With the final word, I thrust my full weight against the door and walked through into the throne room of the Snow Queen.
The vast hall looked much as I had imagined, lined with tall windows down both sides, a high, vaulted ceiling far overhead. On the far end a large dais held an imposing throne carved in whorls of ice. The traditional second throne was missing, leaving no doubt there was only one ruler in this frozen kingdom. Instead a tall figure stood beside whoever sat on the throne.
I stood too far away to make out either of their faces, but I could well imagine who they both were. I strode forward without checking to see if Giselle followed me. If she wanted to keep out of this fight, I wouldn’t blame her. Not after the iceflakes that had guarded the outside of the palace. Who knew what horrors guarded the queen herself?
But nothing came forward to challenge me as I made my steady way across the empty floor. Even with my focus on the figures ahead of me, I noticed something different about this floor. It wasn’t completely smooth like those in the rest of the palace, and the light reflected differently from the ice.
A hissing voice behind me told me Giselle had followed, and that she’d noticed me glancing at the floor.
“It looks like the surface of a frozen lake.”
I stilled briefly in surprise before striding on. Why should it surprise me at this point that the Snow Queen would build her palace on a frozen lake? She clearly had no fears this place was going to melt.
But she should be afraid, a voice inside me murmured, accompanied by a comforting swell of warmth in my middle.
As I got close enough to see their faces, my eyes were drawn irresistibly to Oliver. He watched me approach, but his eyes didn’t connect with mine. This wasn’t the Oliver I knew, the one I had come to love. This was the Oliver I had first met in Eldon. A vise gripped my heart and squeezed, nearly causing me to stumble.
Yet again, I lost control of my fire which sprang unbidden to my hands.
“Ah,” said a voice like the clanging of bells. “The little fire girl. How fascinating.”
My eyes snapped to her face, and for the first time I saw the woman who had been slowly destroying this kingdom. The kingdom Oliver loved so much.
A crown, several times taller than any I had ever seen, perched atop her head, the steep points rising up in shards of ice. Her strange coloring looked just as it had in her portraits, and she made even the frozen version of Oliver beside her look flushed and alive.
Her cheekbones cut as sharply as her pointed crown, her features beautiful, I supposed, if not for the red in her eyes and the absence of color. But nothing about her looked natural, and the sight of her made me want to shiver, not admire.
But the prince at her side showed no such revulsion. He showed no emotion at all as he watched me and his sister draw closer and closer. I longed to run forward and send my power racing through him, as I had done so long ago at the palace. But when I went to take another step, the queen waved a lazy hand, and a waist-high wall of ice sprung up before us. I only just stopped myself from crashing into it.
“I think that is far enough,” she said. “I am not so fond of fire, you see.” The bells of her voice sounded musical, but also grating. A clanging that reverberated in my head and set my teeth on edge.
“I can well imagine, Your Majesty,” I spat the last two words at her. “I’m not so fond of ice, myself.” My hands—still burning—reached out to melt the ice that blocked my way. But before I could do more than release a few puffs of steam, my attention was drawn sideways to Giselle.
Something on the far side of the room had captured her attention. She strode down the long wall of ice, making no effort to bypass it, and after a quick glance at Oliver, I dashed after her.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, glancing back at the throne again. The Snow Queen remained seated, watching us with a small smile on her face.
When we finally reached the side wall, I frowned. Apparently it hadn’t been coincidence that had led her to sprout the wall where she had. Not when the only decoration we had seen in the entire palace outside of the portrait gallery hung on the wall in a direct line with it.
“Look,” said Giselle, her expression fascinated. “I recognize it.”
I sighed and actually looked at the object in front of me. The elaborate gilt frame held nothing, its large oval interior bare, revealing the ice wall behind. I couldn’t imagine the purpose of such a thing. There could be no need to highlight that this building was made of ice. The palace itself did a more than adequate job of that.
