Page 157 of A Lord of Snow and Greed

I shook my head because a healer was the last thing I needed. No, I required someone who might know how to restrain my magic. Somehow, though my throat felt coated in frost, I croaked. “Get Vale.”

She whirled and ran to the door, slipping on the ice on the floor before catching herself and flinging the door open. “Help! The princess needs help! Get Prince Vale!”

A nearby door opened.

“What’s wrong with her?” Anna’s voice, still groggy from sleep, hit my ear and a moment later, she appeared in the doorway. She’d put me in the room between hers and Clemencia’s, and my oldest friend hadn’t leftmy side until . . . Well, I supposed until I fell asleep because I did not remember when she left.

“Her magic is appearing!” Clemencia shouted. “Help! It’s being violent with my lady!”

“What!” Anna shrieked, and though I still felt like a glacier was crushing me, I could still make out Anna’s distinct footfalls, the way her clubbed foot dragged ever so slightly as she ran to the bed.

“Neve.” Anna’s voice trembled at my name. “Are you hurting?”

I raised my hand, showing her how blue my skin had turned before a flurry of snow burst all around me. I yelped, and Anna reared back.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Anna murmured. Dimly, I heard Clemencia, still yelling for help, but as a fresh wave of cold rushed through me, the room fell away.

I stood in a forest, before a tree with purple leaves. A Drassil tree.

Vaguely, I knew I wasn’t really in the forest. If I concentrated hard enough, which I could only do in fleeting seconds, I still felt the bed beneath me, heard an echo of someone talking. Anna? Clemencia?

But the tree looked so real. As though if I reached out to touch it, I’d feel the bark rough against my fingertips.

Was I dying? Was my magic killing me and this was some hallucination to make it less painful? Because though I still felt like I was freezing, it was working.

Perhaps this led to the afterlife. If so, it wasn’t so bad. Sort of peaceful.

For a moment, it stayed that way. But when the tree’s leavesdanced and a faint light emanated from it, I sensed that was about to change.

“Hello?” I asked, feeling foolish but also justified. The Drassils had spoken to me before. Why not guide me into the afterlife too?

Isolde,that familiar female voice, the same one that spoke when I’d saved Anna.You must go back.

I pushed aside the fact that now the tree, or maybe the Faetia, was acknowledging my bloodline. “Back where?”

To Winter’s Realm. To those you love.

I sucked in a breath. So I really was dying?

“How?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to follow through. Here it was pleasant and peaceful and in that room in Riis Tower it was . . . Well, anything but peaceful.

You decide to take your place in the world. You claim your life.

“I never wanted the life I have.”

It is yours all the same. You go back. You claim your name, then decide if you want the rest.

“And what if I don’t? What if I want to leave and go south with Anna? What if I want to forget about my mistakes?”

You cannot.

I swallowed. “Why? Is this the price I must pay?”

The voice didn’t answer, and for a moment, I feared our conversation had finished until they spoke again.

The price is unpaid. Until you claim yourself, it will remain so.

“I’ll hurt people.”

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