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The door to our cell opened while Malys’ voice still lingered in the air. She stood by the door, resplendent in her dark attire, a vision of evil, ambition, and desire laced with a touch of desperation. Time was growing short for her as well. I knew it, and so did she.
Malys angled her head to the side, then pointed a finger at me from the door. “Time to go,” she said.
“Go where?” I asked.
“To negotiate your terms, and then fulfil your part of the agreement in short order. We don’t have all day.”
“I won’t let you get away with this,” Radulf said, a low growl in his throat. He tried to stand, but the chains he was attached to made it impossible.
“You should conserve your strength. I wouldn’t want you hurting yourself.”
“You don’t care what happens to any of us.”
“That’s not true. I let her little boyfriend live, didn’t I?”
“We have no way of knowing that.”
She tilted her chin up. “That’s right, you don’t… I suppose you’ll just have to take me at my word.”
“Why would I believe you?”
“Because as your sister has already discovered, I am many things, but a liar isn’t one of them. Now, if you’ll excuse us, time grows short.” She waved her hand, and my shackles undid themselves, the manacles around my wrists and ankles falling to the floor with a metallic thud.
“Don’t do this,” Radulf pleaded.
“I love you,” I said to him. “I know we’ll see each other again.”
“Amara!” he yelled, struggling against his chains.
It broke my heart to see him like this, but there was nothing I could do for him right now. This part I needed to do on my own. Radulf’s part in all of this was yet to come up, but it would. I just had to hope Malys hadn’t caught on yet, and that my grandmothers had returned from… wherever they were.
I stopped at the door to the cell and looked at Malys, the woman who wanted to take my life from me and make real her version of Arcadia. “Don’t hurt him,” I said.
“We will discuss all of that on the way to the Frost Stone,” she said. “After you.”
“Will there also be tea and biscuits? Because I could go for a nice cup right about now.”
Malys seemed not to understand me, she narrowed her eyes. “Are you asking for a last meal?”
“If you’ll allow it.”
She gestured with her hand into the corridor immediately outside of the cell I had been kept in. “After you,” she said, “And we’ll see.”
I left Radulf in his cell, as much as it pained me, and walked ahead of Malys. I was immediately joined by two armed soldiers wearing clunky, full plate armor that looked almost impenetrable. The guards escorted me up a spiral staircase, through the keep, and toward the palace proper.
I had never seen the dungeons before, had never visited them in my lifetime, but I had been to the palace before. Of course, I had. I remembered the walk well, the cold stone walkway leading up to the palace, the palace grounds with its lush topiary and its beautiful, manicured hedges.
The palace itself was—at least, before Malys got her hands on it—a wonderful sight. Resplendent. A gorgeous mansion made of the lightest marble, each stone inlaid with delicate blue filigree that seemed at times to glow, and even hum. Sitting atop the palace like a crowning jewel was the Frost Stone, a floating crystal infused with light that shone high into the sky at day and night.
People referred to Windhelm as the Beacon of Civilization in the Winter Kingdom, and because of the Frost Stone, Windhelm lived up to that name. The crystal’s light, and the beam it shot into the sky could be seen for miles, and miles, and miles. That was true, at least, for the Frost Stone I remembered. This one, though, was the opposite.
Instead of the clear blue of a sunny sky, this stone was the deepest blue of a dark lake. Instead of reflecting the sunlight that touched it, the stone caught the light and sucked it in jealously, greedily. The palace, too, was different. It was a dark building of deep blue stone and silver latticework. It was no less beautiful, but it wasn’t my home.
“Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” asked Malys. “It was simply too bright in here for my liking before.”
“I didn’t come here to make small talk,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“You’re eager to run off into your inevitable demise, aren’t you?”
