“I’m stealing the object. And then we’re going to make a run for it.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What?!? We’ve never even seen the object. Are you mad?”
I laughed, but the slightly wild sound didn’t seem to reassure her. “Perhaps.”
She continued to glare at me, but her disapproval did nothing to erode my determination. “We know where the object is, that’s enough.”
“Yes, it’s in a forbidden hut. Remember? And you don’t have your powers anymore.”
I frowned at the mention of my fire. “I don’t need powers, Giselle. I survived without them for eighteen years. Even in the midst of an attempted coup and a rebellion.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“And, anyway, once we’ve got it, you can take it ahead. To free my powers.”
Giselle narrowed her eyes. “If we make it that far.” She gripped my arm. “This is crazy, Celine. At least wait until Oliver gets back. Let us all talk this over. What if you get in there and there’s more than one object inside? How will you know which one it is? And what if they catch you? You remember what the elder said about obeying their laws. Do we even know the penalty for disobeying them? Oliver and I won’t be able to protect you.”
I brushed her concerns aside along with her hand. “I’ll know. And I won’t get caught. You’ll see. Just be ready to run.”
Before she could stop me, I thrust open the door and pushed out into the night. Excitement filled me, tingling in every part of my body. She would see. And so would Oliver. So would anyone who had ever doubted me. I was Celine of Lanover, and I didn’t need a godmother’s gift to keep the people I loved safe.
I soon slowed my stride, however, remembering the need to stay out of sight. Thankfully my goal stood nowhere near the tavern or the baths, the two buildings that seemed to attract nighttime traffic. I slipped from shadow to shadow, staying away from lighted windows or the occasional villager making their way home. I should have waited longer, but I couldn’t risk Oliver returning and trying to restrain me.
When I reached the building, I realized I also should have checked Sterling’s house for tools of some sort. I tried the door, just in case, but of course it remained locked. So now I stood in the dark with empty hands, staring at a locked door.
My eyes traveled to my useless hands and then down to my feet. After a moment of consideration, I shrugged. It seemed I only had one choice.
Planting one foot firmly, I pulled the other up, glad to be wearing pants instead of skirts, and smashed my heel against the door, just below the latch. It didn’t move, but I thought I heard a faint splintering.
A grin stretched across my face as I drove my foot again and again against the same spot. For a moment I forgot everything else as I vented all my anger and frustration on the wooden panels. Finally, with a louder splinter and a crash, the latch gave way, and the door swung inward.
I stood for a moment, panting, satisfaction surging through me. But slowly it faded, a flaring pain in my ankle replacing the surge of energy. I shouldn’t have used my previously injured leg. And now an unwelcome unease accompanied the physical pain.
How much noise had that made? I glanced around, but no one emerged from the shadows to tackle me. I looked again at the broken door. There would be no hiding this. If I couldn’t identify the object, or if it wasn’t even here…
But I shook off the thought. Such doubts would do no good now. And why else would there be a windowless hut, forbidden to all? It would be here.
I stepped inside. My first thought was that I should have brought a lantern. Without windows, the hut remained in almost complete blackness. Something I should have foreseen.
But you didn’t stop to think, did you? said a voice in my mind that I squashed just as I had the earlier thoughts. I was here now.
I pushed the door as wide as it would go, letting in the faint gleam of moonlight. A small table stood close enough to catch some illumination, and I could just make out the outline of a candle. My groping fingers found the nearby tinder box and after much fumbling, I managed to light it. I was far from expert in the task, and I was still complaining to myself when I turned to survey the room.
Ice instantly washed over me. The inside of the hut was as simple as the outside, with the exception of the carved door I had just partially destroyed. But it was no display room. In fact, the inside looked exactly like the storage shed I had first imagined it to be.
Several wheelbarrows, one missing a wheel, leaned haphazardly against one another in one corner. And at least half of the single room was taken up with various pieces of broken furniture all piled on top of each other.
Godmothers were known for enchanting ordinary objects, but I had never known one to enchant a broken chair. And no one would store an essential magical object in such a place. Several of the mismatched piles looked like they might collapse at any point, crushing anything that happened to be beneath them.
An unpleasant tingling rushed down from my scalp to my toes and back up again. If it wasn’t kept here, where was it? And what had I done? This had all been for naught.
A drop of hot wax dripped onto my hand, and I yelped and jumped backward, only just managing to keep my grip on the candle. My gaze flew from the small flame to the wide-open door. I tried to remember what this building faced onto. Was it angled so that anyone would see the light, so out of place in this particular spot?
I needed to get out of here before someone discovered what I had done. I blew out the candle and let it fall to the floor. Running, I burst from the door, almost tripping down the few stairs in my haste.
As my eyes sought out a path in the unfamiliar darkness, they fell on the shape I most feared. A human shape. Not on the village side of the hut, but on the other side. Someone lurked on the very edges of the village, barely visible in the gloom of the night.
My feet took off running before my brain could catch up. I fled back toward Sterling’s house, not bothering to keep to the shadows because the sound I most dreaded had fallen on my ears. A shout from the shrouded figure. And then the pounding of multiple feet.
