Chapter Forty
Thyra
Dread consumes my thoughts as Lilis, Stellen, and I approach the city surrounding the Frost Palace.
An icy-blue wall rises up around the city’s outskirts, concealing the buildings that lie behind it. Men and women whose silver armor gleams in the midday sun patrol the ramparts, their clear vigilance and neat formations telling me they’re well-trained and disciplined.
My stomach stopped growling hours ago, becoming a quiet hollow instead. I suspect we could have arrived much faster if the wolves had broken into a run, but not once did Stellen command Lilis to pick up the pace.
She’s straight-backed where she rides ahead of us, but the random moments when her figure sways betray how lightheaded she still is.
As we descend the final gentle incline, Stellen breaks his silence. “The city is divided into three concentric circles, each one separated by a wall. Within the outer circle—the largest one—is the city where citizens live. Within the second circle are the soldier’s barracks and training grounds.
“The palace is within the inner circle. The original Frost General had it built this way to ensure that anyone who wanted to come after him had to get past an entire city of people and through an army, as well as over three walls.”
Ahead of us, Lilis lifts her arms into the air.
Stellen continues. “The guards on the wall are more highly ranked even than other soldiers, so they have the authority to deny access to anyone who shouldn’t pass through one of the gates. Lilis will signal the guards now. My signal will follow. Don’t be alarmed.”
His left arm tightens around me.
Lilis raises herself off her wolf’s back, her icy power gathering visibly around her hands, a shimmering display before she pushes both arms forward and releases her frost into the sky.
A spear of ice shoots from each of her palms, soaring high into the air, but the spears don’t fly straight; instead, they rotate rapidly, catching the sunlight like mirrors and reflecting it.
Spinning across the sky like they’re caught in some beautiful dance, the spears arc outward and then inward, casting the light wide and then more narrowly.
The impact on the soldiers guarding the wall is unmissable. Every head snaps up, every figure standing to attention.
Stellen lifts his right arm from around me, and I catch the dangerous swirl of frost gathering in his palm. An orb takes shape, building from a thin flow of glistening snowflakes until a ball spins above his palm.
Up in the air, Lilis’s spears arc toward each other, revolving as if they would collide.
Stellen waits another heartbeat.
With barely a flick of his wrist, the orb flies from his palm, shooting up into the air so quickly that I can’t follow it.
My breath catches in that moment of quiet.
Then the orb hits the spinning spears at the exact moment the spears collide.
The air explodes.
But not with deadly shards.
The orb and spears shatter, an epicenter of ice that bursts into snowflakes.
Dazzling, sparkling, they erupt across the sky with such force that the air booms. Then the breeze fills with soft sighs as countless sparkles spread across the city.
It’s impossible to hold my tongue. “Beautiful.”
The snowflakes waft through the air, the gorgeous explosion becoming a gentle snowfall.
Lilis increases her pace, urging her wolf into an easy run, surging away from us for the moment it takes Nara to catch up.
I brace, instinctively leaning forward, my hands planting on the back of Nara’s neck. The white wolf is as attentive as Azul, seeming conscious of my reactions, her gait easing a little, becoming smooth.
At the thought of Azul, sadness rushes through me. I have to believe the giant eagle is alive. He was badly injured but still breathing when I last saw him. I imagine him soaring away from the bloodlands even now, escaping the darkness.
Sunlight glints across my eyes as we race toward the icy wall and the gate in the center of it. Steel bars make up the portcullis, which rises quickly as we approach, no doubt being lifted by soldiers within the ramparts, but from this angle, I can’t see them.
A moment later, we race through the opening, leaving the white expanse behind.
The snow gives way to a wide, stone path, which is completely clear, stretching beyond the entryway and into the city ahead.
We’re moving too fast for me to study the details, but the quiet hits me. The absence of fae. The brief glimpses of stragglers hurrying off the street and into nearby buildings.
Suddenly, the beautiful display in the sky takes on a different tone.
Not a welcome but a warning: get off the streets.
It’s such a difference from the Starlit City in the Iron Kingdom, where highborn and lowborn alike converge to kneel to the king, even raising their voices when they thought his sister, Cassia, their beloved princess, was hurt.
Here, a fraught silence has fallen.
Whatever work was being carried out, whatever conversations were in progress, whatever lives were being lived, the silence is now punctuated by the snapping of shutters and the thumping of closing doors.
Is it by design?
Has Stellen taught his people to do this?
Or is this their chosen reaction to his presence?
