Page 2 of Moonmarked

“You can’t escape a prophecy, My Queen. You cannot trick or manipulate it. You cannot stop it,” Vair reminded her, as he had a million times before, as that was simply the truth.

The queen smiled and the reflection on her mirror almost startled her. She looked as spent as she felt. Her eyes were nearly empty, even with all the bright blue color in them.

“I don’t plan to try to escape or trick anything, Vair. You think me a fool,” she said.

“Never,” the lynx said, then jumped on his back legs and rested those large front paws on the windowsill next to the queen. Like that, the top of his strange ears reached her chest, and the queen looked at him again. Though magics like this didn’t have gender, and he spoke inhervoice, she had always felt Vair to be a male, and she could never quite think of him asher.

“I will not attempt to stop the prophecy, Vair,” the queen told him. “I merely plan to survive it.”

They both turned to the windows again, to the dark sky and the moon casting a soft silver glow on the land of Verenthia. It had been a long time since the ice queen had appreciated its beauty.

“How?” the lynx finally asked.

The queen looked down at her mirror, touching the diamonds around the frame, the glass that reflected her appearance, with her fingertips. “This world is full of liars and cheaters, a mess of timelines marked by the royals who’ve ruled over the people. Fairly and unfairly. With and without right.”

It was not the answer he was looking for, so Vair asked, “Will your new plan involve the Midnight King,?”

He’d never much liked that man, thatmonsterwearing the face of a fae.

“Yes…and no,” the queen said. “He’s thought me a fool,weak,since the day he came to me with his proposition, Vair.”

“You’re neither,” said the lynx.

The queen nodded. “And I will outlive him, one way or the other.”

“How?” Vair asked again.

“I will speak my name backward into this mirror. That’s how,” she said, and the lynx jumped off the wall, moved back.

“My Queen, you shouldn’t,” he said, and he had rarely looked as panicked as he did now. “That’s ancient magic.Darkmagic. It’s the worst sin in all the lands.”

The queen smiled again, though her heart skipped abeat. Vair was right, of course, but… “What’s one more royal sin in these courts, when every throne stands on a long line of graves already?”

“The spell is unstable. It could backfire,” he said.

“It won’t.” The queen was sure of that. She’d been planning this for a while now, and the book hidden underneath her silver worktable on the other side of the room would guarantee that she wouldn’t fail.

The Ice fae had always been friendly with the sorcerers. Which is why they knew that fae magic wasnotthe most powerful kind in Verenthia, like most believed. It had more intensity than others, true—but sorcery was wilder. It didn’t rely on birthright or bloodline. It bent the rules of the world because it was born from breaking them.

“It’s sorcerer magic, My Queen.”

“It’s stillmagic,” she insisted, and she turned her back on the windows to go to her silver desk, to the book with thick grey covers she hid in an illusion only her frostfire could access.

“It’s not the same and you know it,” Vair insisted, and she did. “Sorcery corrupts. Consumes. It leaves marks nothing else can touch, and once it has you, itneverlets go.”

The queen sat behind her desk and reached for the book inside her illusion. Her frostfire hummed—such powerful magic at the tips of her fingers, and yet on the face of a prophecy, it meant very little.

At least, it did for others.Notfor the Ice Queen, though. Not any longer.

She was done being afraid. She was done cowering back and accepting orders from a man who was a quarter of a ruler she was. She was done watching her court come apart piece by piece.

She was done living like this. Now, she was ready to die.

“I count on it,” the queen told Vair as she went through the pages of the grimoire. “It is my birthright to sit on my throne and rule my kingdom, and onlyIwill decide until when, not a prophecy. I am ready, Vair.”

The snow-white lynx raised his front paws onto the edge of the table to look at the pages of the book, too.

“As you wish, My Queen,” he said as he, too, read the details of the spell. “As long as you understand that nothing is guaranteed. That your frostfire might not survive. That you might perish for good.”

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