I should have run out of the valley entirely, but I was pointed the wrong way, my pursuers cutting me off from the narrow passage and escape. Without thought I continued on my current path. Only as I neared Sterling’s house, my breath now coming in sharp pants, did it occur to me that I couldn’t lead them here. I had to keep running. Find somewhere to hide until I could circle back and be free of this wretched place. Once I hit the snow line, none of them would be able to hurt me. Or so I hoped.
But even as I made the desperate plan, I neared the house, almost brushing against its wall, and the door flung open, blocking my forward momentum. Oliver leaned out, gazing beyond me, clearly looking for the source of the commotion. But it took less than a second for him to see me, my face no doubt blanched with fear.
It seemed to take even less time for him to take in the whole scene, understanding rushing across his face and fear filling his eyes. I tried to duck around the door to keep fleeing, but he grabbed my arm, pulling me inside and slamming the door behind us.
He still wore his boots and jacket, so he had either just returned or had been on his way out to find me. If only he had found me in time, a miserable voice inside whispered. If only he had stopped me.
But the fear in his eyes held no room for recriminations. Instead he scrabbled at the clasps of my jacket, pulling them apart while I stood there stupidly, trying to understand what was going on. As soon as they were undone, he ripped the garment from me, throwing it into a heap in front of the fire.
It hit the floor just as the door handle turned, and he thrust me back toward a chair, his hands rough and his eyes on the doorway. As I hit the seat hard, understanding rushed through me. I leaped back to my feet, but the damage had already been done.
Several men had pushed their way into the room, and the sight that confronted them was two girls sitting by the fire and one man, dressed for the out
doors, standing panting by the door.
“No!” I cried, even as three of them moved forward to grab Oliver’s arms. He didn’t resist, whether for our sake or simply because he was outnumbered, I didn’t know. But I could see several more men milling outside, talking in angry voices. We had no chance against them if it came to a fight. Not without my fire.
Someone else stepped inside just behind the men, and my brain finally caught up with me. The figure I had seen watching the hut was a familiar one. The same who now entered the house—Sterling.
His eyes traveled from Oliver, held securely between the villagers, and me. Relief rushed through me. He had been there. He had seen me. The truth would now be exposed.
But his eyes skated back over me, landing once again on Oliver. And the expression on his face was one of satisfaction.
“My apologies for bringing a lawbreaker into your community,” he said to Oliver’s captors.
I rushed forward, my mind scrambling to make sense of it all, and wrapped my hands around one of Oliver’s arms. The man on that side pushed me back, and Oliver turned on him, his eyes furious and his stance strong despite the restraining hands.
“Don’t touch her!”
“She’ll be safe enough,” said the elder who had warned us only that morning. “It’s not she who has broken our laws.” His eyes held no mercy.
I opened my mouth to correct him, if Sterling would not, but Giselle kicked me so hard in the shin that I nearly fell, already off balance. I wobbled against the younger girl, and only two of the men even spared a glance for the overwrought women as they hauled Oliver away.
I got a final glimpse of him, looking back at us, and the relief in his eyes made me crumple to the floor for the second time that day. He had not hesitated to sacrifice himself for me. And I—I had destroyed everything.
After several deep, shuddering breaths, I scrambled back to my feet.
“We…we should go after them.”
Giselle, her face white, and her hand shaking, glanced from me to the door. “Do you know where they’ll take him? Did you see a prison in your explorations?” She bit her lip and wrung her hands. “We might make things worse.”
I looked around, trying to make my mind work rather than circling endlessly back to Oliver’s final expression.
“Why did you stop me? You should have let me tell them the truth!”
“And have you both hauled off? We have a better chance of freeing him this way. Especially if they send him out of the valley.”
I wanted to storm off into the night. To demand to know where Oliver had been taken. To demand to see him. But I hesitated. What if Giselle was right? What if I made it worse? I didn’t know their customs or laws, I had been too busy in my useless quest for information on the object to ask. And we were only in this predicament because I had already rushed foolishly into something today…
“It was Sterling,” I whispered.
“What?” Giselle looked at me in confusion, clearly having the same difficulty in ordering her thoughts that I was having.
“He was out there in the night, watching the hut. I think he was waiting for one of us to try…” I took a deep breath. “I think the whole thing was a set up.”
“Did you…did you find it? Was it there?”
I bit my lip. “It was just a storage shed. Like it looked from the outside. But one that had been locked and forbidden. Why would anyone forbid access to a storage shed? Unless they wanted to lure someone into breaking the law.”
Giselle swallowed. “You mean Sterling wanted you to break the law?”
I shook my head. “Not me. You saw what just happened. Sterling knew I was the one to break into that shed, but he said nothing. It was Oliver he wanted. He must have thought he was the most likely to do something rash.” Tears filled my eyes. “He underestimated me. And then he got lucky that Oliver is too noble for his own good.”
Giselle gaped at me. “But what does Sterling want with Oliver?”
