Chapter Four
Stellen, King of Frost
My world is cold, and my heart is ice.
Even here on this beach, where I’m bathed in bright sunlight while sparkling water laps at my snow-white boots, there is no warmth for me.
My wolf growls softly at my back, her deep snarls barely perceptible above the screams filling the air. She hates the heat, but she’s accustomed to the roar of battle and death.
Cloying fear radiates toward me from every direction except from the sea. The vast blue expanse is serene while the village is in chaos, its people trying to escape the battle in the sky above them, the acrid iron, and the burning fire.
Their cries don’t touch me. Can’t touch me.
I lost my capacity for empathy on the day I took the throne.
That was the day betrayal stole everything I loved.
No more.
I bend to the wet sand, take a fistful of it, and grip the granules tightly, freezing them before I beckon my wolf with my free hand. “Come.”
Within the chaos, I will look for that which is calm, the female Oracle whose cunning and strategy must ensure she is not afraid. She couldn’t have escaped detection for so long unless she was shrewd beyond her years.
Twenty-five years ago, her birth was heralded by a shower of stars, the most breathtaking display of diamond-bright light flooding the sky as far as I could see. If the stories are to be believed, that light spread across all three kingdoms.
I was only five years old, but I had never seen anything so beautiful. In my innocence, I believed this female Oracle to be a savior, a bringer of peace, the ender of an endless war.
The years passed, and I realized the truth.
She hides peace from us, withholding her power and her pity, leaving us to our destruction.
She’s the reason I’m broken.
I head along the watery edge of the beach from its southern end, where I separated from my general, Lilis, only minutes ago, commanding her to find the Oracle by whatever means necessary. I have no fear for Lilis’s safety, nor for the two men she took with her. Others should fear her.
As they should fear me.
My footsteps are measured as I expand my senses and listen for the quiet pockets within the village, searching for the calm in the chaos. It’s easy for me to ignore the frantic footfalls of running lowborn, the acrid scent of iron, the crackling wood touched by Ember fire.
Where I step, the water turns to ice, my cold heart acting of its own accord, defying the waves that try to drag the water back out to sea, keeping them frozen on the sand, leaving peaks of snow behind me.
Halfway along the beach, a wail breaks through my calculated reverie. A child’s cry.
It isn’t the peace I was seeking, and yet it draws my focus like a snapping twig in a silent forest.
My focus shoots to a small girl huddled in the sand beneath the shade of a tall tree up ahead. She can’t be more than four years old. Fiery embers and burning leaves fall around her as softly as snowflakes, a dangerous rain.
A woman lies beside her on the sand, her face turned away from me, but it’s clear from the stillness of the woman’s body that her spirit no longer inhabits this world.
I’m not certain why this particular child’s cry broke my concentration, but I don’t ignore it. My instincts must have responded to her for a reason, and I won’t dismiss them.
Emotion may be meaningless to me, but instinct is not.
I hurry toward the child, my wolf padding along behind me, her growls warning me of the fiery danger in the sky.
I’m unperturbed, casting a thin film of ice upward, dousing the falling embers before I scoop the wailing girl into my arms.
She falls silent, her little voice choking and her faded eyes tear-filled as she stares up at me.
I read the pure horror in her expression, so intense she can’t even scream.
I’m accustomed to this reaction.
My mother was Lethian, the last of the ancient ones, gentle and kind, even though she looked like an otherworldly spirit come to steal souls.
I inherited her pointed ears, her eyes, which were so pale gray they appeared white, and her angular cheekbones. Years ago, I tried to find a way to add color to my eyes, but it was a foolish endeavor.
I also inherited her keen hearing. Her ability to isolate a whisper within screams and identify creeping footfalls on a quiet night. A useful skill against the assassins who keep coming even now.
“Child,” I whisper to the little girl. “What is your name?”
She shudders at the sound of my voice, her entire body shivering, her only response a frightened whimper.
My forehead creases, a furrow that deepens as I contemplate what to do with her, since I’m now burdened with the problem of her well-being.
It’s clear her mother’s spirit has passed on.
I could put the child on my wolf and command her to take the child to one of the many orphanages in my kingdom, but that would be a false kindness.
