Chapter Three
Gerard
The Cold Council had never looked quite so cold.
Or so sparse.
Edward stood at the fore of the little group, eyes cast down in deference, and his hands crossed before him.
Behind him, almost shoulder to shoulder, were Bertha, Councillor of Public Wellbeing, and Norris, Councillor of Foreign Affairs, both of whom were shaking.
The room had not been thawed in weeks, the icicles still glittering just overhead, reaching lovingly for their scalps with wicked, bladed fingers.
Ger strongly suspected it was not the cold that bothered them.
Behind them, one hand permanently affixed to the hilt of his sword, stood Captain Doran. Judging by the slight, satisfied tilt to the thin slit of his lips, the Councillor of the Gard seemed perfectly comfortable with the chill in the air.
The four of them were all that remained of Queen Selma’s advisors, although technically the Councillors of Land and Coin were both in attendance, even if they couldn’t really contribute in their current state.
Ger shifted from foot to numbed foot, fighting exceptionally hard not to turn around to where the two silent councillors stood at either side of the silver throne.
Averting his gaze would make little difference; the anguished, frozen expressions of Adeline’s father and Grand Aunt followed him into sleep each and every night.
In his dreams, they still had their voices, their eyes.
In his dreams, their iced-over gazes followed him wherever he moved, somehow both immobile and imploring as they screamed and screamed, the sound like the shudder and shriek of splitting ice.
It was, however, not a horror he needed to revisit in his every waking moment, even if he was forced to be stationed mere feet from them. Which he was most days, as the Sorceress had taken to hosting her formal audiences in the throne room. Presumably, since she’d put such effort into the decor.
Ger winced at the passing thought.
Goddess save me.
How was it that even within the exhausted shell of his own mind, he still had the inclination to make light of what was indisputably dark? He couldn’t keep the frozen ghosts of Silas and Johanna at bay, but he could find bleak humour in the psychological torture of his countrymen.
Even when the person he loved most in the world had been chased from her kingdom. When she’d been usurped by a powerful if not entirely stable ancestor, what family she still had held hostage in a pretty silver prison. When her father had been—
Murdered?
Ger wasn’t sure; Silas was certainly not living nor breathing at present, that much he knew.
A dark little part of him couldn’t help but envy the Duke for all that he had missed.
The Silver Kingdom still belonged to the late Queen Selma in the ways that truly mattered—but life within the Silver Palace was another story.
No matter how much bleak humour there was to be found, Ger was rarely laughing these days.
Especially not now, as the eerie silence of the hall finally broke. The sound of crackling frost was barely audible beneath the creaking of old hinges as the door to a private hallway swung open and Avette Beira swept into the room.
Not missing a beat, Ger’s knee hit the ground in perfect unison with the three other gards stationed around the throne.
Though he kept his head bowed, it was barely a moment later that they heard two more soft thuds, the gards who had followed her into the room joining their brothers on the icy floor.
Without lifting his head, Ger flicked his eyes up, peering past his own brow to where the four Councillors had followed suit. His breath slowed in his thrumming chest, and he let his eyes fall closed for a moment.
Thank the Daughters.
He didn’t think he had the mental grit to witness another Aera-blessed petrification today. Silas had been enough. Frail, defiant old Lady Johanna had been enough.
And they hadn’t even been the last.
There’d been the trio of Wielders behind the impulsive, ill-fated coup attempted just days after Avette’s return. Ger still couldn’t dwell too long on that one; the memory ached like a bruise pressed too hard to heal.
Almost as painful was the memory of Briony and Thomas, the young gard initiates who’d been found in the Merrow King’s bedroom with two unconscious Queen’s Gards.
The same two Queen’s Gards who later woke to spin a heroic tale of being rendered unconscious while attempting to prevent Kai and Adeline’s abduction.
They had, they said, been following their Captain’s orders, as handed down by the Sorceress herself, to bring her the Merrow King, and the Snow Queen’s heir.
And so, Briony and Thomas had been slowly frozen alive while they pleaded and thrashed and shrieked like cornered hogs, all the while swearing they’d had nothing to do with Adeline and Kai’s disappearance.
Thomas had wet himself, the heat of his urine briefly freeing his thighs enough that he lost his balance and ripped a leg free with the weight of his own fall, landing hard on one knee.
