Page 5 of Fated to the Frost King

The Frost King’s eyes didn’t leave mine, even as he waved his hand in signal to his guard.

“The room is dismissed,” the guard announced.

What did he want with me that he would hesitate in front of the audience who had just watched him execute two of their own? I swallowed down another wave of panic, but still held my ground, hardly registering the rush of bodies all but trampling each other to leave through the narrow walkway.

When there was a small break in the mass exodus, I took a careful step into the gap, making to leave like I didn’t know perfectly well that his dismissal hadn’t applied to me.

A cracking sound echoed through the room as a wall of ice appeared directly in my path. I skidded to a halt just short of slamming into it. The arrogant ass had only wanted me to approach him for the sake of his own ego.

Surprised whispers echoed off the walls, the other females parting around me with all the caution one might treat a curse.

Their steps were more frazzled now, their heels loudly clack, clack, clacking against the marble floors as they rushed to freedom, and away from potentially invasive walls of doom.

Of course, when I stepped around my wall to try to follow them again, another sheet of ice rose up from the floor, then another, as if he were taunting me.

“The king has demanded your presence,” a guard intoned unnecessarily, his dark eyes peering down at me from over the ice.

I took a slow, steadying breath, letting indignation chase away the vestiges of my panic, willing myself not to lose control. That would be a mistake, even now, with so little left to lose.

I cleared my throat. “If the king wishes to be my executioner, he is welcome to approach me to that…end.”

Welcomewas a stretch, but it wasn’t as though I could stop him.

There was no one in the kingdom whose power could rival that of the king, and I had none at all.

Even in death, there was no escaping him. The Frostgrave Battlefield stood to this day. Corpses of both Seelie and Unseelie served as glacial sentries at the border between the Winter Court and the Wilds, entombed in ice made of pure mana that refused to thaw.

I had never gone to see the frosted graves of my cousins and aunts and uncles, but the images haunted me all the same.

Was it poetic that I would meet the same fate? To become an icy monument for a war I didn’t get to choose?

When I still didn’t move, the king scowled.

“Check again, Visionary,” he seethed. “She lacks both the wit and basic common sense her position requires.”

I blinked, turning from the wall of ice to face him, certain I had somehow misheard.

“What?” I hated that the single confused syllable only gave weight to his assessment, but he couldn’t be implying what I thought he was.

The Shard Mother wasn’t that cruel, was she? Hadn’t she already ruined enough of my life?

But unless the King’s Visionary was now portending his maids, I couldn't imagine what other position he meant…even ifit was ridiculous because,no, I was not his bride. I couldn’t be for so, so many reasons.

My gaze sliced over to the seer in question. If she saw the treason of the first two, she had to know what I was.Didn’t she?

Or were there limits to what she couldSee? Regardless, her expression didn’t waver.

“My visions are never wrong, Your Majesty.” There was just the slightest hint of mocking in the title, an undertone to their interaction that I didn’t understand.

My heartbeat picked up once more, indifferent to my efforts to calm it.

This wasn’t salvation so much as a stay of execution. How long would it take him to discover what I was? To realize he was shackling himself to his enemy?

One wolf growled and stalked closer, while the guard closed in on my other side. The sound of claws and boots clicking on the marble floor ricocheted around the nearly empty room and through my skull.

I desperately tried to think of something, anything to get myself out of this, but there was nothing I could do.

When the guard reached for me, I backed away too quickly, my heel catching on a chunk of ice.

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