26. Chapter 26
It was the sort of cold that would make one quietly accept their fate; a cold so ruthless, so relentless, I would probably feel it in my nightmares.
Already my limbs and joints were stiff and sore, as if I’d endured a vicious beating.
My shivers grew so violent my muscles contracted as if by mechanical reflex, constant as the ticking of a clock.
I walked beneath the stone archway crackled with ice and into a world of night.
A feral prismatic sky, the blackest blue I’d ever seen, endless and indifferent, the chill in the air somehow sharpening each point of light on the stars and throwing them into greater relief.
I had never seen a moon so large and incandescent, as if it loomed physically closer in this Hell.
Frost had no need for torches beneath the radiance of the moon and stars; they shattered bursts of rainbows across snow beds and lit upon a great frozen lake, speckled with artful spills of snow, in the center.
In the middle of that lake, a throne. It must have been hewn of ice, the way it glittered like diamond.
A woman sat upon it. Arrayed around her, demons so still and pale they may have been carved of ice, as well.
Bloodless and blue-tinged, armored in ice, frost at their temples, faces frozen into vacancy.
None said a word as we approached. No sound but the rustle and crunch of footsteps through the snow, the chatter of teeth inside my own head.
I clutched Jessa to me, the blade trembling in my hand.
I found no humans, at first.
You will, It said. Watch your step.
I leapt back in surprise, Jessa banging against my chest.
The heads wore fluffy caps of snow. Their eyes were frozen over, but through the thin sheets of ice covering them I could see a blur of irises, pupils darting left and right. I doubted they could speak, buried to the neck. Would their vocal cords have frozen?
The damned don’t speak here. They make no sound at all. Treachery is carried out by the tongue as often as a blade in the back.
Even if I’d had something with which to respond, I wouldn’t have. The woman on the throne was gazing at me so coldly and impassively that I caught a deeper chill. She seemed to give off an undetectable venom I could somehow taste in the air, white and writhing and waiting to kill me.
Frost icicled her lashes, rimed her moonlit eyes, her skin a graceful drift of snow.
The moon silvered the unbound hair waterfalling down one shoulder and trembled across the shards of ice or crystal or whatever it was that made up the dress she wore.
It glittered like glass, iridescent rainbow pops catching the light.
Perhaps her face was frozen too, because no expression flitted across it.
She sent a wordless sideways glance to one of her guards and he bent behind her throne and produced a white fur-lined cloak.
He reached me in a few strides and seemed reluctant to touch me as he held out the cloak with two fingers.
I shrugged into it one fumbling arm at a time.
It didn’t do much to ward off the chill, but it took the edge off.
If the regent supposedly loved her children, she did not show it as she looked upon Jessa and then back up at me. I didn’t like the feel of her infinite, probing gaze. I averted my eyes to the snow-dusted lake upon which she sat and almost choked on horror.
Here and there, snowcapped heads protruded from the ice at the edges of the lake, though they must have been the lucky ones, the least traitorous in life—
The least treacherous are in the snow beds. It directed my gaze through the lake. The worst are inside the lake.
They were caught in slushy water beneath a thick layer of glassy frost, and they must have had no need to breathe in there because they moved, albeit jerkily. Their eyes blinked and swiveled and begged when they met mine.
I looked up at the regent to find the specterlike beginnings of a half-smile cracking the ice of her face. “So,” she said, her voice like frostbite. “You’ve learned my daughter’s name.”
My mouth formed the words, but it took my voice a moment to catch up. “It told me.”
“It?” She arched a frost-flecked brow.
“I don’t know what his name is. He’s never said.”
“Ah.” The tinkle of glass from her dress as she leaned back in her throne. “And did he tire of his punishment so quickly? I feel as though it happened only yesterday.”
I supposed when one has lived for centuries, six years was but a blink. “I tired of it first. He warned me of the wood, told me we had no choice but to accept being bound—”
A disinterested smile, a glowing hand held aloft to quell my words.
“That surprises me a great deal. It”—delicate, deliberate emphasis on the word, as if she weren’t convinced it was actually a word at all— “was laboring under the deluded conviction that what he’d done was perfectly justified, last I spoke to him. ”
“What did he do?”
She laughed as if she were supremely unamused.
It sounded like cracking ice as it rolled out over the frozen lake.
“It was a feckless, reckless fool who had no respect for authority or elders or hierarchy or any rule at all for that matter.” Her smile was the coldest thing about her.
“It did not respond to discipline or direction. It was simply begging for a sharp lesson. And has it taken?” She tilted her head so all that silver hair swung behind her back.
Her eyes cut straight through mine as if it weren’t me she was seeing.
It bent my body into a ridiculous, low-sweeping curtsy, my hand pulling out the cloak as if it were a skirt.
