1. Stellen, Prince of Frost
Chapter One
Stellen, Prince of Frost
TEN YEARS AGO
My death will protect the ones I love.
An icy wind sweeps across the arena, tugging at my white tunic and pants, my simple clothing, while up in the stands, my father, the Frost King, looks on, his body swathed in fur, his fingers coated in silver rings, and a sneer on his face that he reserves only for me.
His hated son.
I am the son who dared to step between his fists and my mother’s body and say: No more.
I’m prepared to die for her and my sister. I’ve chosen this path and I’m at peace with it. This morning, my mother sang a final song to me, a melody that will keep my heartbeats calm and my mind focused, undaunted by the pain, until the end.
A hush has fallen over the onlookers because it’s time.
Up on the stand behind my father, the timekeeper rings the bell.
On this day, at this hour, twenty years ago, I was born, and now it is time for me to die.
It’s been this way since the False Queen cast her curse and broke the Kingdom of Serulia into three: Frost, Iron, and Ember.
The first Frost King decreed that when his youngest child came of age, all three of his heirs would fight to the death until only one remained.
He built this arena within the inner circle just north of the palace for that very purpose.
Now I wait, not for my little sister, whose life is more precious to me than my own. Or for my mother, whose tears dampened my cheeks when I hugged her goodbye.
I wait for my older brother, Sorley. The son my father loves. The son whose hunger for power allowed me to make a deal: my life for our sister’s.
I will not try to win. I will not use my Lethian Voice. I will make a show of fighting to ensure Sorley’s pride can hold, but I will fall in this battle and hand him the throne.
In return, our little sister, Safra, gets to live.
Not that I trust Sorley or my father to honor the deal after I’m gone.
Right now, Mother and Safra are packed and ready to slip away.
My white wolf, Nara, is waiting for them at the far palace gate, hiding in the shadows with the supplies they’ll need.
Once they clear the city, they’ll make their way north through the Wilds to a ship that’s waiting to carry them across the sea to the land that lies beyond.
All they’re waiting for is the sound of the second bell, which will signal the start of the fight. Then they can escape while all eyes are on me and Sorley.
Most of the seating is occupied by the favored highborn fae my father invited to witness the spectacle. There are no children here. At least, in that regard, my father saw reason.
A lowborn man stands directly behind me, gripping the partition in front of him. He is Otto, the husband of my mother’s dearest attendant, Juniper. I wanted them to escape, too, but Otto insisted he would not allow me to die alone today and Juniper wouldn’t leave without him.
I meet his pale-blue eyes across the distance and take comfort from his presence.
Kindness is a rare gift in Frost. I’ve valued the gift of care that Otto and Juniper have given me and returned it with protection wherever I could.
Taking deep breaths and squaring my shoulders, I cast my attention back to the arena entrance a hundred paces away, expecting Sorley to appear within it dressed in full armor.
As the favored child, he will carry the two pearly-handled longswords that have been passed from Frost King to Frost King, a sign of our father’s approval.
The hush around me deepens and my forehead creases when the entrance remains empty.
The first bell has sounded.
Sorley should be here.
A prickling sensation grows at the back of my neck. I push against it, fighting my dread, taking deep, calming breaths and recalling the lingering strains of the song my mother and sister sang to me, drawing on that calm as I expand my hearing.
I listen carefully, past the shuffling in the stands, the highborn beginning to murmur and fidget, past the space outside the arena, where the spectators’ white wolves are gathered, past the soldiers standing guard along the path, and then beyond them…
A quiet scream floats along the icy wind.
The thrashing cry of a fragile thing trying to escape.
Chilling fear strikes my heart.
No…
Please.
My sister’s cry cuts short.
Up on the dais in the stands, my father’s lips stretch into a smile.
I’m running before I know it, arms and legs pumping, sprinting to the entrance and past it, too fast for the soldiers who try to answer my father’s roared command.
“Stop him!”
And then his cruel laughter, a deep rumbling that follows me along the straight paths, staying with me during the soul-crushing minutes it takes me to reach the Rose Room, a confined compound that became my mother’s cage.
Sorley lived here too, in a room with walls painted gray, until he turned seven and our father considered him old enough to move to the palace. There, Sorley could be raised in the ways of Frost, away from those who could have shown him the power of mercy and compassion.
Fear clouds my vision as I race toward the front door that now hangs off its hinges, its surface cracked.
