The crowd lapped it up, gazing back at her with unearned love; love that belonged to a figure of myth. A girl with a gift and a broken heart, ready to risk it all for the one she loved. They were already conflating her with the figure from their fairytales, just as Imogen had predicted.
“What you have heard is true,” she went on. “I am Avette Beira; Sorceress and Saviour. And the rightful heir of Eisalaan.”
The exulted roar of the crowd was immediate; it was relief and delight and giddiness, and it rolled over Ger’s numbed skin like a gust of cool air, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Avette held her hands up in a soft plea for silence, and it fell at once, as though she were a pianist and they, nothing but keys to be played beneath her fingers.
And none of them have even seen her murder or maim someone yet.
“I should like to take a moment to thank my Cold Council. I am truly grateful to them all for believing in my claim and my unending love for this kingdom. It is an honour,” she said, one hand pressed earnestly over her cold heart, “to take up the mantle of my late cousin. Anhonour,to stand where the Queen of Snow and Silver once stood.”
The applause rose again, louder this time, buoyed by decades of love and weeks of painful mourning. Again, Avette raised her hands for silence. Ger heard the slight, irate huff beneath her breath, but her gesture was just as gentle as before, and the crowd fell willingly quiet, entirely enchanted by her every movement.
She smiled into the whistling silence.
“For too long, I stood elsewhere. I stood in the place you now know as the Sorceress Shrine. I stood, for centuries, hearing the prayers of your ancestors as they laid gifts I could not touch nor see at my feet. But Ilistened, and was warmed by their company—and by their faith. It was my one comfort over half a millennium spent in the cold confines of my own great sacrifice. And it, like so much else, was torn from me. I was removed from the Shrine, and you prayed to a cold marble impostor thereafter. I was stolen from you, and you from me.”
Avette paused with a small, pained gasp, bowing her head, and an echo of that gasp rippled across the courtyard.
Daughters damn us all. She’s too good at this.
When she lifted her gaze, her long lashes shimmered with unspilled tears, and Ger had to wonder if she had somehow convincedherselfjust as much as the people gazing up at her.
“It breaks my heart,” she said, trembling and broken but still taking great care to project her voice far and wide. “To know that one I trusted, one mycousintrusted, was responsible not only for my loss, but for my family’s loss too. Foryourloss, once and again. My legacy has always been one of love and magic, and ithurtsme that this is my first act as heir to the blessed silver throne.”
With a little sob, Avette took a graceful step back. Without turning her back on the crowd, she swept out one, lace-trimmed arm. Behind her, all in attendance flinched back. The balcony was quite as crowded as the courtyard, with the ladies of the court huddled close in one corner and the few remaining councillors, save for Doran, in the other.
“I present to you, my Cold Council.”
As an Eisalaan Gard, Gerard had been trained to keep his eyes up front—focused on the threat beneath them, alert for objects thrown or arrows fired. But the true threat, he knew, was at his side. He could not help the way his eyes strained to look at her, to look at the Cold Council, and when he finally did, he saw that Doran had given in too. His grey grin made Ger’s stomach drop, weighed by plummeting dread.
“They loved Queen Selma, as you did,” Avette continued. She spoke in that same wavering, mournful tone, but there was an edge in her voice that dragged Gerard’s hair on end, skin prickling with an alertness that did him no good. “They loved your Queen of Snow and Silver—and that, unfortunately, was her downfall.”
If the crowd was silent before, they were frozen now; enough so that Ger had to glance down into the courtyard just to be sure that the Sorceress had not weaved her ice magic on them while she spoke. She had not; they were entranced. Or perhaps a little on edge, just as he was. Perhaps they, too, felt the bite that had bled into the cold winter air.
“May I introduce to you, my most trusted advisor, and Chief of the Cold Council, Captain Jonathan Doran.”
Doran bowed his head to a small swell of applause led by the rest of the Queen’s Gard; Gerard could tell by the metal clang of armour on armour and the oily harmony of their jeering.
Enduring the shift of attention for only a moment, Avette gestured to Norris, who cringed back before stepping, rather courageously, in front of Bertha.
“Councillor Norris, of Foreign Affairs.”
He was met with a second smatter of confused applause, mirrored in his own face, before Avette’s hand drifted, wavinghim aside. He did so, reluctantly, and Bertha took an uncertain step forward, eyes wide.
“Councillor Bertha, of Public Wellbeing.”
Bertha nodded, then gratefully stepped back in line when Avette released her, gaze turned now on Edward. She toyed idly with her pendant, and it glowed prettily beneath her touch.
“And of course,” she said, so softly that Gerard was certain the crowd below would be straining to hear her, which was probably what she wanted. Avette sighed and dabbed at an imaginary tear, careful not to smudge the artful streaks beneath her eyes. “Queen Selma’s first love, and sire of her golden firstborn. Commander Edward Brogan, our former Councillor of Wielding.”
Former.
The word raced around the curve of the balcony on a sudden breeze, weaving between the tight knit of tensed bodies. Edward did not step forward. He stilled, eyes wide, shoulders curling in as if he could make himself small enough to escape her notice.
“He has served Eisalaan faithfully for many years. A natural born talent, or so he would have had Queen Selma believe. But the Commander’s magic was not his to Wield. It was mine. It was Edward, you see, who removed me from my resting place. Who kept me captive. Who learned to harness my power and used it to tether our late queen’s heart to the Frost. And who took her life out of heartache and spite.”
Edward’s face was slack. He fell back a step, and Norris and Bertha scattered behind him, pressing themselves to the walls and out of Avette’s sight.
“No, I—I loved her,” Edward croaked, every word weaker than the last. “I didn’t want this. I tried to stop it.”
