by Amber Argyle
Elice folded her hands in her lap, and in her embarrassment, winter opened up inside her. She reached for the comforting touch, and almost without realizing what she was doing, she drew a sliver toward her. The ice was malleable in her hands, like clay. She pressed down with her thumbs, flattening it. Her fingers pinched off the ends and formed three curving petals and three with sepals. Then she curled the petals inward to create a flower bud that fit nicely on her palm and looked almost like a flame.
She held it out to him. “I was named after the elice blossom.” Adar stared at the flower, his mouth a thin line. “I know it’s rather simple, but I always wanted you to have a fire with you, even if it won’t actually keep you warm.”
She stared at the floor, trying to force down the hurt that he didn’t seem to want her gifts. She went to her clothes from the day before and started dressing.
“Thank you, Elly, for these gifts,” she heard him say. “I cannot tell you how perfect they are. But I don’t have anything to give you in return.”
So that’s why he hadn’t wanted her gifts. She let out a silent sigh of relief. “My grandfather often gives me stories as gifts.”
“I’ve already given you plenty of those,” Adar said.
Now fully dressed, she approached the bed. His gaze went to the pendant at her throat. “I haven’t seen that before. It’s interesting.”
“My grandfather made it a long time ago for my grandmother.”
Adar folded one hand behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “You know, someday our children will talk about the ice knife their mother gave their father to show how madly in love with him she really was.”
Elice threw her boot at him and missed. But she wasn’t really angry or even all that embarrassed. She was growing used to his teasing.
He sighed. “I want to give you more than just stories, Elice. I would give you your freedom, if only you would come with me.”
She held out her arms. “Am I not free now?”
“Not to become what you were born to be. You’re too busy satisfying everyone else’s needs.”
She turned away from him, staring out at the clouds on the horizon. They were nacreous clouds, like streams of molten copper, silver, and rose-gold. “Come with me.”
Adar pushed himself out of the bed. “Where are we going?”
“Outside. My mother and her fairies will be exhausted after the storm last night. Which means they won’t be out and about for hours yet.”
They went down the stairs and hurried to the cave. Elice pulled the mounds of fine snow into herself and sent it to winter.
“Does it drop on someone’s head when you do that, or simply disappear entirely?” Adar asked.
She frowned. “I don’t really know where the snow goes.”
He looked around the cave. “And how did you get lucky enough to find this place, with an opening that points straight toward the winter palace?”
She reached out and picked up a piece of volcanic rock. She filled it with ice, then thawed it over and over. On about the fifth time, it crumbled in her hands.
“Huh,” was all Adar said.
Brushing off her hands, Elice approached Picca, who was chirping for attention. Elice entered the pen and eased back the bandages. She almost felt sad to see the dark scars. “You should be free.” She choked a little and had to press the back of her hand to her mouth. Picca’s purpose in life couldn’t be to wait for Elice to bring her food and touch her. The seal deserved to push through the waves, hunt her own food, and someday have pups of her own. “I can’t wait to watch you swim.”
Adar stepped up to the pen. “Why save something you might only hunt later? Something that will only hurt you when you have to let it go?”
“Because she needed me. For the time I’ve had her, she has brought me joy. And now I can set her free.”
Elice disintegrated the rest of the cage. Then she went to the table, took the scraps of meat, and lured the seal after her. Picca was far too big for her to carry. “This way I can balance out some of the lives I have to take in order for us to survive.”
They stepped into the brilliant sunshine. Adar gaped at drifts taller than he was. Elice simply sucked in the snow to reveal the trees hidden beneath it. She studied them, occasionally reaching out to fix a broken branch or add a leaf that had blown off.
“Fire and burning,” he muttered. “When your mother loses her temper, she really loses her temper.”
“You should have seen her after Father died,” Elice said quietly. “The whole palace was buried under drifts of snow, and the roof was groaning under the weight. I’m not sure we would have survived at all if Chriel hadn’t gotten through to my mother that she was about to crush her own father and daughter.”