My feet carry me inside, where I stop.
Too late.
Faces splattered with blood. Lifeless hands. Silent hearts.
Gentle throats crushed and my whole world with them.
A roar builds within my chest, a mindless, raging shout as my heart breaks into a thousand sharp pieces.
Yet into the stillness, I utter only a whisper. “Why?”
Sorley moves within the shadows at the back of the room, pushing himself off the wall, his bloodied hands smearing the paint.
His hair is as icy white as mine, his stature as tall, and his eyes as ghostly gray, but his ears are not pointed.
It happens. A Lethian child born without a Voice.
He shrugs. “I did what I had to do.”
His voice is flat, nothing like our mother’s. Nothing like mine.
The thumps of my breaking heart dominate my hearing, the thunder in my throat pushing upward and gaining power.
My mother. My sister.
They were love and kindness and gentle hope.
They were innocent and used and had no place to hide.
Their voices have been crushed and their eyes are sightless, and all for fucking power and fucking greed.
And even now, my brother seems so wrapped up in the comfort of his own supremacy and his belief that I will remain subservient to him no matter what horror he delivers upon me that he doesn’t seem to understand…
He should fucking run.
“You took them from me.” My voice is no longer my own. Deep and feral. Broken and destroyed.
I inhale, a single breath that makes the air tremble.
Sorley’s eyes fly wide. “You wouldn’t—”
“Die.”
Sorley crumples where he stands, falling to the right and hitting his head on the wooden edge of a nearby chair whose pink upholstery was already splattered with blood.
He slides across the seat, but his head catches in the crook of the circular armrest and his arms end up dangling to the floor.
I don’t pause.
Grabbing one of his feet, I wrench him away from the chair, allowing his head to smack the floor. The sickening crack barely registers through my heart’s pain.
I drop onto his side, my knee hitting his ribs, breaking them.
Pop, pop, pop.
I take another long breath, focusing on the vibrations within my chest and my throat as I form a song my mother wouldn’t teach me, for it is too violent. Too brutal. Too cruel.
A forbidden melody.
But life taught it to me.
For every fae my father put to death. For every cruel game he and his lackeys played. This song is every last breath, and every final heartbeat, and every tear falling down a cold cheek.
I have never sung this song before, but it comes far too easily to the tip of my tongue. A fully formed melody. Sharp, forceful notes that will pin a soul to the dying body from which it flees.
The notes glide from my mouth, crystal clear.
Sorley gasps for air as his eyes fly wide, his face rapidly filling with pain. “Get off me!”
“They were gentle!” My roar mingles with the song I keep singing, forcing his soul to remain in his body even as I consider every way I can break his bones and make him suffer. “Safra wasn’t a threat. Our mother wasn’t a threat.”
“But you are.” Sorley attempts to fight back, managing to get his hands up, his frost power blasting at my chest, strikes so powerful, they would knock any other fae across the room.
The impact jars through me, but Sorley’s frost merely shatters into snow against my body, sparkling in the air around us.
“Do you think I’m stupid, little brother?” Sorley rages up at me, writhing and fighting to get free. “Do you think I can’t see my frost power crushed against yours? I see your strength. I hear your songs. Your oath made me look weak!”
I loom over him. “You are weak.”
With a blast of ice across my brother’s chest, I rip through his tunic, visibly burning his skin. He passes out, allowing me to wrench him upward and drag him over to the silent bodies.
I drop him to the floor, face down, ram my knee into his spine, and wrench his head back, ready for when he comes to a moment later.
“Look at them, Sorley. Two kind souls.” I am quiet now. Dangerously so. “Two women who loved you. Do you feel strong now, brother? Do you feel like a king?”
Sorley spits blood onto the floor. “Get off me. It’s over. Time for you to give up and snap your own neck.”
Still, he believes in his supremacy. Despite his claim that he sees my strength, he’s still certain that he will ultimately prevail.
“‘Give up’?” My voice is calm, but my heartbeats are erratic.
Shattering. Over and over.
Snapping. Over and over.
I have never been heartless. I could never close off my feelings. I felt the world in all its music, dark and light, but I taught myself to find peace in the hum of air across stalactites dripping from frozen trees, the pad of wolf paws on snow, the calm beats of hearts I will hear no more.
And now I’m breaking.
“You took from me all that I ever loved,” I whisper. “I was ready to die for them. I would have died for them. You could have had the throne.”