Page 63 of A Lord of Snow and Greed

He slid onto the other side of the bed, and, for a moment, I marveled at how comfortable I felt sharing this space with him. Roar and I had slept in different rooms,and I’d wanted to keep it that way. Not that that was an option here, but it didn’t need to be. Vale might have secrets, but for what mattered, I trusted him as I’d trusted few in my life. Deep down in my soul, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me or betray me. I just knew it.

“Given your past, you might not know about the Ice Scepter, but?—”

I gasped. “I do, though! Roar told me about it!”

During my time at court, the Hallow of Winter’s Realm drifted from my mind, but now the conversation in that tavern in Traliska came rushing back. “It was lost during the rebellion, and Roar told me it has affected the magic of the realm since. Possibly that it was responsible for the blight affecting the health of the fae too.”

“He told you the truth,” Vale said. “No one knows where it is. My family doesn’t speak of it, and I’m sure the great houses have deduced that we don’t have it. Perhaps the lesser houses and commonfae suspect that it’s missing too, though I doubt that the latter think of the troubles of the noble houses often.”

I let out a dry laugh. “No, I don’t think they would care if a noble house was missing a bauble.Butcommoners are perceptive.”

In my experience, slaves were even more perceptive, I wanted to add but didn’t. Vale was compassionate, but he might never fully understand how I grew up. How all the slaves I’d known did. I suspected many commonborn fae in this realm, especially the poorest among them, lived similarly in some regards—on a knife’s edge of survival, day to day. And if the Scepter was key to their survival,someone would eventually question why the king hadn’t brought it out in so long. Why he wasn’t using it now.

“Many fae have been born sick or deformed, and Winter’s Realm is growing more harsh.” I paused. “If the temperature continues to plunge and the storms worsen, we’ll die, won’t we?”

“Even the most stouthearted fae of Winter’s Realm won’t be able to live here. We’d have to flee south to the Autumn Court or die. But if we can find the Ice Scepter, things could change. That’s why my father called the Courting Festival.”

A festival to suss out the Ice Scepter? “I don’t follow.”

“I’ll explain.”

And he did. Vale told me of his most recent battles with the orc tribes in the midlands, how he’d found an elder orc, and she’d given him information on the Ice Scepter. The orc believed a noble lord of the land had taken it.

The king believed they might still have it, hence why he’d called every noble family to Avaldenn under the guise of an ancient practice, a Courting Festival.

“What if the houses had no one to marry off?” I asked. “Or what if the Heads of House, the most likely to possess the Hallow, didn’t come?”

“The Heads of House were required to attend, and as for family members of marriageable age, almost all of them had at least one person fitting that criterion,” Vale said. “We made sure of it. The few who didn’t were jarls, old and not very well-off ones, at that. Their houses were crumbling, and they weren’t at all powerful. Why take amagical object with the magic to change the realm if you have no hope of controlling it?”

“Does your father? Can he control it?”

He was Falk by blood, and it was said that the Falk line could wield it best.

“He should be able to do so, but he’s never had the opportunity. By the time he took Frostveil, the Scepter was missing.”

My hand pressed into the bed, and my fingers fiddled with the blanket, teasing the fur between them as I listened.

“Father believed that if the lord or lady in possession of the Ice Scepter was invited, they were likely to bring it with them—if only to take it before our Drassil tree.”

I blinked. “What does that mean?”

“We have a Drassil tree at the palace, a twin to the Heart Drassil in the Tower of the Living and the Dead. It’s called the Crown Tree. It’s said they were planted at the same time and are intertwined even more deeply than the usual Drassil connection. Every Falk who took the crown has stood before the Crown Tree and asked the Faetia to bless them with the ability to wield the magic of this realm.”

Roar hadn’t mentioned that. Surprise, surprise.

“What does that do?”

“If the Faetia accepts, it binds the ruler to the land in a way no one else can claim. They become the undisputed king or queen.”

“And no one questioned that your father didn’t do that?”

“Some did.” Vale looked away. “They disappeared.”

My stomach tightened. No, the king had killed them.

“He is the blood of Prince Calder Falk, though.” Vale turned his eyes on me. “The king’s own brother. No one disputes that, and so most accepted his rule. In time, no one spoke of it again.”

No one was foolish enough to want to lose their heads for speaking up about something that didn’t affect them.

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