Her people are here. It would be cruel to take her away from them, and cruelty in this situation has no logical purpose.
“Where is your family?” I ask, not expecting an answer.
To my surprise, she raises her arm shakily as she points out toward the ocean.
I half-turn in that direction, following the line of her little arm to a single figure, a lowborn man, stumbling from between the burning trees toward the edge of the water.
There’s no obvious reason for him to do this. Every other villager seems to be trying to stay away from open ground so as not to expose themselves to the battle in the air.
The man drops to his knees and leans forward, planting his hands in the sand where the water ebbs and flows, seeming completely unaware of my approach as I cross the distance towards him.
His desperate pleas repeat over and over, his voice clear within my heightened hearing, but there’s a lilt to his voice, an intonation, an accent I haven’t heard before. It may be particular to this coastal town, but I can’t be sure without interacting with more of these villagers.
“Goddess, forgive me,” he cries. “Cleanse these hands of blood. Strip this heart of wickedness. Goddess, give me peace. Cleanse these hands of—”
“Who did you kill?” I quickly assess his bloody hands and appeals for forgiveness, drawing conclusions from them.
His victim can’t be one of the highborn attacking this village. No mere lowborn could hope to challenge us. Yet it’s clear some sort of altercation has occurred. The water runs red where it laps at his hands, carrying the crimson gleam of fresh blood.
At my question, the man jolts and recoils so sharply that he throws himself back from me.
I have a full view of his face as he attempts to crawl away from me through the wet sand.
He wears a short beard, and his skin is oddly pale for a villager who must spend much of his time working in the sun.
A patch of blotchy, darker skin, maybe some kind of birthmark, extends from his jaw down the left side of his neck, the uppermost portion partially concealed by his beard.
As soon as his focus flies to the little girl, he stops scooting backward, taking panicked glances from me to her.
She cranes toward him, her arms outstretched. “Dada!”
I tighten my hold on her, repeating my question. “Who did you kill?”
“Please,” he rasps, his beseeching face raised to mine. “Spare my daughter.”
“Answer my questions, and I’ll consider it.”
I have no intention of killing this child. Again, cruelty has no purpose here, but fear certainly does.
He pushes himself back into a kneeling position, facing me. I’m sure he intends to throw himself at my feet, but the movement brings another sound.
Metal clinks against metal.
I’d recognize the sound of coins clattering against each other anywhere. One of my first memories was of my father sifting coins through his fingers, beaming over the exorbitant tithes he demanded from our people in exchange for protection from the Iron Fae’s former tyrannical king.
Shaking off the memory, I consider the weight of coin that could make such a rattle and the man’s desperation to wash the blood from his hands.
He was begging the sea to take his sin.
This was not a crime of passion. It was planned.
My voice is no longer a whisper, becoming a roar that makes my wolf snarl. “Who did you murder?”
The man flinches. “A carpenter in the village.”
“Why?”
When hell is breaking loose around him, why would this lowborn leave his family, his woman, to be slaughtered and his daughter to scream with fear, while he went to murder a carpenter?
“For the coin.”
My lips curl. “Obviously. Why the carpenter?”
“I don’t…know.” His focus flickers to the little girl, his speech hurried, and again, I detect the oddly unfamiliar lilting accent in it.
“I found a note on my pillow this morning. It came with a pouch filled with more coin than I’ve ever seen.
The note said an even greater payment was waiting for me if I did what was asked.
” His focus rises to the sky, to the smoke, and then lowers to the burning trees and the explosions of ice now shattering across rooftops. “I wanted more than this life.”
If I could feel emotion, it would be disgust.
I narrow my eyes at him. “How were you to collect this second payment?”
He points toward the mainland. “I was to go to the pass where the Iron Army fell. The coin would be brought to me there.”
No doubt by an assassin ready to slit this man’s throat.
How simple must this lowborn’s mind be, how great his ambition, that he wouldn’t suspect himself to be mere fodder in someone else’s game?
But whose game?
Who is playing with fate on this day of all days, when the three kings have been drawn to this village?
And why kill a simple carpenter?
“Give me the note,” I command.
The man’s hands tremble as he pulls a slip of parchment from his pocket.
Unfolding it, I study the script.
