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 outdoors, 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 you 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.
Valley View served not the King of Eldon but this so-called Snow Queen. They provided her with food and supplies and kept her existence a secret from the world. And Sterling was not a villager, but a long-time servant of this queen. He carried her commands between her distant Palace of Ice and the village. And any lawbreakers were sent back with him, to serve the Snow Queen in whatever way she saw fit. None of them ever returned to the village.
“What do you think she does with them?” asked Giselle, as if reading my thoughts.
I threw up my hands. “I have no idea. Turn them into giant sculptures of ice to decorate her throne room?”
Giselle paled even further, and I felt instantly guilty.
“No, of course she doesn’t,” I said quickly. “Ignore me. I’m sure she has them doing the usual servant things. Preparing her food, cleaning her rooms, tending her fires.” I considered. “Well, maybe not that last one. Not if she lives in a palace of ice.”
Giselle’s eyes widened. “Surely it’s not really made of ice. Surely it’s just a name…”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point. Would you?”
Giselle’s thoughts seemed to have wandered down a different track. “So do you think this magical object we’ve been chasing even exists?”
I rubbed at my temples, briefly covering my face as I considered her question and my own foolishness.
“Yes,” I said at last. “Something is protecting this village from the weather. And something is blocking my powers. But I don’t suppose it all happened the way Sterling described it. We’ve been able to tell since we arrived that there’s something wrong with this place. With these people. But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with ice. No one seems frozen…”
I swallowed. “I didn’t think it was the same thing as what’s infecting the rest of the kingdom. But clearly it’s all coming from this so-called queen. Which means while the object may work against enchantment, it clearly doesn’t work against this strange ability she must have to destroy people’s hearts and minds. Which means it would never have worked to free the palace anyway. And if I had listened to my instincts warning me about Sterling, maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to do something so stupid…”
Giselle looked away, apparently not willing to absolve me, and I couldn’t blame her. Because it hadn’t been trust in Sterling that had led me astray. It had been my own pride and over-confidence. I had let myself rely too much on my new powers. And then, when they were stripped away, I had been so determined to prove my strength—to prove how useful I could be all on my own without powers or even help—I had behaved not with strength but with recklessness. And someone else had suffered the consequences. I deserved far worse than Giselle’s condemnation.
“So why bring us here at all?” Giselle sounded bitter. “If you’re right, and it’s Oliver he wanted—or rather she wanted, I suppose—why not take us straight to her? We wouldn’t have known he was leading us away from the village.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I can’t know for certain, of course, but I think that was probably his original plan. Only the weather was worse than he expected. We were in a bad way after that blizzard, and he must have decided we needed to rest and resupply.”
Giselle looked at me grimly. “And the blizzard did something else, remember. It exposed your powers. Maybe he thought his queen wouldn’t be so pleased if he showed up at her ice palace with a girl who can lob fireballs in tow. He must have had to improvise. Try to come up with a plan to separate us from Oliver.”
I groaned. “And we played straight into his hands.”
Giselle glared at me.
“Well, I did, at any rate” I corrected quickly. “Me, and Oliver’s stupid nobility.” I thought it over, remembering the way Sterling had disappeared when we first arrived. “What did that elder say? That we hadn’t asked? I think Sterling commanded them to lock that hut and forbid all access to it. On the Snow Queen’s orders, of course. He probably told them not to give us any information on the object, and not to tell us anything about anything unless we specifically asked. Easy enough instructions for everyone to follow, but safe, too, since none of us would ever have thought to ask about a Snow Queen.”
I groaned. “We were too busy asking about the mirror which was likely never here at all.”
How strange that I had been so right to mistrust Sterling even though it now seemed as if he couldn’t be responsible for the thing that had made me doubt him in the first place. Because if his queen wanted Oliver alive, it didn’t make sense for him to have caused the
cave in.
Silence fell between us as we both pondered the most important question. If it was Oliver the Snow Queen had been after all along, then what did she want with him? I had a sinking suspicion it must have something to do with his being the heir to the throne. Perhaps she had grown tired of ruling a distant mountain and a single village. And if she offered him a marriage alliance in exchange for lifting the curse on Eldon, would he agree?
Would he have any choice?
“What do we do now?” asked Giselle, and for once I remembered that she was only fifteen and years younger than me.
I hadn’t actually considered it, but I found I knew the answer all the same.
“We go after him, of course. We get him back, and we melt this ice palace to the ground.”
Giselle met my eyes and actually smiled, her expression ferocious. “Well, what are we waiting for then?”
The elder had been able to tell us only that the Snow Queen’s Ice Palace lay to the north. Or, in other words, up. We didn’t bother questioning anyone else. If no one taken there ever returned, it seemed fruitless to hope any of the villagers would know the way. And I couldn’t imagine they’d tell us even if they did.
At least they didn’t try to stop us leaving.
It took longer than I would have liked for us to prepare, but Giselle had insisted that we both sleep and eat, at least a little, before starting out. Reluctantly I had to admit that she was right. We wouldn’t get far on a sleepless night and empty bellies. And we’d sleep better here in the house—despite the destruction I’d wreaked on it—than we would out in the snow.
And then, of course, there was the matter of our packs. With only the two of us, we had to abandon many of the supplies we’d used on the way up to Valley View. I had never been so conscious of the fact that Sterling and Oliver had carried the heavier packs. So even more time passed while we unpacked and laid everything out, carefully choosing which things we most needed.
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