His jaw pulsed. His ice again pressed against hers, down below them.
Hadn’t Einar said once that strength came from the very act of ruling? That the more she really used her power, the more powerful it would become? This must be proof of that. Fodur had given her authority, and exercising it made her once-weak magic stronger. That was the only possible explanation for how easily she held him back.
“You make a mockery of the Crown.” His words were a low rumble. “You are unfit to be a princess of Fjordlandi—”
“Enough.” The Song from the kyrka filled her mind, her ears, blocking out the noise of his displeasure. She straightened. “Iam not Mamma’s pet anymore, Fodur. I am your only surviving child, the Heir, invested by you with authority over the storms and the prison, as witnessed by the Two Councils and all the Blessed. If you wish to recall that authority, you must do so through the proper means.”
Fodur’s ice pinged at the windows. His frost climbed the walls. “You really want me to Challenge you? Publicly? For all to see your shame?”
She silenced the ice. Called the frost away. And marveled that it listened. To her, rather than to him.
He noticed. She could tell first from the new flame of rage in his eyes, and then from the way his face went pale as he fought silently to wrest control.
And failed.
Failed. Kyrja’s stomach sank from knots into leaden dread. Was Fodur ill? Dying? Why else would his power be weaker than hers?
Or…? No.
It was his anger weakening him. His rage. Hadn’t he always said that the key to their magic was impassiveness? That emotion ate away at the ice?
She lifted her chin. “Your anger melts your ice, Fodur. It’s understandable. You lost a son, a daughter, a consort—”
“I need none of them!” He shoved at the desk, but it moved only an inch toward her before she froze it in place. “And I do not need lectures from you.”
She stepped away, toward the door. “We can discuss the Ice Prison situation more after the funerals. If you wish to make an official Challenge, I should hope you at least wait until you’ve commended our family’s bodies to the mountain. And Fodur—I expect to witness atrialfor Nikanor Tristansson. A fair one.”
This time, her father’s frost burst over the whole room in a single, breath-snatching moment. She didn’t even try to stop it.Why bother, when she’d be gone in another few seconds? “You will not make demands of me, child. You are not queen—you will never be queen. If I were to die today, you’d have a dozen Challenges by nightfall, and any one of the other Blessed could defeat you in two minutes. I don’t know what’s come over you, but stand down and return to your proper place before you shame your mother’s memory.”
She recognized his words for what they were, a frozen arrow aimed at her heart. The place that had always been softest—Mamma.
But he clearly didn’t understand love, if he really thought he could weaponize it like that. She lifted her brows and wrenched the door open, sending frost scattering from the seam. “I intend to make her proud, Fodur. I pray she’s watching from Himmel, and I pray she’s smiling to see me becoming exactly what she always said I could be.Worthy. Worthy of the Blessing the Giver has given.”
She didn’t wait for a response. Just stepped into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind her—in time to hear something shatter against it.
A Vektor stood at attention in the hall, and his throat bobbed with a hard swallow—Viggo, her father’s highest-ranked non-magical royal guard. She expected him to ignore her, as the guards always did. To pretend he didn’t even see her. Or else to scowl at her like the brave ones sometimes would when she displeased Fodur again.
Instead, he dipped his head. Lifted the hand holding his ceremonial spear. And saluted her with it.
A sign of deference due only to the king.
She spun away rather than bear witness to treason.
8
Elianne stepped into the dark of the lava tube, casting a glance over her shoulder. The others were asleep—Logi and Ember in their chamber farther removed from the others, Eldrid in the uppermost chamber he preferred, which they’d taken to calling his perch. Dae in the smallest of the rooms attached to their main living space.
His breaths had been deep and even for over an hour. But was he really asleep? She’d never questioned it before, after her first nights of solo exploration that always led to the ice wall. He’d never called her back, never followed, never confronted her about them.
But he knew. Had he always known or discovered it lately?
It didn’t matter. He’d told her to get word to the king, hadn’t he?
It didn’t stop the guilt from gnawing at her, as it always did when she crept down one of the tunnels without a word to her friends. But the force that drew her was stronger than the one holding her back.
The sharp lines of basalt bit into her feet as she walked, no doubt leaving a trail of blood behind her. She’d cauterize the wounds when she stopped, and they’d not so much as scar, buteven so, she wished for the boots that had tumbled into the flow the other day and vanished. Or the spare pair that had been on the shelves, now obliterated as well.
Fear held her muscles captive as she made the familiar journey, the questions so big in her mind because she didn’t know which would be worse—the wondering or the answers.
