Chapter 6 - Wintery Words
Wrenora
Just as the prince had ordered, Magdala arranged for half the thralls to be relocated.
Where they went wasn’t information shared with the rest of us.
We were left to wonder if they’d been sent away or if they’d been killed.
I tried not to think about it, because in the end, there was nothing I could do to change my outcome.
I would be sent away all the same. We were slaves—possessions of the crown.
And right now, the crown was his Royal Broodiness.
“You—Wrenora.”
I heard the voice, but it took a moment to register as I continued to peel potatoes. I’d lost count of how many I’d peeled. It was enough that my hand felt stiff from holding the knife in the same position for so long.
“For the gods’ sakes, Wrenora, I’m talking to you.”
I perked up, turning toward Magdala who stood on the other side of the kitchen from me.
“Yes, Lady?”
“I need you. Leave the potatoes.”
She waited, glaring with impatience, as I glanced over at Lorna who’d been slicing the potatoes as I peeled.
“I’ll send someone else to finish,” Magdala said as she nodded in Lorna’s direction.
I did as she asked and hurried to her side, my hands endlessly thankful for a new task.
She led me out of the kitchens and toward a set of stairs.
I hesitated. I’d been personally reprimanded by the prince more than once and didn’t wish to be caught on the upper levels again.
Contrary to what one might think, I wasn’t interested in being impaled with a frozen sword.
Magdala glanced back as she ascended and made an exasperated huff. “You’ve nothing to fear. You’re with me.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. Every task she’d given me thus far had been a questionable decision.
Was she, in fact, trying to get me killed?
Had she been assigning other thralls tasks on the upper levels?
Or was it just me? After another second of hesitation, I swallowed my fear, shoving it deep into the pit of my stomach, and climbed the stairs behind her.
She took me to a small room. It was cozy and warm with an actual fire crackling happily in a stone fireplace insert made of the same material as the cook stoves. There was a cluttered wooden desk to one side of the room and several thick manuscripts piled on top.
When did Magdala have time to read? She was always doing something, going somewhere, or ordering someone to help with a task.
My eyes climbed up the frozen walls, marveling at the texture of the ice that glittered with the movement of the fire.
The ceiling was lower here than others, frosted and decorated with hanging icicles that sent a shiver down my spine.
If one of them fell, it could spear a skull.
Magdala didn’t seem nervous, though, so I tried to rip my eyes from them as best as I could.
“It took a while for me to get used to them, too.”
I jerked my head in Magdala’s direction, shocked to find a coy smile turning up her lips. I looked away quickly, trying to hide my confusion. Was she being nice? To me?
“Your magic,” she said.
I froze in place. My magic was shackled. I was surprised she could sense it at all.
“You’re a fire mage.” The words slithered from her lips like a dirty secret. Not a question, but a truth.
“I...I’m...”
“You’ve nothing to fear. I’m just surprised you weren’t put to death with the others at the end of the war.”
This very thing had crossed my mind numerous times. The other fire mages had been executed, their heads sent back to the human cities of Kaldaira in baskets. Fire was dangerous to a royal family of frost elves.
All humans held some fragment of magic in their bones from a bargain made many millennia ago with the gods, thus the shackles on our wrists. But a rare few possessed enough that it could be manipulated and projected outside their bodies. And an even rarer few were like me.
“I do possess fire magic, but it’s...different.”
And it was. I wasn’t lying. I couldn’t throw glorious fireballs from my fingertips, start a fire, or heat a kettle for tea like other fire mages. Perhaps this was why I was spared. If you weren’t particularly sensitive to magic, you might never know I possessed it at all.
My mother called it quiet magic. It could flow from one person to another and ease a mind, sometimes swaying a person to do things they otherwise might not do, but this was an inconsistent ability I’d never mastered.
It was really only good for one thing: imbuing.
I could coax and trap the essence of magic into objects by heating and changing the composition of the material from which the object was made.
