Page 159 of Winter Gods & Serpents

I didn’t want her to hate me but asking her of that would be robbing a wish, unattainable. “Shocker.”

She rolled her eyes at my response and gathered her cloak tighter. “Let’s go before this cold freeze my body and you freezes my will to live,” she said, mounting Memphis.

“As you say, dahaara.”

She groaned, murmured, and mouthed about dozens of curses in Calgnan as she often did before urging Memphis forward.

Chapter 29

Roses and Thorns

Snowlin

Adriata is not helping Isjord, not with military. I had believed him somehow—I believed what he said, and it had brought me a piece of peace. Everything he said brought a sense of serenity.

Father had located troops all over the border cities, and that they were now not only dealing with the Solaryans. He had requested immediate dispatch of a unit to travel to Hanai under discretion to retrieve or depose the soldiers caught prisoner trespassing Hanai, for a reason that was not stated anywhere. Whatever the reason, he was willing to go as far as to have his own soldiers executed before they were able to speak or be tortured by the Hanaians. I also had figured where exactly Elias had gone. He was north, but the Hanaian north.

Sleep soaked me in mother’s chambers. Utter dark, tall shadows and light white mist hovered blanketing my surroundings, ones I’d almost buried in memory. The windows blown open, brought in heavy wind and black snow that coated the white marble floor a shade of screaming dark. My mother stood affront me, draped in the white dress of the solstice from twelve years ago and as I stepped toward her I felt my feet soak in viscous wetness. Blood pooled all around us, it flowed out of my mother. Her hair blew back and I stumbled to the ground drawing my eyes shut at the terrifying sight of her bloodied features, leaking of the crimson fluid.

Snow, little snowflake, come, see me.

My mother’s voice jerked me awake. Cold creeps had raised at the realness of its sound, as if she had been standing by me. I looked around, studying the unchanging and unmoving surroundings ultimately making myself laugh. So I was losing it. I were many things, a mad woman was not going to be one of them, yet I gathered my robe around and headed out of my room.

Kilian leaned back, arms crossed by the wall opposite, he blinked unbothered almost expectant to my actions. I suppose it was a habit of mine and he was picking on them very well. A flush of embarrassment heated and creeped towards my ears. The other night I had revealed more than what I had ever thought I would tell to an Adriatian, more that I would tell anyone at that. His words however had managed to lift a heavy weight from my head, and soothed some distraught blankets of thought. I contemplated if I really had done that to myself, emptied my soul, that I was a wandering breathing and living spirit that felt nothing. The words he had used had left me in enough of an awe I had not known what to say, although I knew what I wished to do at that moment —grab his ridiculous handsome face and kiss him till air left his lungs. But though I wanted him, he only thought of wanting me.

“The gardens, mountains, forest or by the sea. Where will you drag me today?” he asked, lazily pushing himself from the wall.

As much as I wanted to indulge and humour him back enough that he would pull his hair out, today was not the day—today was a bad day, well, night.

“Down a few corridors, arsehole” I said charging ahead.

“Are you alright?”

I hated those words. Alright, not alright, was there really such a state? “Mhm.”

“You don’t look alright.” Why would he not let it go?

“What do you think, waking from one nightmare and finding another right at your doorstep.” I only wanted him to understand that I craved quiet, the one my head was denying. That I was tormented and that the thoughts about him tormented me more, but instead…I injured him.

“Snow—”

“And it speaks at that.”

He went silent after my harsh words. I would have gone silent too. My anger took charge and aimed straight—straight at someone I didn’t want to aim it at.

I imagined myself making this way a thousand times since returning to Isjord, though my heart had commanded my feet stock-still every single time. It terrified me, to surround myself with her presence, if I felt her too alive in memory I’d long for her to heartache. The wooden doors of her bedroom stood solid and unmoving before me as my hands refused to open them, so I stood there for several minutes, fighting that inner battle of thought a few couple of times before I managed to lift my hand to the cold golden handle.

“Do not come in,” I said, and he halted without question, probably already aware whose chambers I’d entered.

The large doors creaked around the hollow room and corridors from the unusual movement. My chest expanded wide enough that I had to lift my hand to clutch away the pressure. I remembered myself running around the marbled floor, jumping atop the large fluffed bed, sitting by her vanity trying every crown and jewellery, dancing around corners of the chamber in her dresses that drowned my small limbs. I remembered my every movement and her every laugh, the caress in her features when she looked at me, the softness in her olive eyes and the gentleness of their invisible touch smoothing over me. Her humming still eerie reminiscent in my ears, it prickled the hair of my neck.

The white marble smooth under me, each touch of my soles sent jolt after jolt of memory in my head, happy memories that were now translated to the most painful. Memories were the cruellest form of torture.

I kneeled before her bed and felt the smoothness of it once more, but my hands met thorns that scrapped deep in wounds that were still open and leaking. Roses—she always smelled of roses, everything smelled of it still, but its sweet scent had variegated with the metallic stink of blood which brought a sickening feel to my throat. I held my stomach tight, standing to escape the nauseating feel that had coated sweat beads across my temples and sent tremors down my hands.

Voices and heavy steps sounded outside the windows pulling my attention. It was the middle of the night, why were people marching around the castle at this hour for? I moved towards the arched window cracking the pane open just slightly. Below, two long lines of Verglaser soldiers beaming in white marched ahead carrying a wooden chest between them, led by a lean hooded figure towards the old castle quarters of my father’s dark crafter. Those chambers had been shut down when I wad very young; when my father executed the last crafter for treason and conspiracy with the leader of Eldmoor, the 102nd Grand Maiden, Urinthia. He thought the crafter had been communicating court secrets to the spiritual kingdom, he’ cut ties with Eldmoor shortly afterwards and banned all craft in Isjord. There had been fear of war between the two kingdoms, well at least the one my father wanted to rage, but Eldmoor had not replicated or even indulged in my father’s wishes to create a rift that could end up just in that. The Eldmoorians did not care for war, lands, glory, and gold, to them magic was everything. So, swiftly the crafters avoided war and my father all together, no one heard from them, not that they cared. To them anyone that was not Eldmoorian was of very little interest. Why had father opened the part of the castle that should have been shut for years, and what was he taking there?

I tilted my head further down the window, narrowing my eyes down the dark crafter's court and met a red hued transparent layer flickered in and out of sight—a crafter's veil. A protection barrier, doubtfully one I could trespass. He had reopened the quarters? But there was still a ban on dark craft in Isjord?