The two of us stared at each other wordlessly. Because neither of us had an answer to that question.
Chapter 24
We didn’t sleep. Instead we took turns pacing and glancing anxiously at the door, until we both ended up huddled together on the floor in front of the fire.
We had agreed that at dawn we would venture out and find the elders. Demand to know where Oliver was being kept and what his punishment was to be. But the hours dragged endlessly, and with every one that passed, the heavy weight of my stupidity and arrogance grew. This was all my fault.
Dawn brought no lessening of my guilt. But at least we could finally act. Silently we picked ourselves up and left the house.
Even though they refused to acknowledge his authority, I could only hope the villagers would hesitate to deal too harshly with the crown prince of the kingdom in which they sheltered. Except, of course, that these people had already shown they didn’t think like other people. I bit my lip.
As we left the house, I saw our full packs lined up next to the door. The sight drove a fresh shot of pain through me. For all her disapproval, Giselle had obeyed my orders. She had been ready to flee with the object.
As the sun rose higher, we made our way to the central square. I don’t know if I had expected to find the full council of elders in attendance, but I didn’t expect to find it empty, with no sign that anything at all had happened.
Blinking, I took in the entire village. Nothing I could see looked out of place. People moved about their daily business, as they had done the morning before. None even looked at us with any special curiosity.
When a woman passed close by, I reached out and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop. She looked at my fingers with distaste, but I didn’t let go.
“Where’s Prince Oliver? Where are they holding him?”
This time she looked at me in surprise, and the emotion seemed genuine. “Didn’t you hear? He broke our laws.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, barely restraining my impatience. “But where are they holding him?”
Her brows lowered, and she looked between me and Giselle. “Holding him? What do you mean?”
I held back the urge to shake her with difficulty. “Prison, jail, the stocks…whatever it is you use for those who break the law.”
“Oh, we don’t hold them,” she said.
Her words surprised me enough that my grip slackened, and she managed to pull herself free. I turned frightened eyes on Giselle as the woman marched off, her gait indignant.
“They can’t have…surely they can’t have…already…” I couldn’t seem to get the words to come. Giselle looked equally stricken.
When the elder from the day before appeared, as if from nowhere, I rounded on him so fiercely I was actually baring my teeth. He looked unintimidated, his gaze hooded and impossible to read.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Where is Oliver?”
“He broke our laws,” the man said, calmly.
“Yes, we know,” snapped Giselle, her patience clearly wearing as thin as mine. “But where is he?”
He looked between us. “He is gone.”
I fell back a step, my heart stuttering. Surely he couldn’t mean…
“You dared kill the crown prince of Eldon for breaking down a door?” asked Giselle, and I had never heard that tone in her voice before.
He shook his head once, and I managed to breathe again.
“No, of course not. We do not kill. But neither do we keep lawbreakers among us. Those who transgress must leave immediately.”
I tried to comprehend his words. If Oliver had merely been banished, I felt certain he would have found a way to sneak back in by now to find and reassure us.
“I don’t understand. Where has he been taken?”
The man’s eyes strayed to Giselle, although I was the one who had spoken. “We told you that we do not fall under your sovereignty. But you never asked who it is that we serve.”
A horrible, creeping cold swept over me. “Who do yo
u serve?”
His eyes bored into mine. “She calls herself the Snow Queen.”
Part III
The Snow Queen
Chapter 25
I screamed and threw a chair so hard against the wall that one of the legs broke off, bouncing across the floor. Giselle flinched, but she didn’t scold me.
“That traitor! That lying piece of manipulative scum. I’ll—” But I broke off, unable to think of a suitable punishment, and settled for throwing a plate against the wall instead. When it shattered, something in me shattered with it, and I sank onto one of the remaining chairs.
Sterling’s treachery ran even deeper than we had feared.
“I always knew there was something off about him.”
“Yes, but we couldn’t possibly have guessed this,” said Giselle. I could see the horror in her eyes, but she held it in much better than me.
“So you’ve really never heard of this Snow Queen?” I shook my head. The whole thing seemed too incredible to believe. “I seem to remember someone mentioning her but only as a nursery story.”
“Well…” Giselle hesitated, and I pounced on it.
“So you have heard of her!”
“Not in any real way. Not as a real person. But you’re right.” She chewed on her lip. “I have vague memories of hearing the servants talk about her as a threat to keep children in line. You know. Behave or the Snow Queen will freeze your heart. Eat your vegetables or the Snow Queen will freeze you where you stand.” She shrugged. “I always thought they meant it as a sort of humanizing of winter itself.”
I stood back up and paced across the small floor.
She shrugged apologetically. “I certainly never heard anyone say, Hey, you know that woman who lives high in the mountains with the power to control snow and ice? The one with a whole village to serve her? You know—the Snow Queen.”
I slumped back down, as unable to keep pacing as I was to keep sitting. I tried to take stock of what we had learned.
A Crown of Snow and Ice: A Retelling of The Snow Queen (Beyond the Four Kingdoms Book 3) Page 19