
Sighing, I head to the outskirts of the kingdom where the peasants live, the streets no longer familiar to me after all these years.
While sweeping through to reap the dead, I let my mind wander.
Neve was truly surprised by my Reaper status, so I assume the royals didn’t have an intricate working of death anymore than the rest of us did.
Ray and Zarev haven’t said if either of their princesses knows much about their status.
Reapers are new, but at the same time, the concept of reaping cannot be.
The world was not overrun by the dead when the four of us shifted, so the Shadow Man was doing his work before we rose.
Sitting on the palace roof, I dig out my seeing stone to reach out to my friends for the first time in a long while.
The stone glows for several minutes before I get a response, which is sort of what I expected. I’m still surprised he answers. “Ban.”
“Lucius,” I reply, smirking into the stone. His sightless eyes stare back, a cruel gift the Mad Queen bestowed upon him. “How’s that librarian of yours at research?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his head cocking to one side.
Lucius and I look similar, his light blond hair closer to my white than either Zarev or Raymundo.
It’s funny how we live on opposite sides of Mystica, yet our looks are the closest. Of course, my hair used to be dark until I received my ice magic.
“Ban, you know she’s a ghost.”
Ah, yes, the ghost of Thornton Palace. Lucius's live-in living dead. I’ve never seen her, but he’s mentioned her enough times for me to get the general idea. She’s not a spirit in the traditional sense, but I don’t know how to label her. “Yeah, her. Think she can look into something for me?”
“Bellarose doesn’t really take direction,” he grumbles, and I almost laugh. He’s getting bested by a ghost. I’m almost not sure how he can call himself a Reaper. “Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story, friend. I’m hoping to do a bit of research.”
“You want to learn something?” he asks, surprised. A smirk tugs at his lips. “Has it been so long you’ve forgotten how to read?”
“Ha,” I reply dryly, shaking my head. “Your library is probably the most intact thing in Mystica. I need to do a little digging into the royal bloodlines of the Frostlands.”
His head tilts to the side, brows furrowing together. It makes the scars on his cheeks shift, lifting the hearts just a little. “They don’t have a royal library? All royals have a library, Ban. Even a hall of accords, something to track the passage of time.”
“I’m aware. But I’ve wandered through the palace plenty of times, and I have yet to see a library.”
“Hmm. I suppose with a hundred years on the throne, the Snow Queen might have made some changes.”
My back straightens. Even when I was snooping for answers about where the damn needle was, nowhere I looked and no one I listened to had such a refined timeline of events.
Rumors of Ronnie’s long rule are old news and the order of events is muddled.
Even the nobles’ homes I searched through, looking for the needle, weren’t that informed. “You’re sure it’s a century.”
“Well, that’s about how old you are, right, Ban?
” he asks. I may not have gone into details about my knowledge of the royals of the Frostlands in the past, but I have mentioned it.
My friends are well aware of my age. “You’ve brought up King Andor here and there.
I studied my parents’ records in great detail.
Andor died about a hundred years ago. You were alive then and the Ice Queen rumors began at the same time. It makes sense.”
“Yet I can’t find a library of documentation out here.”
Lucius shrugs, moving back until I can see the folded tips of his wings.
I’m surprised to see them at all. Usually, when we speak, they aren’t in sight at all, and I don’t think he’s flown in a long time.
I’m not sure he can anymore. “Thornton is a small land ruled by me. I can control what disappears with time and what doesn’t.
The Frostlands is full of deceit. Perhaps the interim queen isn’t sharing the truth. ”
I don’t bother to correct Lucius about the Dowager Queen crap I keep hearing. Interim sounds so much better. “You have no idea.”
“There’s nothing new about the Frostlands’ records on my end,” Lucius goes on. “No new rulers, no new outsiders. That is a land paused in time. Snedronningen has had a century to change the land into a kingdom of her own design. History may not have a place in her tomorrow.”
“You think she destroyed records of the past,” I groan.
“I think it takes one generation to wipe clean the recording of time,” Lucius says carefully.
“She’s had four to turn the Frostlands into her utopia, to let the past be forgotten.
She doesn’t reach outside the walls of her own kingdom, and trade with the Frostlands is all but gone.
The borders are closed, the people trapped, except for Icicle Pass.
If she wishes to rewrite history, it would be the perfect time and place to do it. ”
That’s what I’m afraid of. I doubt she will quietly step back and allow Neve to take the title of Queen after hiding her away. I ruined Ronnie’s plans, and until the Ice Queen trusts me, she isn’t going to listen to a word I say. Which she needs to if we plan to fix the deceit of the Snow Queen.
“I take it you won’t ask the ghost, then?” I sigh.
“I can ask, but she doesn’t always listen to me.”
I chuckle, shaking my head as I look at the sky. It’s going to snow again. “Bellarose, was it?”
“Yeah,” he says carefully, his tone changing. If I didn’t know better, I would call it endearment. “I call her Belle.”
~~~
Later, after I’ve witnessed a most uncomfortable dinner between Neve, Ronnie, and the two Icebound who don’t eat, I sit on a windowsill overlooking the palace grounds when my stone begins to shine in my pocket.
Damn, I knew this might happen. My focus remains on Neve, who I know is still in the guestroom.
Palace workers spent the day moving things from one room to another, and Ronnie made up excuse after excuse about why she couldn’t sit and talk with Neve.
If she didn’t see through that, there’s no helping the Ice Queen.
I can’t quite tell if they are moving things into the correct suite for Neve, moving Ronnie’s things out, or some strange mixture of the two.
Everything looks the same among all the furniture.
For the moment, Neve seems to be brooding. That’s what she was doing the last time I peeked into her room. Mostly, I’m curious to see if she tries to sneak away or take matters into her own hands.
She’s the rightful queen. She doesn’t have to listen to her mother. So far as I know, there was never a ceremony for the Dowager Queen, so she doesn’t maintain a higher title than the Queen. Neve should be able to do whatever she wants, but so far, she hasn’t even tried.
Groaning, I slip into the shadows, shifting away from the palace. Down into the noble streets and further still into the poorer districts, I move until I’m outside the main city.
It doesn’t matter that it’s distant; it just matters that no one will care about me out here. When I drag the stone from my pocket, I expect to see Lucius again, hopefully ready to regale me with good news.
Instead, it’s Odette.
“Hi, Ban,” she says, smiling through the stone. My brows rise high on my head, surprised she’s talking to me. She had an insatiable curiosity when we met in the caves, but I haven’t felt the urge to talk to her again since I started back to the Frostlands to find Neve.
“Odette.”
She gives me a knowing smile. “Ray said I needed to discuss this with you. Something about a history lesson?”
“So Lucius told him?” I ask dryly. I can’t think of the last time the four of us corresponded this much. Part of that is definitely because of me, but Lucius isn’t as chatty as Ray and Z. They were always the closest of the four of us.