But when Giselle reached a hand forward, as if to trace the distinctive markings of the frame, I pulled her back, noticing it wasn’t completely empty after all.
“Careful,” I said. “That looks like it could cut.” I glanced back at the throne again, my mistrust growing at the smug look on the queen’s face.
Now that I had seen the tiny shards around the inside edge of the frame, I realized what this was. Or at least had once been. A mirror. And now that I knew it was a mirror, I realized the frame did look vaguely familiar.
“It’s our mirror,” said Giselle, shock and anger in her voice. At least she didn’t try to touch it again.
“But it’s broken.” I struggled to think clearly. My desire to get to Oliver overwhelmed my mind. I needed to free him. Every time his blank eyes fell on me, it cut like a fresh wound. I had never imagined he would look at me that way again.
“The royal mirror of Eldon. Our royal mirror. The one we’ve been searching for. It might be broken, but this is it.” Her voice turned sad. “Or it was. I suppose I’ll never get the chance to see it now.” She spun around to face me only to push straight past, stalking back toward our original position. “I may have only seen it in that portrait back home, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”
I hurried to follow her, struggling to grasp the fact that the mirror we had pinned so much hope on had already been destroyed. Not that we needed it to tell us the source of the curse now.
“I see you are observant, little princess,” said the queen when we faced her once again. “How do you like my mirror?”
“It’s not your mirror, it’s ours.” Giselle almost spat the words. “And you’ve broken it.”
“Yes.” The queen sighed, her eyes straying back to the frame. “I was most disappointed at the time, but it has turned out far better than I could have hoped.” She reached out a languid arm and patted the prince beside her.
I actually growled, wanting to leap over the ice and rip her arm off. She smiled at me as if she could read my thoughts, and I forced myself to calm down. She had wanted us to see that mirror. And I wanted to know why. Was it purely to taunt Giselle with what she had stolen from her family?
“What did you do?” demanded Giselle. I had never seen the younger girl look so regal.
“I tried to use a second magic item to enhance its power. To infuse something of myself into it.”
“The mirror can only be used by the royal family of Eldon,” snapped Giselle.
To my surprise, the queen nodded in agreement. “So it seems.” Her gaze strayed again to the empty frame. “It did not take kindly to my attempts.” But then she laughed, and I had to stop myself pressing my hands to my ears as the sound echoed painfully in my head.
“But it seems that something of me transferred into it after all. And then I discovered the power in the shattered pieces—no more than specks of dust in some cases.” She smiled again. “Such clever little shards, as it turned out. Able to worm their way into a person’s heart and make it as frozen as my beautiful mountain. Such powerful magic in those royal mirrors!”
Giselle swayed beside me, looking sick. I gripped her arm to steady her and glared at the queen.
“If you’re trying to say this all happened by accident and wasn’t part of your plan, I don’t believe you.”
“Not originally part of my plan,” she said. “Once I understood the power of the shards, naturally I knew my time had at la
st come to act. For years beyond counting I have waited, amassing the right tools, ready to spread my snow and ice down the mountains.” Her terrifying eyes seemed to glow. “And I knew my moment had come. I began to send down my winds, each of them carrying such precious, invisible cargo. Sent first to the capital and then out into the rest of the kingdom. Only the farthest southern regions have yet to feel my wind blow.”
I shivered. How far would her winds extend once she reached the capital? Eliam was right to fear the encroaching cold.
“The magic is slow to work,” she continued. “But that gave me time to study it. To perfect it. I have learned how best to use the power.”
This time her gaze flicked not to the mirror, but to Oliver. So that was how she had managed to freeze his heart again so quickly. I understood Sterling’s words now.
The thought of the traitor made me want to spit. He was far more dangerous than I had supposed. He might even be the only servant who served her with a free heart and mind.
“Why are you telling us this?” asked Giselle. “Is it just that you’ve missed having a chance to gloat?”