It had to be strong enough to withstand intense changes in temperature—mostly gemstones or things made of metal.
It took concentration and extreme temperatures—mainly heat—to do effectively.
I hadn’t performed imbuing in years—not since volunteering to fight in the war.
Once I picked up a sword, I put away my imbuing studies.
Now it was more of a burden than anything.
I could feel it pushing against the shackles trying to break free, the dissonance of it incessantly grating against my consciousness.
“You’re a warrior, right?”
I didn’t like the direction of the conversation.
It was fairly obvious I was a warrior. Most human slaves were warriors or clerics sent to heal the injured.
It was one of the reasons I assumed the prince didn’t want thralls at his fortress.
Why surround yourself with your enemies stolen directly from the battlefield?
The people who wanted your death and had the skills to kill you.
She made a dismissive gesture. “It doesn’t matter either way. I noticed your magic seems to fight against your shackles.” She gestured for me to come closer. “May I see them?”
I hesitated, mostly because the last time someone asked to see my wrists, they’d welded the shackles in place, and now I’d wear them for the rest of my life.
“You’re not in trouble.” Her smile grew as she stepped closer. “I’m only curious.”
I held one of my arms up for her, shivering at the feel of her soft touch as she flipped my hand over to inspect all sides of the shackle. Her brow furrowed as she leaned closer, twisting the band around my arm. Then, as though she’d never asked to see it at all, she stepped back.
“I need your eye for organization.”
Confused, I gave her a quizzical look. “I’m not sure I’m all that skilled at organization, my lady.”
“Perhaps I just have a need for...someone other than overly critical elven judgement.”
This took me by surprise. Magdala was an elf after all. I nodded, still uncomfortable having a casual conversation with someone who could easily have me put to death.
“I need help going through all of these books and scrolls and putting them back in some sort of order on the bookcase.” She pointed to a bookshelf that was all haphazard manuscripts and knickknacks sprawled over five shelves.
“This study belonged to the prince’s previous advisor, and I haven’t had time to get it organized since coming here. ”
I tried not to let my curiosity show. I’d assumed she’d always been here. What had happened to the advisor before her? The fortress itself was new compared to the rest of Neeva a few leagues away. The prince had constructed it after his exile from the royal city of Dyga...if the rumors were true.
I glanced around the study. The task seemed daunting, but at the same time, I would take anything over peeling more potatoes.
“Of course, my lady.” I hesitated, not sure how to respond in a way that didn’t sound rehearsed, so I went with genuine. “I’ll do the best I can.”
Her smile was warm—almost endearing—and it made me desperate to understand her motivations.
Had I met an elf whose heart wasn’t completely tainted with hatred for humans?
Someone who still remembered the time before the war when our peoples had been friendly, the border between Telrain and Kaldaira peaceful.
“I know you will.”
“How could you possib—”
“Are you questioning me?”
I clamped my mouth shut at her sharp tone. I’d lost myself in the moment, my eyes going wide as I realized she could easily punish me for my words. Six months and I still wasn’t used to being a slave.
“Forgive m—”
“I’ll be back to check on your progress.”
Before I could express my concern at being left alone on this level—vulnerable should anyone else find me here—she ducked out of the room and closed the door behind her.
––––––––
I managed to get two of the shelves organized and was sitting next to a mound of scrolls when the door was thrown open, slamming against the wall behind it.
I’d been lost in thought as I thumbed through a manuscript on transformative magics and imbuing and nearly smacked my head on the shelf behind me.
The prince stepped in, his brows furrowed in anger, eyes raking over the disheveled contents of the desk.
“Magdala—” His glare abruptly stopped on me, eyes going wide before he stepped farther into the room, drawing his blade. I scrambled away, sliding on my backside until I hit the shelf behind me.
There were clambering footsteps from the hall and a terrified cry as Magdala fell into her office behind him.
“She’s here on my—”
“Alone, in your study?”
