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Am I on the right path?The question was hesitant, unclear. She sank deeper into the dark of her thoughts.Will I be a good queen?No, that wasn’t the right question either. Without knowing what to ask, the heavens couldn’t guide her. It had been so long since she’d done this.
What was it that she truly wanted, needed?Softness. Trust. To bloom unharmed in a frozen waste.She breathed deeply. The candle flames popped, their wicks thick and dark.
Show me the way to trust. Show me which path to follow if I am to rule with love instead of fear.
Elma opened her eyes. She blinked in the sudden brightness, the sputter of the candles. Smoke swirled before her, painting rivers of soft grey-white in the air. When she had done this in Mekya, or alone in the courtyard, or in the cool breezes of her room with an open window, shapes resolved inthe smoke. Questions became answers. But now, only abstract swirls remained of the candle smoke.
She sat unmoving for several minutes, watching hot wax drip down the candle sides, peering at the smoke, hoping some image or message might appear to guide her. But she felt in her stomach that nothing would come to her that day. Or, perhaps, ever again.
Leaning forward, Elma blew out the candles.
Very well, then. If the heavens would not show her a sign, or illuminate the path to tread, then she would find it herself.
Twenty
Days passed one after the other, fading together like winter clouds before a snowstorm. Elma carried out her duties as was expected of her. She rose in the morning and took her breakfast, dressed in queenly raiments, and met with her advisors. She made last-minute decisions about the coronation, listened to her uncle’s repeated warnings of danger, his insistence that he saw things in the faraway snow — that an attack from Slödava was not to be dismissed as impossible.
And through it all, Elma drifted as a ghost.
“You look unwell,” Godwin said, five days before coronation. “Have you been eating?”
Three days before the coronation, a heavy snow fell. There could be no travel to or from the Frost Citadel, and Godwin was so agitated that he returned to his duties on the citadel battlements, appearing at evening dinners with ice in his beard.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Rune said when only two days remained. “Reigning is easy. The hard part is determining who wants to kill you and killing them first.”
On the night before her coronation, Elma undressedslowly. It was late, and the moonlight reflected on the snow outside her window, illuminating the room in pale blue. There had been a feast that evening, small but celebratory, though Elma felt none of her family or advisors’ anticipation, let alone excitement. A heavy rock had settled in her stomach and showed no signs of leaving.
Tomorrow, she would be Queen Elma. And with that crown would come stability, power, and the ability to declare lasting peace… or war. When her fingers tightened, the realm would feel it. With a crown on her head, the rest of the world would have no choice but to recognize her place, her influence.
And she’d be free, at last, to rid herself of Rune.
The stone settled deeper in her gut. She ought to have been eager for the power, the freedom this queenhood would bring. But all she saw stretching out before her was a vast emptiness, a frozen waste, a long and joyless reign.
He makes me laugh, she thought, unlacing the sides of her overdress before pulling it over her head.No one else makes me laugh.
Pressing her lips together tightly, Elma shrugged off her woolen underdress and hung it in the wardrobe. She shivered with only her thin undergarments to protect her from the room’s chill. The fire had died down during dinner, and Cora had not tended to it.
“Laughing is overrated,” Elma muttered, pulling her nightgown from the wardrobe.
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Elma spun, heart hammering, her throat constricted. The voice had come from within the room. And as she stumbled backward, shocked into inaction, a figure emerged from the shadows. As if he’d been there forever, waiting for just this moment.
He was tall and lithe, dressed all in black. His hair was cut short, close to the curve of his skull. But even in the dim light, Elma saw that it was white. The man smiled, a ruthless, predatory glimmer of teeth. Firelight danced in his blue eyes as if he were gazing hungrily out at Elma from the underworld.
Cold realization settled in Elma’s chest, painful and sharp. This was no imitation Slödavan. She was about to die.
As she watched, still frozen in horror, the man stepped toward her. His movements were like Rune’s — smooth and controlled, as much a dancer as a killer. He licked his lips.
“You’re looking lovely tonight, Elma Volta. Ripe and ready for the picking.”
She opened her mouth to speak but found her throat and tongue were utterly dry. Only a strangled sort of whimper came forth. She knew she ought to do something, call out, defend herself. But the Slödavan was so close, so real and horrifying in the night, and his presence overwhelmed her.
How did he get in? her thoughts demanded.
“Not a word of welcome,” he said. Like Rune, his skin was tan, his features nothing short of beautiful. But a feral cruelty glimmered in his gaze, a cruelty Elma realized she hadn’t seen in Rune’s face for days. Weeks, even.
As he spoke, the assassin drew his weapon, a gorgeous silver blade that rivaled Elma’s own queenly sword. Grinning with satisfaction, no doubt thinking her an easy mark, he lifted the blade, ready to swing. His eyes had darkened to the color of the mountain itself, granite and unyielding.
