Page 131 of Cursed Crowns

There came another knock at the door. It was Inga. “The king is waiting for you down at the pond.”

“I have no interest in ice skating,” said Wren.

Inga hesitated. “It’s about your grandmother.”

Wren was on her feet in a heartbeat.

Alarik Felsing was standing alone at the edge of the pond, with his hands tucked behind his back, waiting for Wren. His wolves, Luna and Nova, paced the frost-laden grass, watching Wren as she marched through it. She kept her fists clenched, the blizzard of her emotions at bay. For now.

“This’d better be important,” she called out.

Alarik raised his brows. “Everything I do is important.”

“Don’t,” said Wren raggedly. “I’m not in the mood.”

“For kissing?”

“For talking to you. To anyone.”

His face changed, the joviality seeping from his voice. “I gathered.” He stood aside, revealing the sled he had been blocking. The one Wren had been too busy staring at his bruises to notice. She saw it now, and it took her breath away. Upon it lay her grandmother’s body. Her face was pale but peaceful. There was no blood in her white hair, no dirt matted to her cheeks. Someone had cleaned her up.

Wren’s eyes burned as she stumbled toward the sled. “But the mountain... the rocks... I don’t understand.”

“My soldiers excavated the catacombs this afternoon.”

“But why? There was nothing down there...”

Nothing but Banba.

Alarik was silent.

She looked at him. “Alarik, why?”

He frowned, examining the cuff of his sleeve. Wren understood, then. Alarik wasn’t going to tell her that he did it for her, that he had been moved by sympathy. It was an emotion the king of Gevra was not supposed to feel. “You may decide what you wish to do with her,” he said instead.

Wren reached for Banba’s hand, shuddering at the coldness of her touch. Her skin was waxen, and even in death, her mouth was set into a hard line.

She doesn’t have to be dead,whispered a voice in Wren’s head. The one that came from that dark and primal place. Whispering through a forbidden doorway she had already opened.

Wren’s fingertips began to tingle. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine her grandmother alive once more. She couldtry, at the very least. She could try to bring her back. But there was so much fear insideher, it threatened to choke her. She knew Banba wouldn’t want it. Banba wouldhateit.

And if it did work, who knew what version of her would even come back?

Wren’s frown deepened as she wavered.

But still... just to hold her grandmother one last time. To hug her. To tell her how sorry she was...

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Alarik.

Wren could feel him watching her. “Would you stop me?”

A long beat. “No,” he said at last. “But it won’t be the same. You know that.”

She turned back to him. “You have Ansel.”

“Not as he was.”

“But would you give him up?” said Wren, but she knew the answer already. It was knitted into Alarik’s grimace. He would rather have the mind-addled version of his little brother than none at all.

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