by Amber Argyle
Elice sagged a little as she realized her grandfather meant fighting for love. But wasn’t that the same thing? She had to choose. Choose between saving the world or her mother. And in the end Elice could lose both.
Ilyenna’s jaw clenched. “Have you forgotten that Adar lured Elice from the safety of the queendom? As a result, she was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Do you truly think she can choose to go back?”
No. Elice had to convince her to make peace. There was still light in her. Elice just had to make her see it. “You are a quarter Idaran, Mother.”
“Is that the lie the Idarans told you?” Ilyenna scoffed. “The first time Raiders came, they killed or enslaved your grandfather’s entire family. The second time, they took me. They did—” she faltered “—unspeakable things. So the clans rose up against Idara, determined to make sure they could never hurt our people again. That Summer Queen, the woman you call Nelay, wiped them out, to the very last man. Whole generations, gone. No mercy. Gone. Your grandfather lost his only son and many of his grandsons in that war. I lost nephews and old friends. Do not think for a moment that we carry any of their tainted blood.”
Elice met her grandfather’s haunted gaze. “An Idaran didn’t tell me. Storm did.”
“Storm?” Ilyenna said, her gaze flicking between her father and her daughter.
Otec sighed heavily. “Matka—your mother—was half highwoman, half Idaran.”
“She was an Idaran slave,” Ilyenna retorted. “You told me that yourself.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Otec murmured after a pause. The wind picked up, gusting across the balcony in erratic bursts. “I never told you. We never told anyone. It would have meant Matka’s life if anyone had found out the truth. And after she died . . .” Otec paused, his voice hitching. “. . . you already hated the Raiders—everyone did. I didn’t want you hating your mother, too.”
Ilyenna swept the loose hair away from her face. “This can’t be true.”
Feeling battered by the wind, Elice took a step toward her, hand outstretched. “Don’t you see? This war is tearing us apart. Seek peace with Nelay—she will give it to you. Adar and I . . .” Her voice broke. Adar could very well be dead by now. She shook the thought from her head. No, he has to be alive. “Adar and I will marry, and the queendom and the realm will know peace. We can stop the Sundering, and—”
“There’s no such thing as the Sundering,” Ilyenna cried. “Ridiculous stories to lure us into another trap!”
“I’ve seen it!” Elice said.
Her mother turned away. Elice reached for winter and formed an ice dagger in her hand. Gusting harder now, the wind pushed her hair back from her face and blew what looked like swirling columns of fallen leaves. But there were no leaves in the Winter Queendom.
“Let’s go inside. A storm’s brewing.” Otec eyed his daughter as he said this, clearly blaming her wild emotions.
But something wasn’t quite right about this storm. Letting the knife dissolve, Elice stepped to the rail of the balcony as the wind blew one of the leaves toward her. The shape was too curved for a flat leaf. She leaned as far over as she could, caught it in her cupped hands, and brought it to her face. It was not a leaf but a cold fairy, the most common and plain of the fairies, with simple features—angular eyes and a pointed nose, chin, and ears. The fairy wore a misty dress. Her wings warped the light, making the air seem to shift and bend strangely.
But the fairy wasn’t moving. Something was wrong with her. Elice blew on the creature, but that didn’t wake her. Strange. Fairies don’t get sick. Shielding the creature from the wind with her hands, she hurried inside. She settled the fairy on her table.
Otec trailed Elice into the room and sat heavily in the chair. “What’s wrong with her?” He gently prodded the fairy.
“She’s dead,” a hollow voice said from the balcony. “I didn’t notice it before—I thought it was just my anger. Didn’t realize it was death.” Ilyenna stared out over the queendom, her face as hard as the carved statues in Elice’s forest.
“Fairies cannot die unless you kill them,” Otec protested.
Ilyenna turned. Her gaze snapped to her father and then to Elice. Dozens of war fairies streamed toward the Winter Queen. “Hundreds of them died,” Ilyenna said, her face expressionless. “All at once. Dropping from the sky.”