Lilis continues at a faster pace ahead of us, the wide path taking us straight ahead for long minutes until we reach the second wall.
The portcullis is already open, a near-perfect timing to our approach and again, we race through.
Behind this wall, the buildings are low-lying and appear set out in a grid formation. Here, the soldiers stand out in the open, each of them bowing low as we pass by.
I catch a brief glimpse of what could be barracks as well as open spaces—possibly training grounds—before we approach the third and final wall.
The palace rises behind it, frost-blue structures slightly higher than the wall. There are no towers here, but that makes sense, since Frost Fae don’t ride eagles that need landing spaces.
A wide, paved path extends around the outside of the wall, forming an additional buffer between the palace wall and the soldiers’ barracks.
Another group of silver-armored fae stand atop this wall and several also patrol the stone path at ground level.
Lilis slows her pace as we pass through this final gate.
The entryway appears like a tunnel through the wall, deeper than the previous two gates and high enough that it soars above us.
A handful of fae stand lined up within the entryway—three men and three women, none wearing armor, all dressed in warm furs.
These fae appear lowborn, their dull, black hair clearly visible from beneath their hoods, although they keep their eyes down, so I can’t see what color they are.
Lilis slows to a stop in front of one of the women and speaks quickly to her.
I don’t catch the woman’s name—assuming Lilis speaks it—but I do hear “food” and “clothing” and finally “Oracle,” at which the older woman startles, her head snapping up, revealing pale-blue eyes and a weathered face before she resumes her firm study of the ground.
Lilis soon continues forward, but she doesn’t proceed far into the palace grounds, stopping on the other side of the gate.
As we pass the six lowborn fae, they still don’t look up. Each one sinks into a low bow without making eye contact.
I have to wonder now why Stellen was concerned about anyone seeing him touch me. I guess the soldiers might have seen, but otherwise, nobody seems to be looking.
Stellen draws Nara to a stop beside Lilis’s wolf.
“Leave us,” he says to Lilis. “Return tomorrow morning.”
She draws back a little, and even Nara’s ears twitch, as if Stellen’s command were unexpected.
“Not sooner, Lord?” Lilis asks, then she quickly grimaces, clamping her mouth closed.
From the corner of my eye, Stellen’s smile is cold. “Return earlier if you wish, Lilis. Your next punishment will be waiting.”
A threat delivered smoothly, and with it a good reason for Lilis to stay away and get the rest she must desperately need.
Kindness dressed as cruelty.
“Tomorrow morning,” she replies firmly, bowing deeply before urging her wolf into a run back through the tunnel and away into the city.
The lowborn fae file into the palace grounds, after which the portcullis on both sides of the tunnel slowly lower.
Stellen ignores those fae completely, giving a low whistle to Nara, who carries us farther inside the palace grounds.
Ice-blue buildings are connected by structured paths, a grid formation, at least what I can see of it.
“You don’t speak with your people,” I say, meaning it as a question, although it seems like a fact to me.
Stellen sighs softly in my ear. “My staff would die of fright if I uttered a word to them.”
I assume he’s joking, even though he made it clear there is no humor in Frost. If I could summon a smile…
Well, it would fade immediately.
“My Voice carries power,” Stellen continues. “My people’s fear of a mere conversation with me is logical. Just as their fear of my touch is logical.”
His words confirm that other than Nara, he’s very much alone.
The memory of what he said to me in the Alak-Teah when he was falling asleep returns to me. I told him he was all I’ve got, and he replied, As are you.
As Nara turns a corner, I have the chance to glimpse the lowborn without craning past Stellen. All six scatter in different directions, but all cast quick glances at me.
I’m surprised by what I read in their crinkled foreheads and wide eyes, their darting, pale-faced glances: they fear for me.
“Don’t worry,” Stellen whispers. “They may not converse with me, but they will speak enough amongst themselves.”
“Who are they?”
He stiffens, and I’m not sure why.
I clarify, “I mean, why did you choose them?”
“I didn’t. Their families have always served the Frost King.”
I consider the empty path ahead of us. The heavy silence.
“Do their families live here, too?”
“Their families are dead.”
Like Stellen’s family.
As we continue along the path, the hush around me is broken only by the distant hubbub of a city bustling back to life once more. But here…
Barely a sound.
“You live in this enormous space nearly completely alone.”
“I can hear an incoming attack better this way.”
And still, he doesn’t sleep well.
As if he reads my mind, he says, “This palace may be nearly empty, but it isn’t safe, Thyra. Prepare to sleep as badly as I do.”