“It’s fine.” She takes a breath, then offers the official story we all heard. “It was a kelpie hunt. He was wounded and didn’t survive the journey home.”
“A kelpie? Really?” Juani asks.
The king was a renowned hunter. It’s said there are trophies of every wild beast he killed mounted on the throne room walls.
Val glances at me, something unreadable in her eyes. “That’s what everyone says. But…there were rumors. Some said that a party of Night Guardians from Nattvarnheim had crossed the border into our lands. That the spilled blood from the kelpie attack drew them, and they came to feast. The huntsmen and king fought them off, killing every last bloodsucker, but they lost three more men, including m—” She blinks and rubs at her throat. “Including our king.”
Most of us sit stunned. It’s unthinkable that Night Guardians would venture into the Hinterlands when they always stick to their shadowy territory. But she would know better than anyone.
Aili tilts her head. “And then the queen turned mean?”
Val wears a mask as icy as our queen’s. “I guess so. They say she sealed the border with a wall of ice that spread as far as the eye could see. It never melts. Some believe that’s when the seasons stopped turning and winter became endless. So the rumors say.”
Rumors? Or something she witnessed?
She clears her throat. “When my family returned to the capital for the funeral, the queen was ice cold. She didn’t acknowledge anyone. Not even the princess.”
“That must’ve been hard,” I say before I can think better of it.
“I’m sure it was…for the queen.”
“And for Princess Talvie,” I add quietly.
She shrugs tightly, trying for nonchalance, but her hands quake in her lap. “Clearly the queen never recovered, for her to keep being so selfish. Isolating us all.”
Bitterness bites through her words.
That was her life. Years spent in a lavish palace, but isolated and alone inside walls built to keep everyone out. My princess, my sweetheart with her sensitive soul, locked away with no oneto love her. No one to hold her. The painful grip on my heart tightens.
“She made an entire wall of ice?” Johannes asks.
Hugo adds his voice to the question with a squeak.
“She’s powerful,” Val says. “Too powerful to fight against.”
“Maybe she just forgot how to love,” Aili says.
I give my head a shake. The words are too sweet to have come from my tough little grouch. Val’s head turns so fast, I expect her neck to crack. I can’t tell if it’s grief or wonder on her face, but she stares for too long.
Then she whispers, “Aili, you might be a genius.”
We wait.
Val blinks and looks around the room like she forgot we were here.
I hate seeing her look so lost. “You think the Ice Queen needs to be reminded of love?”
“I don’t know. I thought the ice wall was about keeping danger out, and the endless winter was an accidental side effect. But what if it was the point? What if she locked her grief and loneliness in?” Her sapphire eyes dance across our faces with shades of Princess Talvie’s aubergine glimmering through in my sight. “If there was a way to get her to see what I—what the people out here go through…If she could just open her heart, even for a moment…”
Hugo gives a questioningchirrup, and I scoop him off the table to stroke his quills.
“She’s not grumpy, she’s just sad,” says Aili, making Katja loop a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders.
Mikael’s voice is low in the quiet. “She froze her own heart.”
The princess leans back with a small gasp. After all the time I’ve been watching her, I can read the expressions her face rolls through. Wonder. Confusion. Revelation.
“She…can’t feel love. If she could feel love, she wouldn’t treat people this badly. We have to make her feel again!”
