Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stellen
Achill strikes my cold heart, a remarkably painful sensation that makes my head snap up.
My focus flashes from the ancient scroll I was poring over to the dark room around me. I scrutinize the rows of shelves, the shadows between them, and the unchanging light.
The catacombs beneath the Sacred Stone Temple are quiet.
Nothing moves.
I’m alone, just as I commanded, and yet the chill was very real. A shot of ice, startlingly colder than my power. It lingers even now at the base of my spine.
My hands clamp around the scroll I was reading, dangerously close to tearing its edges.
This scroll is one of the few in my possession written and illustrated by the Ferocie Scribes, an ancient tribe of fae whose artwork was infused with magic.
An image of the False Queen is emblazoned on it, the best depiction we have of her. The oldest one I could get my hands on, which makes it more likely to be accurate.
But it only raises questions.
Her dark hair could be black or dark brown, depending on which way I turn the parchment in the light. Her facial features are constantly concealed by her hair. At some angles, she looks tall. At others, shorter. The color of her skin could be fair or possibly tan.
She may as well be faceless. Even nameless.
Yet, every description of her is emphatic: her beauty was beyond compare, and her power was breathtaking. Not a single assassin could touch her. As for other women, they were unbreakably loyal to her, speaking only of her generosity.
On the page I’m looking at, one line of script has leaped out at me.
I never paid much attention to it before today, not before I met the new female Oracle.
She is all things to all people.
It was just as I re-read that line mere moments ago that the cold chill struck me.
I listen carefully, but I’m not certain if my senses are playing tricks on me.
After all, it’s been a long day already…
As the silence stretches and I relax once more, I’m assailed by memories of the new Oracle’s face. The way her features had transformed before my eyes.
It was as if she reached into my mind and plucked from my thoughts my ideal of perfect physical beauty. Not only in her appearance, but in her voice, thrumming with the songs of my ancestors. She might have stepped from a past that had been destroyed and brought it back to life.
And yet, as beautiful as she was in that moment, I wished her to return to her complex self, the version of her that fed my soul with all her furious emotions.
Behind me, past the next door and deeper within the catacombs, her father lies in a crystal coffin, completely preserved in ice.
I will study him next, but first, I need to continue searching the ancient texts for any mention of stars ever going out.
Scooping up the scroll, along with the anonymous note I received this morning and the charred Frost coins I confiscated from the assassin named Stanimir, I prepare to store them safely in an ornate chest resting on the nearest shelf.
That’s when the smallest whisper reaches me from across the room.
A heartbeat that is not my own.
Any other fae wouldn’t hear it, but I can.
Fucking assassin.
The chill clawing at my stomach returns.
Before today, I wouldn’t have thought much more about an assassin. It’s nothing new for Frost Fae to come after me. My people want me dead. I’m descended from Lethians. It matters not that I’ve kept them safe.
Now I have to ask myself if this assassin is of Frost, or if this imminent attack could be connected to the Oracle’s father’s death.
Without pause, I continue pushing back my chair, but more slowly now, listening beneath the scraping sound for the scuffle of feet.
Whoever they are, I’m certain they’ll only move when I move, attempting to conceal their presence beneath the sounds I make.
Let them fucking get near to me.
I have no problem giving an assassin false hope before I flood their bones with ice, freezing them, but only enough to immobilize them so I can interrogate them.
The smallest change in the shadows to my right tells me that, whoever they are, they’ve reached that row of shelves.
I step slowly out from behind the table, drawing my power to my fingertips, keeping my movements nonchalant.
Come closer so I might capture you…
Just as I take another step, my sight floods with golden light, a force knocking into me so hard that I stumble.
What the—?
A second later, the catacombs are gone—
I’m standing on a wide stone rooftop while gleaming white starlight streams down on me. Unnatural starlight, not like the clear night skies in my kingdom.
Despite the bright light, everything around me is hazy, obscured, and my hearing buzzes.
Then a scream breaks through the pall, and my focus flies to my right. I would recognize the Oracle’s voice anywhere; it’s imprinted on my soul ever since I first heard her scream.
“I won’t be your pawn!”
My eyes widen when her form becomes suddenly clear within the haze.
She’s attempting to wrench herself back from the male figure who stands in front of her, yanking wildly on a chain that stretches taut between her wrist and his, her right arm extending so far that she’s in danger of dislocating her shoulder.
An image of the Dragonstone Blade is startlingly visible across the inside of her arm. Its golden hilt stretches across her palm while the tip of its blade points to the inside of her elbow. The Lethian silk it was wrapped in is depicted twining around her arm all the way up to her sleeve.