The queen laughed again, sounding genuinely amused. “Of course not. I have no need to gloat. I merely hoped to rid myself of the tiresome necessity of a battle. I hoped you would see how impossible it is to resist me. I hold an entire kingdom in thrall, after all.”
“Enough!” I said, sending a stream of fire into the partial wall of ice in front of me. “I will free Oliver’s heart as I have done before, and then we will leave. And once we’re gone, I will melt your precious palace, and your throne, and all of your enchantments with them.”
I strode forward through the newly created gap, steam rising around me. I expected to have to burn through much more than one thin half-wall, but the queen made no move to prevent me approaching Oliver. I watched her out of the side of my eyes, not trusting in her seeming acquiescence. But even when I placed my hands flat against his chest, she made no move to intervene.
As soon as I felt his broad chest, still warm with life beneath my hands, thoughts of the queen fell away. The fire from my anger was nothing compared to the inferno that raged inside me now. Freeing him would be easy. I pushed warmth down through my arms and out my hands, keeping it just short of bursting into actual flame.
“Oliver! Wake up!” I repeated the words I had used once before.
I expected him to glow, as he had then and Giselle after him, but the warmth instead seemed to leach out of me and disappear into him without making him any hotter. I tried again, with more force, but when nothing happened beyond singeing his outer shirt, I stumbled backward.
“I don’t understand,” I said, my eyes on his. He had not reacted to my presence in any way, and I was finding it hard to breathe.
It was the queen who answered. “The prince is not infected with a single speck of dust blown into his heart on the wind, little girl. He has a shard placed there by my own hand. He will not be so easily freed.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe it. Oliver wouldn’t give himself up so easily. He would fight.
“Oliver,” I said, keeping my voice low, and pretending the queen wasn’t there. “Oliver, please. It’s me. It’s Celine. You can fight this. You must try!”
“I can see it’s you, Celine,” he said, the sound of his voice shocking after his previous silence. “I haven’t lost my mind, you know.”
The voice was his, certainly, but his tone was cutting and cold. I had never heard him speak like that, not even in Marin when we had first met. I stumbled back another step while he surveyed me coldly from head to foot. I had never been so conscious of being in such physical disarray before. I was very far from the perfectly dressed princess who could shock a room into silence.
“Although, now that I see you again,” he said, “I can’t work out what it was I saw in you before.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I seem to remember I even thought you beautiful.”
I sucked in a breath, unable to believe the words I was hearing.
“Can’t you see she’s enchanted you, Ollie?” cried Giselle, following me through the gap in the ice, but staying off the dais. “Please, you have to fight her.”
He turned his cold eyes on his sister. “Oh, be quiet, Giselle. You’re always following along where you’re not wanted, pushing in no matter how much we try to keep you away. When will you learn that you only make things difficult for those of us who actually have important things to do?”
Giselle gasped, her mouth falling open as tears welled in her eyes. I backed down the stairs of the dais so I could put an arm around her shoulders. I directed my glare where I knew it belonged—at the Snow Queen. These words didn’t come from Oliver. He loved both his sisters—but his younger sister, especially.
“Don’t listen, Giselle,” I whispered. “Don’t listen to her poison.”
The younger princess wiped an angry arm across her eyes and straightened. I squeezed her shoulder before pulling away to stride forward again. It was time to try something more drastic.
Remembering the way he had surprised me in the cave, I barreled forward to grip his face, pulling it forcefully down to mine.
Chapter 29
A spark seemed to leap from me at our touch, but his lips remained cold and unresponsive.
Pulling back, he pushed me away, and I once again stumbled backward away from him.
“Did you not understand me before? I do not want your kisses, Celine. I suppose it must have amused me to dally with you when there was no one else around, although now I can’t imagine why. Whatever my reason previously, I’m no longer interested.”
I screamed, rounding on the Snow Queen and throwing fire ball after fire ball at her head. She reacted instantly, throwing up an arm and pulling a shield of ice from the base of the dais. My fire balls burst against it, shattering the ice, but as each one made a dent, she waved again, bringing up a fresh layer of ice to strengthen it.