That meant all those blowing leaves were actually dead fairies. “It’s the Sundering, Mother. You have to believe it now. You have to stop this.”
“This is the Summer Queen’s doing,” Lowl growled as she came within range, her lieutenants yipping their agreement.
Elice huffed. “How could she kill fairies in the heart of winter?”
Lowl turned glowing yellow eyes on her, and Elice remembered how the fairy had grinned at her, blood dripping from her fangs when she’d attacked them on the mountain pass. The hair stood up on the nape of Elice’s neck.
“What other explanation is there?” Lowl spat out.
“Mother.” Elice came up beside her, knife in hand. If she couldn’t convince her . . . “I’ve tried to tell you, the Sundering—”
Her mother pulled away. “Winter and summer have always battled! It is the way of the queens.”
Elice shook her head. “Not like this. Squabbles over territory during spring and summer—not pitting your powers against each other. When you fought each other over the ocean, your green light met her red and created white light so intense I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The ground began to tremble and shake.”
“That was hours ago,” Lowl protested. “And the damage never reached the queendom.”
Elice wet her lips. “What if the effect is like a ripple? It takes longer to reach faraway places and when it does, it’s weaker.”
“Ilyenna, I think you should listen to her,” said Elice’s grandfather from his place at the table.
Ilyenna’s gaze seemed uncertain as she looked from Lowl to Elice and back again. A sprig of hope blossomed inside Elice. Then one of the counselors, Ursella, gasped and began to struggle. Ilyenna whirled toward the fairy—one of the original ones who’d chosen her—and held out her hand. The fairy collapsed onto her palm, the fans of frost at her back beginning to wilt. “My queen,” she said in a tinny voice.
“Ursella?” Ilyenna cried. “What is happening?”
“The magic,” Ursella said even as she rolled over, her silver hair fanning across Ilyenna’s palm. “The magic is slipping away.”
Another fairy zipped through the door—it was Tanyis, her wings like broken glass. “The fairies most vulnerable to heat are fading first, my queen,” she reported. “The cold fairies are already dead. The frost fairies are sickening. My ice fairies are weak.”
“Just like how we feel when the Summer Queen is near,” Lowl said, pointing south. “This is her doing. It has to be.”
“No!” Elice cried. “It’s the Sundering!” By the Balance, why couldn’t they see?
Ilyenna’s gaze was fixed to the south. “I do not feel the Summer Queen within our borders, Lowl.”
Elice stormed in front of the general. “You’re a warmongering dog, slavering for hot blood and flesh between your teeth.”
Lowl tipped her head and glared at Elice, then looked at her mother. “I have commanded your armies for forty years, my queen. Have I ever counseled you false?”
“You have yet to win this war,” Elice shot back.
But Ilyenna didn’t appear to be listening to either of them. She was staring at the fairy in her hands. Ursella’s eyes were open but sightless. “She was one of my oldest friends,” Ilyenna mumbled.
“Chriel was one of your oldest friends too,” Elice reminded her. “She tried to warn you this was coming. You didn’t listen.”
Ilyenna lifted haunted eyes to Elice. “Nelay sends her son to my queendom to lure away my daughter, then passes a death sentence on her head, and you expect me to believe some wild story from a rumor of dead legends?”
Elice took a
step toward her. “It’s the truth behind the tales, Mother. The—”
“It is fiction!” her mother roared, slamming a wave of cold into Elice. Ilyenna held up Ursella’s limp body as proof. “This is reality.” Tears fell from Ilyenna’s eyes as she gently set the fairy’s blue corpse on the table. Otec came up beside his daughter to rest a weathered hand on her shoulder.
Elice took first one step toward her mother, then another, an ice knife forming in her hand. She gripped the hilt so hard her fingers were numb. She lifted the knife, staring at the spot between her mother’s shoulder blades. She thought of the world—not just Idara but Svass and the clanlands. But then she remembered what Chriel had always said—“Outshine the darkness.” And Adar had called her a prism, breaking the light into fire and color.