“Maybe I should meet this Chriel and she could convince the queen to let me go,” Adar said evenly.
A pang of worry shot through Elice for her friend. “That isn’t likely. She’s fallen out of favor with my mother and has been locked up in the cellar. My mother promised she’d let Chriel go though, as long as she apologizes at the hearing.”
“Apologize for what?” Adar almost sounded nervous.
Elice turned to him. “At the celebration, she told stories about the Sundering. Mother thinks it’s all just stories to undermine her. She’s worried her fairies will turn on her like the summer fairies turned on their queen.”
“Those aren’t just stories, Elice. I’ve seen it. I’ve known people who have died from it.”
“You don’t know the Summer Queen like I do,” Elice pointed out. He snorted and she shot him a glare. “She’s a master manipulator, Adar. This is exactly the kind of thing Nelay would do. And my mother wouldn’t lie to me.”
He was speechless. Elice looked up at him, not bothering to hide the tears in her eyes, and said, “You don’t understand. If what you say is true, it’s my fault.”
“What is?”
“The Sundering.”
His brows rose. “That’s ridiculous.” He reached out to her, but she moved away, leaving him staring after her. “Elly,” he called after her.
“What do you want from me, Adar?” she replied, not even turning her head.
He hurried to catch up with her. “Elice, I—” Trying very hard not to cry, she watched him shove his hands in his armpits, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Then he bumped her with his good shoulder and teased, “I heard they had to take all the furnishings from the Summer Queen’s room because she kept lighting things on fire when she was angry.”
Elice forced a laugh, relieved he’d let it drop. Glad he was trying to make her smile. “Where do you hear all these stories?”
He grinned. “I told you, my father is a historian. He’s fascinated by stories of the fairies and their queens.”
Elice glanced at the sky and realized she only had a few more hours until Chriel’s hearing. Then her friend would be released. Elice would never be able to hide Adar from Chriel—the rabbit fairy was far too perceptive. And far too loyal to her queen.
Elice shifted her gaze to Adar. “You’ll need to go soon. Once Chriel is released, I won’t be able to hide you for long. Not from her.”
“Going to miss me, are you?” His tone was light, but his eyes were sad.
Picca was lagging, so Elice tossed her a bit more meat to keep her interested. The seal chewed happily, not seeming bothered at all by the snow coating the meat. “I don’t want you to go,” Elice murmured.
She half expected Adar to ask her to come with him again, but he didn’t. He only grasped her hand and said, “You know I can’t stay here.”
All the breath left Elice in a rush. “Actually, I think you could. I overheard my grandfather and my mother last night—I’m to have a companion. Why couldn’t that companion be you?”
Before he could respond, they passed through the last of the trees and rounded the rise. Elice bent down and wrapped her arms around Picca. She couldn’t stop the tears now. “I’m going to miss you.”
Picca bumped Elice’s cheek with her nose. Sniffing, Elice stood and cleared a path all the way down the water, and then started working on the beach. Picca saw the ocean in the distance and didn’t need any more persuading. She hunched along, her fat jiggling. But she paused at the edge of the water to look back.
“Go on,” Elice whispered. Picca slipped into the slushy water, free in a way Elice never would be.
Adar studied her face and then wrapped his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder. “You would want for nothing—rooms, clothing, jewels. My mother would make you impervious to the cold. You would be safe from the battles that gave you all those scars. We could swim in the ocean and watch the whales. And in the winter, you could see the auroras and we could read books by candlelight. I know you’d be leaving—”
“Elice . . .”
She could hear the “no” in the way he said her name, and she couldn’t bear for him to reject her so quickly. “Don’t answer now. Just think about it.”
“Elice, thinking about it won’t change my answer.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Oh.” She moved out from under his arm.
He sighed. “Even if your mother would let me stay, I couldn’t have a life without purpose, without meaning.”
