Page 9 of His Realm

Ascalon created laws that covered all areas of a vampyr’s birth, life, and death. His firstborn son, Magnus, ruled after him, and then Messina, and one day, Varic. Things had changed for each ruler; laws were amended, added, and others stricken as no longer necessary. But the one unchangeable law was that everyone followed the same rules. Except, apparently, Decimus.

“I don’t understand,” I told them all.

“What’s to understand?” Zev asked. “Decimus’s court runs as he alone sees fit.”

“How?”

Zev glanced at Eris and Brenna, then tipped his head at Dae-Jung.

“None of us grasp your question,” Dae-Jung said. “You keep asking how, but what do you mean by that?”

“I mean, did Varic agree to let this agreement between Magnus and Decimus, that his father also honored, continue when he becomes king?”

Zev shrugged. “I don’t know Varic’s mind on these matters. You would, not me.”

“Since I didn’t know about Decimus’s palace⁠—”

“Castle,” Zev corrected. “It’s not like ours. It’s not a beautiful, ornate, freestanding building. The front looks like a medieval fortress carved into the side of the mountain. It’s situated near the end of the Qinngua Valley in southern Greenland, by Tasersuaq Lake, which in turn empties into the Tasermiut Fjord, which tells you everything you need to know about how cold it is there.”

The word fjord did bring to mind arctic temperatures.

Zev squinted at me. “You were in the army. You didn’t have to know geography?”

Whenever I didn’t agree with him right away about something, he assumed I was arguing. “Of course I⁠—”

“The parts of Greenland not under ice would be considered tundra. The valley is not because it’s warmer. It’s a subarctic zone, so you get taiga—forest. Lots of pine, spruce, evergreens, larch. The trees are dense until you get out of the valley, and suddenly it’s all tundra, so vegetation is sparse, and then you hit the ice.”

“So what you’re telling me is that once you’re out of the castle, there’s nothing.”

“That’s right.”

“Which is probably why no one leaves.”

He nodded. “Even a vampyr will freeze to death.”

“What else?”

Everyone was listening, not just me.

“Before you reach the castle, there’s a long bridge over a river I don’t remember the name of, and as soon as you enter through the gate, there are steps you take down and follow deep inside the mountain.”

“And it’s in Greenland?”

“Yes. At the edge of the world, is what they used to say.”

Whatever that meant. “Okay.”

“It’s always cold there. Even for us it’s cold.”

And if it was cold for them, I’d freeze to death.

I had to make sense of everything I’d been told.

“I don’t think Varic would allow Decimus not to have to comply to the way he wants the Noreia to be as a whole once he’s king,” I told Zev.

“Then Varic will have to go there and see it all for himself.”

“When was the last time you visited?”