Elice’s hand fell, the knife turning to a dusting of snow that sifted from her fingers. “You won’t do it.”
Her mother turned to her, tears frozen in tracks on her cheeks. “What?”
“You will see the chaos and death and destruction, and you will understand that the Sundering is real. You won’t destroy the world. You can’t. Because there is too much light in you.”
Frowning, Ilyenna stepped onto the balcony and looked back as the wind twisted her dress around her legs. “I will not return, not until this is over. One way or another. Lowl, to me.” Ilyenna stormed out of Elice’s room, followed by the fairies.
Elice stared at the bodies on her table. A cold fairy and a frost fairy—those whose magic was most tied to that of winter.
The Sundering was upon them.
With a feeling of dread, Elice watched the sun slip toward the horizon. Had she made a mistake in letting her mother live? Had she trusted in something that wasn’t there?
“Tell me about my grandmother,” Elice said to her grandfather, trying to remember that two foes could find a way to coexist, even to love each other. “Tell me about the woman who was your enemy.”
“Her mother was a slave from the Highlands,” Otec began, his voice tired and rough. “Her father was her Idaran master. She was taken to the temple as a girl, as soon as they realized she had the Sight. She came to the clanlands to gather information for a book on healing remedies. I took her into the mountains to look for a flower.” He looked at the pendant hanging from his granddaughter’s neck. “The elice blossom.”
He stopped for a moment, his throat working, and then he went on. “It was while I was gone that the Shyle was attacked.”
Elice had never known her grandmother, who had died when Ilyenna was young. “After she betrayed you, you fell in love with her anyway?” Just like Adar had betrayed Elice.
Her grandfather nodded. “Not at first. But she risked everything to help me. And she loved me. After the invasion was over and my family was all gone, she was the only happiness left for me.”
Elice gripped the banister, her fingers blanching white. “I feel that way about Adar.” Beneath her hands, she sensed a vibration running deep through the palace. She looked out over the landscape, at her tinkling and shuddering ice forest.
Her grandfather stepped beside her. “There was a fairy—an owl fairy, white with black striations. Your grandmother was terrified of her. Did you ever meet such a fairy?”
Not wanting to tell him the full truth, Elice shook her head.
He exhaled loudly. “Good. Good.” He headed back to his chair, his shoulders rounded with weariness.
“Why?”
“She said things—terrible things. About the world ending and bringing about a new beginning. Your grandmother and I both made bargains with her. And the price . . .”
The ice castle began to tremble, a vibration that shook through Elice’s bones. She held her breath until it passed. Then she asked, “What price?”
Her grandfather wouldn’t look at her. He went to take a drink of water, only to find it frozen solid. Elice drew away the cold without even thinking. “Grandfather, what price?”
He heaved out a sigh. “I promised to save your grandmother, which I did.”
“And what did Grandmother promise?”
He gently shook the cup, swirling his brown tea. It was already freezing again. “She promised she would give me a daughter. For the fairy’s price, I lost my wife and my daughter.” He threw the cup. Glass and ice shattered on Elice’s fine floor.
The castle vibrated again. Beneath Elice’s feet, the intricate fractals were split nearly in two. If it was this bad here, how much worse would it be closer to the destruction? She turned as a gale slammed into the room, hitting her with such force she had to duck and hold out her hand to shield her face. Thick layers of crystallized snow stirred up, forming dervishes. Beyond the snow, the sea whipped and chopped, the black waves growing higher and higher.
“I never met that fairy,” Elice finally admitted. “But I think Adar did. Her name is Nagale. She’s the one who helped Adar and Rycus learn about the Sundering. She and Chriel led Adar’s ship here with the intention of kidnapping me.”
Otec gasped. “By the Balance, she found you. Your mother banished her—took her ability to shift, clipped her wings, made her swear by the Balance to never have dealings with any in our family again. Yet still Nagale found a way to hurt you.”
Elice turned to face him, blinking back tears. “But Grandfather, if what you say is true, why would she manipulate you and grandmother into having a child? What was the point?”