Elice clenched her jaw. “Is that what you think of me?”
He tugged on his ridiculous hat. “You make all these incredible things—the palace, the ice forest—but no one ever sees them. No one ever appreciates them. You don’t touch anyone else’s lives. You don’t influence anyone for the better.” Shaking his head, he looked away. “I couldn’t live a life where I didn’t make a difference—where no one even knew I existed.”
His words hurt more than if he’d slapped her. Her eyes fluttered closed, sending twin tears plunging down her cheeks. “So my life isn’t important?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Adar said softly. “What do you think? What do you want out of your life? Because if this is it” —he gestured to the palace— “then stay.”
Elice ached for the life he spoke of—a life where she mattered. But what of her grandfather and mother? “I love my family too much to leave them.”
“Yes, and what about them? Do they love you enough to let you go? Like you let Picca go?”
“If I left the queendom, I would never be safe.” Elice stared at the dark ocean and wondered what it felt like to be cold. If it was bitter, dark, and empty. If so, then she’d never known anything else. “I know you want me to come with you, but I can’t.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better if you stay.”
“What?” She was surprised at her dismay over Adar’s words.
His gaze was locked on the horizon, his expression conflicted. “You wouldn’t be safe. And . . . I couldn’t bear for you to be hurt.”
It pained her that he’d been so easy to convince. Which was ridiculous. “I have to go,” she told him. “Mother is pardoning Chriel this morning, and I have to be there.”
They turned without a word and slipped through a tunnel of mounded snow, only the muted sky and the palace in the distance visible. “You can’t come to my rooms anymore, Adar. Chriel would see you for sure.”
After a pause, he said, “I’m running low on wood.”
They stepped into the cave, where Elice’s vision turned the shadows blue after the brilliance of before. “I’ll try to get you more,” she replied.
Inside the cavern, she started toward the secret door, but Adar took hold of her hand and reached out with his other palm to cup her face. She closed her eyes. He was going to leave. Soon. The realization hit her with such force she felt dizzy.
“Elly, there’s something I need to tell you,” he whispered.
She shook her head and hurried toward the door. “I can’t go and you can’t stay. There isn’t anything more to say.”
Situated in a high-back chair between her mother and grandfather, Elice watched the thousands of fairies, a smattering of animal and magic bonded to form creatures that could have been human, had there been any humanity left to them. Elice realized how desperately she needed Chriel’s steadying presence, her gentle demeanor.
Two raptor fairies came into the room in their bird forms, carrying an iron cage between them. Inside, Chriel stood with an ageless stillness. Elice’s heart lurched. She’d missed her friend. Missed learning the secrets of the world in their library while the candles flickered and the aurora danced beyond the open windows.
The raptors set the cage on the long table before them without so much as a lurch before shifting into fairies with sharp beaks and talons. They backed away without a sound.
The Winter Queen studied the rabbit fairy. “Perhaps I should kill you, Chriel.” She looked about the room, a warning in her gaze. “It would certainly strike fear into the hearts of my enemies.”
Elice stiffened. Was her mother about to change her mind?
Ilyenna let out a long breath. “But really, how could they possibly fear me more than they already do? Those who rise against me believe I am unbendable and unforgiving, and it is true that the magic in my veins does not lend itself to mercy.”
Her voice dropped. “But my father and daughter have tempered my need for justice. Chriel, you have faithfully served me and my family these long years. And even a Winter Queen can be capable of mercy. Beg my forgiveness, declare your allegiance, and I will spare you.”
Ilyenna pulled out a key, inserted it in the cage door, and swung it open. Chriel stepped out, her feet bare and dirty. Her face was haggard, her body limp. Being underground had left her exhausted and weak. Elice longed to comfort her friend, but she dared not show any sympathy for the fairy her mother was trying to make an example of.
“I thank you for your mercy, my queen,” Chriel said.