I’m disconcerted to see that the handwriting appears identical to the note I received at dawn, telling me where to find the female Oracle.
This means the carpenter’s death must be connected to her, a murder the writer of the note wanted to happen on the same day they lured me—and Antony and Maxim—here to find her.
A growl rises to my lips as I ask myself again: What game is this, and who is directing it?
“Give me the coin.”
The lowborn is far more reluctant to obey me this time, pulling the pouch from his pocket and gripping it hard for a few rebellious seconds before he hands it to me.
I slip a single coin from the sack, my lips thinning at the distinct pattern on it. I don’t have to turn it over to know my own countenance is imprinted on the other side.
It’s a Frost coin. Silver, no less. Our most valuable currency. It must have come from my kingdom, although that doesn’t mean the note-writer is from Frost, only that they sourced the coin from there. Someone is trying to implicate my kingdom in a murder that makes no sense to me.
“Where’s the body?” I snap, my sense of calm gone.
The man points northward. “The boatyard.”
I should be searching for the Oracle, but if this murder is connected to her, then I assure myself I’ll uncover her along the way.
Handing the child to her father, I allow her to scramble into his arms, but I can’t stop my command to him. “If you don’t wish your child to become an orphan, you will forget the promised coin.”
I should cut his throat with ice right now. It would be the smart thing to do. Knowledge is power, and I need to suppress information about these events, at least until I can make sense of them.
Yet, I’m already five paces away from him, and I’ve left him alive.
I tell myself it isn’t mercy.
It has nothing to do with the little girl whose future rests in my hands. Nor with the betrayal that took everything from me many years ago.
No more.
I reach the burning trees in seconds, determined to find the boatyard as quickly as I can, but I don’t make it another step.
Without warning, golden light explodes across my vision. I don’t know where it came from or what it means, but for an unexplainable moment, the sun might have burst in the sky, and its rays swept me into blissful oblivion.
A split-second later, agony strikes through my heart, more physical pain than I’ve ever experienced.
Suddenly, I’m sightless, my vision consumed by the light, but my heart…
It fucking hurts.
Oh, glory.
Fucking magnificent pain.
Feeling.
I crash to my knees, more power than I’ve ever felt before, driving me to the sand, its force crushing my chest until I can’t breathe, but I don’t care.
I haven’t felt anything for such a long time, for years and years, and now I feel everything.
Love and hate and grief and happiness and warmth and hope and loss and terrifying need.
A roar builds within my chest as I welcome every feeling, every emotion I’ve been incapable of experiencing, quenching my thirst in this light, filling my body and my mind. Dragging it in, wanting more, wanting…
Her.
The woman I sense at the edge of my consciousness. The woman whose heart and body call to me, demanding that I come to her, demanding that I give her everything she desires, demanding that I hold nothing back from her.
And then—
The light sparks, a final flash. It vanishes as quickly as it began.
Every emotion I welcomed into my body, mind, and heart rushes away from me even as I try to hold on to them, slipping away like water draining through my fingers.
My roar turns to ice as my cold heart takes control once more, and I’m left empty. Thirsty. So fucking bitter with the knowledge that my needs will never be met. Needs that are far more acute now I’ve tasted what has been denied to me.
The female Oracle. She has been denied to me.
My surroundings crash back into view: the dry sand, the burning village, my wolf’s white fur, her alarmed growls, her nose nudging my back, her concern strongly indicating she wasn’t affected like I was. She might not have even seen the golden light.
I thump my fist against the sand, sending rivers of ice cascading out in front of me, safely away from my wolf, turning the hot granules beneath my knees to snow.
My resolve has only strengthened.
I need to find the Oracle before my enemies do.
I need to claim her body and soul. I need to feel again, and she is the key.
Just as I stand, a woman’s scream peels through the air, reaching me across the distance, painfully sharp in my hearing.
A cry of challenge and grief.
And power.
Her shout rises above the chaos of the burning village, calling me as surely as a bell ringing out across a snowy field, as strongly as melting ice dripping from a thatched roof, as certainly as a falling snowflake landing softly on my palm.
Without another moment’s hesitation, I leap onto my wolf’s back, urging her northward in the direction of the scream.
The female Oracle is there.
She’s challenging me to come and get her.
She must be mine.