I felt his fury and wished it could warm me even marginally.
The cloak was better than nothing but Frost’s chill had bitten deep, chomping through flesh and bone and making its camp in my very essence.
“What am I supposed to do now?” She glared through me, right at him, as he seethed and muttered and paced in my mind.
“I can appreciate that you wanted to come home, but to do this? To her?” Her pallid eyes darted to Jessa, moonlight glinting off her icy lashes.
“Are you trying to infuriate me? Are you deluded enough to hope I’ll let this stand?
That it is perfectly acceptable some mortal knows her name?
Of all the things I’d expected of you, somehow this never entered the equation.
And do you care at all about your shell? ”
My tongue felt cold as it wrapped around a yes.
“And yet you’ve delivered her a death sentence. What shall I do with her? Put her in a Frost cell? She wouldn’t survive an hour.”
“I know of at least one empty room,” It said, our blended voices lilting viciously.
I did not even have time to process being called a shell or sentenced to die before she shook her head as if she’d endured as much as she could stomach. “Bring me my daughter and get them out of my sight.”
Release Jessa, It said. I don’t want her in a fugue for days, say her name again and tell her to come back.
I stooped to do so, and when Jessa blinked the frost from her eyes, she didn’t look afraid or confused.
Her face split into a smile. She reached for me with fingers that seemed to be bleeding fog; she was trying to tell me something but then a Frost underling shot forth to disentangle her from my arm.
Another appeared, muttering into the ear of the green-eyed guard It hated—
Marcic, It interjected testily.
—and Marcic grabbed me by the elbow and towed me like chattel back through the lane of hardpacked snow and beneath the archway leading to the staircase.
She was lecturing you as if you were a child, I said, almost glad for Marcic’s firm grip so I wouldn’t tumble on the slick steps. Like you—
She’s my mother, he said, as if through gritted teeth. I guess that’s her privilege. I will forever be a child to her.
What the hell did you do if your own mother cursed you? My God, I wasn’t a perfect princess, but the most my mother ever made me do is extra chores—and your little sister—
I felt It pacing back and forth, felt the twist of an annoyed grimace. Can you hold off on the scolding until later?
Where are they taking me? We were headed up at least, the way we’d come, not down the stairs that would likely take us to the bottom level, which I could only assume was Flame.
I guess we’ll find out. There aren’t many options.
We don’t have guest rooms in Hell. There are cells in Frost and Flame but both would be the death of you.
The cells in the guard’s quarters are only meant for demons.
I would guess they’ll stuff you in a spare room and keep you comfortable enough for Jessa’s sake.
Even from a distance you could order her to run herself through with a blade if you wanted.
But you’re mortal and I’m limited in here.
They’ll put a guard at the door and call it a day.
My mother will think over what to do with you.
I can’t see her actively choosing an option that might potentially limit Jessa’s scope of power, but if she decides she’d like to see you dead she’ll have to convene a council vote.
That’s never quick. You might as well get comfortable. You may be here for a while.
How calmly he could discuss the possibility of my death by council vote.
Good Lord, It said. Calm down. She’d like to kill me, if anything. You didn’t choose to be taken over. She’s the one who did all this in the first place. How can you blame someone for wanting to be free of a lurker?
It sounds as if you did plenty to warrant punishment.
And when have I ever claimed to be an angel?
We passed Fury’s landing in silence, though It still turned my head in hopes of seeing his uncle. I had thawed somewhat by the time the howling from Fang filtered down the staircase, and I had learned my lesson from last time: I didn’t look as we passed its archway, but I heard plenty.
Half-dragged through the antechamber, where our presence sent up a wave of disquiet among the demons who milled within it on crowd control, herding the damned like sheep.
Not present was Its fanged brother, though It cast my gaze wildly around for him.
Demons of all sorts gaped back. Demons who were indistinguishable from humans, demons strapped in blades, demons who had eyes of strange, glowing colors.
Skin of all shades, red and black and brown, tan and pale, chalky skin, skin that shimmered as if dusted in gold and powdered ruby.
Some looked at me shock-glazed and befuddled; some as though they’d like to flay me living.
You must have made quite an impression last time you were here, I said.
Yes, It said wryly. A blaze of glory, before my mother stuck me in time-out.
A hallway and then doors, an endless stretch of them blurring into silver streaks as Marcic hauled me by the elbow and suddenly screeched us to a stop.
“Enjoy what time you’ve got left,” he said with a nasty little wink before shoving me inside a door like all the others. I huddled deeper into the cloak and turned to face my apparent prison as the door slammed shut behind me.
It’s hardly a prison, It said, loosening in his cell for the first time in a while. It’s where I used to live.