Elice breathed a sigh of relief. When this was over, things could go back to the way they were. Adar’s chaotic presence would be gone, and Elice would resume her studies and her life. So why did she feel so lost?
Chriel took a deep breath. “I thank you, but I cannot partake of it.”
Many things happened at once: Elice gasped, dozens of the fairies in the room shifted to their animal forms, and Grandfather shot a worried look at Elice.
Ilyenna rose to her feet, leaned forward, and placed her hand on the table, ice spreading from her fingertips. “What did you say?”
Chriel lifted her head. “This age will end in blood and fire. That end comes, close enough I can taste the ash in my mouth. Your reign is nearly over, my queen. Our allegiance must shift to another if we are to survive.”
The table beneath Ilyenna’s hands cracked in half, the two pieces wedging against one another at a harsh angle. Elice jumped back. Chriel fluttered her wings, which were a little out of sync, so she wobbled in the air. Ilyenna lifted her hand, a ball of icy light appearing above her palm.
“No!” Elice cried, lunging at her mother. But the Winter Queen threw out her opposite hand and formed a wall of ice between them, bisecting the dais. Elice clawed at the slick ice.
“Chriel,” Ilyenna said, her voice dead, “for your treachery, I revoke your ability to transfer, and I grant you the one true death.”
“No!” Elice screamed, banging on the ice and trying to disintegrate it. But her mother kept her hand outstretched, reforming the ice faster than Elice could destroy it.
Ilyenna threw the ball of silvery light at Chriel. For one brief moment, the rabbit fairy was like liquid silver, beautiful and glorious. She stiffened, her regal wings flapping at her back while her gaze shifted to Elice. “Outshine the darkness,” Chriel told her.
And then the fairy shattered into a thousand shards of ice.
Something pierced Elice’s cheek, hard and sharp and impossibly cold. No one spoke. No one moved. Even the fairies seemed terrified. Elice stared at the shattered ice that used to be Chriel. “You—you murdered her,” Elice said in disbelief.
Lowl flew forward, her gray tail t
witching. “A traitor, no doubt recruited by the treacherous Queen of Summer. We must end this.”
Ilyenna nodded slowly. “It has to be the Summer Queen’s doing.”
Behind the thick wall of wavering ice, Elice glared her mother. “I hate you.” She hadn’t meant to say the words. They were just there.
Her mother turned to regard her with a cool expression. “I’ll get you a better gift than Chriel’s life. A few dozen books. Boxes of herbs.”
“I don’t want more books!” Elice screamed.
Her mother waved a dismissive hand. “Take her out, Father.”
Elice’s grandfather took hold of her shoulder—she hadn’t even realized he’d come to stand behind her—but Elice shrugged him off and lowered her head. She opened herself completely to winter. It raged inside her as it had never raged before. The castle walls trembled, bits of ice breaking off and falling down with a sound like breaking glass. She sucked in the barrier of ice that separated her from her mother. Faster and faster.
Her mother turned to her with wide eyes. “And what are you going to do when you reach me, Elice?”
Her grandfather laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Elly.”
Elice lowered her hand and whirled around. Feeling the need to destroy something, she blasted the icy doors and walked through the shards with her head high. She heard her grandfather hobbling after her as fast as he could. At the tinkling of ice, she whirled to see the door reforming under her mother’s magic. Elice glared at the queen as she slowly disappeared behind the thick ice. With a thud, a huge bar dropped across the doors.
Elice raised her fingers to her cheek and removed the sliver that had once been a part of Chriel. She felt blood bubble up and trickle down her face before it froze on her chin.
Her grandfather stood very still, both hands braced on his cane. “I’m sorry, Elly.”
Elice backed away from him. Winter raged inside her, so close to the surface that she was afraid she would really hurt her grandfather if he touched her. “Do you still believe in her goodness?” she asked him.
His shoulders drooped. “Sometimes winter takes over, and she’s not your mother anymore. She would have hurt you had you tried to interfere.”