I circled around her, moving away from Oliver, as I looked for an opening in her protective layer. If I couldn’t burn this ice from Oliver, I was going directly to the source. But as fast as I could throw my fire, she raised her shield to match.
Wheeling back around, I changed tactic. Dropping the fire, I let my anger and pain burn brighter and brighter inside me. When it reached a peak, I thrust my palms outward.
A gale force wind, the type that had blasted rocks from a blocked tunnel, shot out and smashed against the queen’s protective wall of ice. With an angry shriek, the queen leaped on her throne and vaulted over the ice as it fell before my onslaught, crashing into the seat where she had sat a moment before.
With a feral grin, I directed my palms toward her, and the wind swept her up and pushed her body against the wall behind us.
“Prince!”
She managed to yell the word despite my wind stealing her breath.
Oliver nodded once and stepped between us. I snapped my hands down, cutting off the air before it could do more than sweep back his hair. The queen straightened slowly as Oliver eyed me with disgust.
“Always so impetuous, Celine, that’s your problem. Always ready to rush into some ill-thought plan with no consideration of others. And why would you consider them? When you’re so sure of yourself. So brash. You hurt others with everything you do. I can’t imagine why your kingdom allowed such wild behavior in a princess. I would have expected them to beat some sense and manners into you long ago.”
I had thought I knew this wasn’t really him. Had thought myself armored against the Snow Queen’s poison. But his words beat against me and wormed their way into my heart. I had told Giselle that the words were not his, but the Snow Queen did not know me like this. Her magic mirror was broken. She had not been watching me, living with me for weeks. It was Oliver himself who knew my faults. Who had seen my confidence spill over into dangerous, willful stupidity.
I swayed and fell to my knees. Tears blurred my vision. So this was how Oliver truly saw me, once my beauty
had been stripped away by the magic. I tried to remember the words he had spoken among the trees of Valley View, to hold on to the moment we had shared, but I couldn’t actually remember him saying anything. Other than that I was beautiful. And that I burned with fire. Both true, but neither the foundation for love.
Blinking, I saw vague movement, but only Giselle’s scream gave me the warning to throw myself sideways. My vision cleared as gleaming icicles stabbed through the space where my body had recently been. As the queen stalked toward me, I twisted and sprang back to my feet.
I tried to call fire to my hands, but my insides had gone cold. I almost fell down the stairs as I backed off the dais. The queen continued to stalk toward me, only now she was smiling, her face twisted out of any semblance of beauty. Oliver remained behind, apparently uninterested in further intervention.
“It’s not true, Celine,” said Giselle, her sudden presence warm at my back. She gripped my elbow and dragged me backward away from the advancing queen. “Ollie doesn’t mean any of that. It’s like you said to me. It’s just her poison speaking.”
“But Giselle…” I choked on the words as I remembered the snow leopard, and Valley View, and every stupid thing I’d muttered unthinkingly under my breath. Only the night before, I had scared her with my thoughtless words.
She continued to pull me back, maneuvering us through the gap in the queen’s ice wall.
“I love your confidence,” she said. “And so does Oliver. The true Oliver, anyway. You saved us all from the blizzard, remember? We would be dead if not for you. And you nearly killed yourself doing it. You were unconscious, and Oliver was nearly beside himself. I’ve never seen him like that.”
I tried to cling to her words, to regain some of that confidence she spoke of. The confidence that had always driven me into foolish scrapes.
“Even in my fog,” she continued, still moving us backward, “even when my heart was frozen, I saw something in you. Back in Marin. During the Princess Tourney. The piece of me that still survived recognized that you had the strength to save us. That’s why I invited you to visit.”
Beyond the Four Kingdoms Box Set 1: Three Fairytale Retellings (Four Kingdoms and Beyond Box Sets Book 3) Page 78