Shards of ice splintered into his leg and gushed, running in dark rivulets until he knelt in a puddle of piss and blood and slush.
He’d stayed there, sobbing incomprehensibly until the very end.
Briony had given up begging once the creeping frost laced over her midpoint; she simply screamed for her mother over and over until the ice finally crept over her throat and strangled the breath from her lungs.
She was sixteen years old.
Meanwhile, the gards they’d found in Kai’s rooms had sworn their fealty and been rewarded for their bravery in the face of fictional assailants.
It had not been abductors who bested them as they claimed, but a skinny little valet with a silver breakfast tray.
Yet here they knelt at Ger’s side, the pride they radiated so fervent that he swore it physically resonated through him, roiling his stomach.
To them, he supposed, this was a position of pride, freezing their kneecaps off at the foot of the Silver Throne.
Avette had assigned them to her side as a show of gratitude. As for Ger …
Well, he suspected he’d been assigned to the Queen’s personal detail for the same reason that Imogen had been named a Lady in Waiting. They, along with Mareda, were her last living links to Adeline—and therefore Kai.
“You may rise,” said the lovely, cool voice that had become all too familiar.
Even now, it raised the fine hairs at the base of Ger’s scalp, but he stood, turned, and made himself meet her black gaze.
He was not surprised to find it trained on him; it often was, though she would rarely bother to speak to him directly.
If there was one thing he had learned about their new queen, it was that she enjoyed surrounding herself with pretty things.
And if he flattered himself—which he did, frequently—Ger was certainly a pretty thing.
He bowed, grateful for a reason to break her stare, and followed suit as the others filed around the throne and took their places.
From his position upon the dais, he could see that the Council members had risen from their knees too, and now stared up at the throne with varying degrees of anticipation.
“As I’m sure you are aware,” Avette began. “Eisalaan’s Crown is rightfully mine by the ancient laws of succession. I was, after all, next in line many years ahead of your dearly departed queen.”
Silence swelled and echoed in the ice cavern that was the throne room until it appeared to dawn on the councillors that a response was expected.
“Y-yes,” Bertha finally stuttered, and subtly threw an elbow into Norris’s side. “We are aware, Your Majesty.”
“As you say, Your Majesty,” Norris added hastily. His teeth chattered, each word vibrating with cold and tension.
“Then you may also be aware,” Avette went on, her smile pleasant if slightly too bright, “that my cousin died without a named heir.”
She sighed into the shivering silence.
“It has left us in quite the predicament.”
Ger had spent enough time around the Sorceress that he’d begun to hear the implication beneath the sweet, melodic chime of her words. He wondered if anyone else heard it now; that hint of disdain. Irresponsible, she seemed to say. Foolish.
Ger may have had little affection for Selma as the withholding mother of his dearest friend—but he had respected her as his steadfast, benevolent queen. They all had. Imagined or not, the slight to her memory rankled him, stiffened his spine. At the ensuing silence, he slowly raised his head.
Though nodding, Edward was carefully checked out, staring at the shimmering frosted pillar nearest to him. Doran was smirking. But Bertha’s lips were a tight line, and Norris frowned down at his feet; neither of them spoke a word.
“The Cold Council has the power to name an heir,” Avette said. Not an observation or even a reminder, but a gentle prompt.
Still, they said nothing. Norris slowly raised his eyes from his feet, frown flickering like he struggled to flatten it as he met the Sorceress’s eye. Ger tugged at the front of his armour; his chest was tight, and every burning cold breath was thinner than the last.
Avette loosed one long, beleaguered sigh. It was a sigh of exhaustion; the sigh a queen might heave after years of labouring under the weight of her crown.
A crown Avette did not yet wear.
Movement caught the edge of Ger’s eye, and he realised the weary sigh had not been Avette’s at all, but Aera’s; a thin gust of wind that barely ruffled the Sorceress’s white skirts.
It was the only warning the Councillors had before the ceiling began to reach for them, talons of ice creeping toward their heads.
Norris skidded back, dragging Bertha with him, both of them bleating in panic when they slammed into the immovable wall that was Captain Doran.
He glanced down at them, narrow lips slashing wide in a dark grin, his hand curving around the handle of his sheathed blade.