Before he could answer, the castle shook again, so hard that Elice pitched forward, barely getting her hands in front of her fast enough to break her fall. She landed on the broken bits of her grandfather’s cup. Her palm throbbed, and she felt blood spreading out below her. Bits of ice rained down on her.
She lifted her hands. Winter surged through her, and an icy dome rose over her and her grandfather just as a chunk of the ceiling gave way. It slammed into the ice and gouged out a piece. Elice thickened the ice even as she scooted to where her grandfather had fallen, clutching his upper arm.
“Grandfather?” she cried over the sound of breaking ice. Just as quickly as it had begun, the shaking stopped. Elice yanked a sliver of glass from her palm and then gingerly touched her grandfather. “Your arm?”
Teeth clenched, he shook his head. “My collarbone,” he gasped. “It’s broken.”
Everyone, fairy and human, was gone with her mother. Elice and her grandfather were completely alone in the queendom. The castle quaked, and she prepared herself to strengthen her icy shield, but the shaking subsided once more. “They have to be fighting again—it’s the only explanation.” And if the Balance was so broken that the ripples were this strong here, what were things like in Idara? In the clanlands?
“Stay here,” Elice told her grandfather. Then she pulled a side of the ice dome back into winter and jumped over a jagged piece of ceiling that had shattered her pattern in the floor. She stepped onto her balcony and gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The icy fields beyond the palace were gone, and chunks of her shattered forest now mixed with sea ice. Worst of all, the lower half of the palace was underwater. And the sea was steadily rising.
Calling from the well of power deep within her, Elice channeled the cold into the water, but instead of freezing, the palace’s foundation cracked—a black rift that sped toward her balcony. She screamed and scrambled back.
The castle was built of ice. It would not hold against the sea. “Grandfather, we have to go—have to get up the mountain!”
Shoulder hunched and clutching his arm, he looked at her. “What’s happening?”
Elice grasped his good arm and helped him to his feet. “The lower levels of the palace are underwater. I tried to freeze the sea, but that only made it worse.”
She steered him toward her secret wall, the one that led to the caves. She pushed on the latch, but the pivot had broken, leaving the door leaning crookedly against the wall. “Elice, what are you doing?”
The castle shook again. Groaning in frustration, she slapped her hand against
the secret door she’d spent months working on, drawing the ice through her and back to winter. Everything her hand touched disintegrated, revealing the corridor beyond, the one she’d built into the side of the palace so cleverly that no one had ever noticed it.
“You take after your grandmother,” her grandfather said, and Elice thought she detected a hint of admiration. “Always seeing the details.”
They hurried through the corridor just as another tremor hit, shaking them both so hard that Elice slammed into the wall and barely managed to hold onto her grandfather. Behind them, a huge chunk of ceiling shook loose. It crushed the floor as it fell, leaving a gaping hole that showed the churning black sea below. The floor beneath their feet spider-webbed, and suddenly Elice was falling.
Otec lunged for her, managing to grab her hair and hold on while she scrambled up, her scalp burning. They watched her bedroom crumble into the sea with a crash so deafening it obliterated all other sound. Her grandfather shoved her down the stairs. Elice turned back to see him motioning and shouting at her. Though she couldn’t hear his words over the chaos, she knew he was trying to get her to leave him behind.
That was not going to happen.
She whirled around, then pulled winter through her and laid a slick layer of ice at their feet. They immediately lost their balance and shot downward. Elice could only hope they’d reach the cave before the palace completely crumbled.
Then a huge chunk of the passageway before them fell away. Elice concentrated, forming an ice bridge to cover the gap. They crossed open air and shot back into the tunnel. But it was too late. The tunnel completely collapsed around them. They were falling. Elice took hold of her grandfather’s foot. She formed a pod of ice around them and thickened it even as she watched the sea rise toward them.
They slammed into the water. Elice pitched forward, smashing her face into the ice. The ocean swallowed them into its darkness. She closed her eyes to keep the scream in her throat. Their pod reeled as they shot toward the distant surface, and seconds later they burst back into the light.