She’s screaming, and the man is shouting, and my heart thumps loudly, my sensitive hearing splitting with the intensity of rage and fear in her voice.
I recognize the chain she’s tugging on.
The Iron Fae call it a ruby circlet because of the blood that splatters when it does its work.
It’s a truly cruel invention. Part of me wishes I’d thought of it, but never mind, I’m monstrous in my own ways.
The man she’s straining away from is dressed entirely in steel armor. Despite how hazy my view of him is, it isn’t difficult to identify Antony, the Iron King.
An icy growl builds in my throat at the way he’s treating her.
She’s vulnerable. Her father died today, for fuck’s sake. She needs to mourn. She needs to be cared for. Her heart must be tearing apart with grief.
He should not have chained her, should not treat her with brute force. He should give her warmth and show her kindness, make her feel safe—
I stop myself, putting a halt to these alarming thoughts.
But, of course, I’m only thinking strategically. Her grief is a useful tool, and Antony has clearly overlooked it.
Well, better for me if she learns to hate him even more than she already must.
I take a step forward, wondering if they can see me, but it appears they can’t because neither of them looks in my direction or acknowledges me in any way.
A moment later, I become aware of the thread between me and the Oracle, the same icy blue rope that connected us back at the village before it snapped.
It pulls me toward her as she wrenches herself back from Antony. She makes it a step, then another, forcing him to follow her while she screams and struggles as if she would willingly tear off her own hand, break her own body to defy him.
As she cries, her appearance transforms, just as it did back at the village. Icy tears freeze on her suddenly porcelain cheeks, dripping from eyes that have faded from dull blue to a pearly gray once more. The strands of her dull black hair wash to pure white, luminescent in the starlight.
I want to roar at her, to tell her she doesn’t need this veil, but alarm floods me, because somehow, she’s made it to the edge of the roof, and it looks like she’d rather step off it than stay chained to him.
“I will not be your vengeance,” she cries, sending a suddenly frosty blast of air across the space between us, a blast that propels her to the very edge of the roof, and it appears that Antony can’t stop her.
Somehow, in this moment, she’s stronger than he is, a truly bone-chilling possibility. Even more chilling is the icy power of her scream as if she’s calling on some sort of frost power…
But none of that is more important right now than the very real danger she’s in.
If he launches himself toward her to grab her, the chain will only gather slack, and she’ll tip right over the edge.
He has no choice but to continue trying to pull backward, straining against the chain.
She isn’t giving up, and in the next moment, her back foot reaches the very edge.
She’s going to fall!
Without thinking, my hands close around the icy thread extending between her heart and mine.
Just as her feet would slip off the edge, I give the thread a savage tug, fighting her strength, straining against her. All I can do is keep her where she is and stop her from falling.
A second later, Antony launches himself at her, his hand darting out, his fist closing around the material of her tunic, taking firm hold of her—
I don’t see what happens next because golden light flashes again, filling my view, and in the next instant, I’m back in the catacombs.
But…
Fuck.
Something’s very wrong.
Disoriented, I try to understand why I’ve collapsed on the floor, my breath rasping from my throat, one hand planted to my right, my arm shaking as I attempt to keep myself upright.
Warm liquid flows down the front of my chest and onto the polished stone surface, pooling around my hand.
My focus flashes to the dagger jutting from my chest, right above my heart.
I’m hit. A nearly perfect shot.
I’m vaguely aware that it’s a simple dagger. Wooden hilt. Ashen-brown in color. Unusual whorls on its surface.
Gasping for breath, fighting the chill growing around me, I follow the lines of ice extending out from my body, lashes of snow that must have smashed into the shelves, cutting through wood, scattering scrolls, splattering blood and flesh and bones across the floor.
The assassin’s remains are a ghastly mess.
I have no way of identifying who they were, let alone knowing if it was the same man, the one named Stanimir, I encountered at the coastal village.
I must have killed them as they attacked, but not before I was struck, and certainly only in the last few heartbeats before I came back to myself, because a soft clattering sound reaches me.
A single coin rolls across the floor toward me, dragging the assassin’s blood with it, slowing and then tipping onto its side next to my hand.
An Iron Kingdom coin. Silver, just like the Frost coins I confiscated.
My eyes narrow at it, but the idea of an Iron assassin is not so worrying right now as the blade embedded in my chest.
I try to push myself upright, try to breathe, and calm the fear settling at the base of my spine.
I tell myself: Fear will not control me.
Loss will not control me.
Chaos will not…
But my vision darkens.
Somehow, I saved the Oracle.
But I have not saved myself.