Prince Callan angled his sword toward Magdala and she shrank back, a hand pressing to her chest. I could tell by the way her mouth fixed into a hard line that this was not the first time the prince had spoken to her this way, and perhaps not the first time he’d drawn a blade on her, either.
“She’s not an elfling. She doesn’t—”
“She’s not an elf at all. She’s a thrall.” His voice was stained with vile derision, sending a shiver down my spine.
I was worthless to him. Yet, I understood how he felt, because I hated him as much as he hated me.
Possibly more. He was the single symbol of all I’d fought against, and everything that had destroyed my life, killed my friends, and left me shackled.
He was the reason the winter blight crept across the continent, destroying crops, homes, and lives.
He was the embodiment of cold, the thing I hated more than anything else.
“Highness, there’s a perfectly good—”
“There is no excuse. I told you to have them sent away. I said no thralls on this level. Yet, you keep putting this one in places she does not belong.” He squared his shoulders toward her, sparing me the heat of his glare. “I leave tomorrow. I want the thralls gone when I return. All of them.”
Magdala nodded vigorously, and he tipped his ice blade away, as if realizing he had aimed it at his trusted advisor in the heat of frustration.
“Can I send a runner ahead to announce your arrival, Highness?”
“I’m going to Mariss; there’s no one to announce my arrival to.”
His words hung in the air. Mariss was in the mining region.
It was one of the things we humans had wanted when King Lyoneese sent his army to invade Telrain.
As the blight reached its frozen fingers across the land, humans needed more resources, and Mariss was flush with them, including the mines bursting with gems needed to perform imbuing magic, which humans excelled at over the elves.
Elven magic was grounded in the earth, water, tides, and for the rare frost elf, the cold itself.
None of these could transform metal and stone quite like fire could.
“Why Mariss?” Magdala asked.
“For sapphires,” I said, not realizing I’d said the words out loud until the prince spun to look at me.
Fucking Nine Hells.
I looked from him to Magdala and back, my stomach bottoming out.
With smooth elegance, Prince Callan stepped closer, pointing the tip of his sword so it came to rest beneath my chin.
I swallowed hard as he tipped my face up to his.
All the anger and frustration in his expression were gone.
What was left was almost more terrifying—an emotionless disinterest to his eyes that had a practiced quality.
Like he was trying entirely too hard to hide behind both the physical mask he wore on the lower half of his face and one woven from stoicism.
“And what would you know of sapphires?”
My heart was beating so hard I thought it would rip from my chest. Any words I’d had ready to answer him with were cut away by the sting of his frozen blade against my skin.
I couldn’t pry my eyes from his, the unnaturally pale lavender of them clawing away any courage I had remaining.
My mouth hung open as I tried and failed to answer.
Magdala stepped forward, a hand coming up as if to take the prince’s arm, but he jerked away, avoiding her touch.
“Mariss is where the gem mines are?” Magdala asked, her voice forced higher in pitch than usual, desperate to defuse the situation.
Why she cared so much about whether I was hurt was another piece to my shock and confusion. I was a thrall; she was an elf in a position of power within the royal household.
He stood with his infuriating stillness—as if his eyes could see inside my thoughts and rip the answers from me one by one—the tip of his sword still pressed to the soft underside of my chin.
“Please, Highness, she’s only doing what I’ve asked. There’s no reason to—”
“No thralls,” he said as he turned away, his sword disintegrating into the air as he stormed past Magdala without another word.
I took a deep breath, trying to ease the terror that oozed into my limbs and sent cold numbness pulsing through me. Magdala’s eyes were still wide as she glanced at me sitting among the books and scrolls I had yet to organize.
“Well, that went well,” she finally said.
A spontaneous laugh burst from my throat before I threw my hands over my mouth.
She smiled, something strange about her expression that I couldn’t pinpoint. As quickly as the grin had turned her lips up, it fell.
“I’ll have to send you away with the others. Though, if I’m entirely honest, I’d rather keep you for myself.”