Page 81 of A Frozen Pyre
Suley looked at her hands only to realize she’d bunched the fabric of her dress tightly in each fist. She continued to look at her rings, each crease in her skirt, the way her fingers forced pockets of the material into irregular shapes and sizes between her tightly clenched palms.
“Is it the cuff?” Zita asked.
Suley didn’t insult her queen by asking for clarification. She forced herself to relax her hands, smoothing the skirt of her dress over her thighs. She watched as the wrinkles of soft fabric melted into perfect, seamless lines. “Yes,” she said.
Her queen remained perfectly poised as she asked, “Whoin the castle came to your aid?”
Suley lifted her eyes slowly. She debated wisdom and folly, truth and deceit. Honesty would mean every gritty detail, every dark secret, every evasion, and precisely how she’d come to learn that Dwyn would be capable of creating such a device, when truthfully, she’d told her queen only the broadest, most poignant strokes prior to this moment. There was no honor in lying, nor did she think the Sulgrave siren had earned a moment of loyalty from anyone. No promises had been made, and no oaths would be broken.
She sucked in a long, slow breath, and then she told her queen everything.
Twenty-Eight
Zita ran a finger along the brown remnants of what had surelybeen a magnificent flower in its time. Leaves and blossoms fell at will in the temperate south, a place that knew no seasons. Trees shed the yellows, reds, and withered pieces that no longer served them in favor of fresh, bright sprigs. A bush would blossom in shades of pinks or purples beside the deeply green foliage of a plant that had shed its flowers months prior. The plants listened to the soil, to the water, to the wind, rather than a chill in the air or the threat of snow.
Nothing was the same in Raascot.
She’d enjoyed her strolls in the garden, despite the layers of frost and naked foliage. She appreciated the unencumbered view of jagged, snowcapped peaks. Though she loved her palace, the baking heat, the tall palms, the vibrant red dunes, the rainbow flutter of parrots, the diamond-studded nights, and the aquamarine of cloudless daytime throughout Tarkhany, there was a peerless beauty to the lavender mountains that surrounded Gwydir. She’d ventured outside once per day to lose herself in the misty mountains, in the inky, churning river that surrounded the castle, in the blue-black stones so unlike the creams and custards that made up her city.
The unpleasant cawing of a crow drew her attention. A second dark bird joined it in the bare branches, then a third. She shivered against her fur, pulling it closer as her hand dropped from the flower. Her skin had heated the remnants of hoarfrost that clung to its dried, long-dead petals. Though it had been centuries, she remembered the blossoms wilting and dying along the coast. The changing leaves along the shore had signaled to her family that it was time to leave the summer castle overlooking the western sea and return to their winter home.
Seasons were a distant memory now.
Before she could stop herself, she saw the happy faces of children playing on the beach. Her husband scooped them into his arms, kicking up seafoam as he chased them. In the vision, she clapped her hands, smiling and laughing as he hoisted one over his shoulder and caught the other around the waist. His faeling children were fast, but even a human could catch them when they were small. He grinned at her from where he stood, pants cuffed above his calves yet still soaked to the britches with sea spray.
Her sons shrieked with the high, unbridled joy known only by happy families who hadn’t experienced loss, or betrayal, or pain.
She closed her eyes against the memory. Six hundred years had not been long enough. She doubted that she’d feel any different after six hundred more.
“Queen Zita?”
Zita straightened. She cleared her throat, realizing emotion had caught in it like a bit of dry bread. She inhaled the chilly air, allowing it to burn her lungs as she found the serene smile that had been her companion for so long. Her lips were already turned up with gentle amusement by the time she turned to see the golden eyes of Farehold’s only princess.
“I was wondering when you might come to see me, dear. You’ve been back for days.”
Ophir tucked her hands beneath a lush gray-and-white fur. Someone had told her it had belonged to a coyote, but Zita couldn’t recall the exotic northern creatures from her tomes.
Finally, the princess said, “I wasn’t sure what to say. When Ceneth told me that you were willing to claim the vageth was from Tarkhany…” Her words drifted off.
“Vageth? That’s your hound, then?”
Ophir bit her lip. “He’s called Sedit.”
Zita’s gaze shifted away from the princess, over the young woman’s shoulders and toward the castle beyond. It was rare to catch the princess without a friend or guard. Someone was always loitering nearby.
Zita set her jaw as she asked coolly, “And your unseen companion? Will he be joining us on this stroll?”
Before Ophir could respond, Zita knew the answer. She saw the wound on Ophir’s face as clear as a written word. It was the look she’d seen in the mirror in the years following her husband’s death. It was the pain that had plagued her when her half-fae sons and their wives had passed without heirs, leaving her alone once more. It was the injury in Tempus’s eyes when she’d told him she’d never love him. No, Tyr was not there. Whatever had happened between them, he was no longer beside her.
“I see” was all Zita said.
Ophir took a tentative step closer as she asked, “Ceneth said you’d like to be present for the wedding?”
“I would,” Zita said.
“May I ask why?”
Zita lifted her eyebrows at that. She studied Ophir more intently this time. Beyond the gold-brown hair, several shades darker than that of the late sister whose portrait haunted Ceneth’s halls, past the spray of sun-kissed freckles, deeper than the slopes and curves and ethereal beauty so boring and typical to the fae, she searched for something more. The coronas encircling Ophir’s eyes shone with an emotion asbright as the flame the princess so famously summoned.
