Page 82 of A Frozen Pyre
“Do you know the opposite of love?” Zita asked.
Ophir blinked. Her pink lips parted, baffled. The early-winter wind rustled her hair, stirring the loose leaves across the courtyard before she attempted an answer. “Hate?”
Zita made an appreciative sound. “Mmm, people think so, yes. But alas, hate and love are two sides of the same coin. They’re both passion, possession, and obsession. Do me the honor of writing this down, dear. Return to your room, pen my wisdom, and carry my words into the ages.”
Ophir did nothing to hide her puzzlement. “And what wisdom is that?”
“Indifference,” Zita said, “is love’s true opposite. As I look at you now, I’m wondering if you meant what you said. You called a dragon, and the world heard your anger. You burned a bridge, and we watched it go up in flames. But my, what a speech, Princess Ophir. You looked at your father and said something so exquisite that I had to taste it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days straight. Did you mean it?”
Ophir looked around as if hoping someone else might jump in to her defense.
“Will you salt the earth, Princess?”
“You’re asking what I feel toward my father.”
The wind bit her ears and chilled her nose. Her eyes watered against the cold, but she did not look away. She watched the cogs within the princess’s mind turn like the mechanisms of a clock. The final bits of metal interlocked. Ophir’s shoulders relaxed. Her face softened into cool resolution.
Ophir held her gaze as she said, “Good plans aren’t born of hate. True change is rarely made from brash action. Kingdoms don’t fall from spiteful princesses holding a grudge. You asked me to do something, and that’s why you wish to attend the wedding.”
Her small smile was both genuine and endlessly sad. “And tell me, dear, what would you do?”
“I can call another dragon, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Zita chafed her hands against her arms. She gestured for Ophir to follow her and led them farther from the castle. Words such as these didn’t need prying eyes or listening ears. The movement might warm their blood, and the closer they drew to the river, the less chance they’d have of being overheard.
“Your spirit is in the right place, dear, but I didn’t ask what youcoulddo. I’m perfectly aware that you manifest. I was in the room, if you’ll recall. Tell me, whatwouldyou do?”
They kept pace as they reached the bank of the river. Their feet crunched over the frosted grass as they left the path and created tracks in the bits of white that clung to the beige ground. Ophir’s response had the slow, calm resonance of someone sharing impersonal facts as she said, “I’m apathetic, but not in the way one might assume. I don’t care what happens to Farehold. I don’t care if it falls to ruin. I don’t care if Aubade is laid to rubble and Eero’s and Darya’s names are lost to the wind. I don’t care if a fae never sits on the southern throne again.”
“Well,” Zita said, voice level, “that is a lot of not caring.”
They continued their walk, their conversation accompanied by the steady gurgle of water against the riverbank. Zita looked across the water to where a couple caught her eye. The woman had the large wings of a crow suited to the body of a fae. She was too far away to discern if the man was human or not, but he would never know flight. They stopped to watch Ophir and Zita, too, the pale face of the southwestern shores and the deep skin of the desert so different from the citizens of Raascot. He must be human, then, to marvel at faces unlike his own. Only Raascot’s humans would have had lifespans short enough to not remember a time when they’d occupied the southern kingdom.
She looked away from the couple as the princess spoke again.
“What I do want…” Ophir’s hand escaped her furs as she reached for Zita. Her fingers settled lightly on the thickvelvet sleeve of Zita’s cloak. “Is an end to their reign. I want them gone. Not out of spite. Not because I’m mad that I was wronged. It’s his ignorance that has forfeited his claim to the throne. My father is too blind to realize he’s every bit as bad as his father and grandfather before him. He was confronted, he was offered a chance, and he chose to exploit me, to betray Ceneth, to deny your claim to your lands, and if he’s allowed to remain in the castle, that’s his legacy.”
Zita clasped Ophir’s arm in return. She allowed centuries of emotion to come to the surface. Pride and pain and desperate hope tore through her as she understood what it was she saw in Ophir’s gaze. The glinting starbursts of yellows and golds that encircled her large, beautiful eyes were no crowns at all. They were the monarchy that she’d been sent by the goddess to shatter.
“It is,” Zita said. “But it doesn’t have to be yours.”
“And so you want to come to my wedding and watch me raise an army of hellhounds?” The flicker of sarcasm was half-jest, half-sincere.
“Perhaps,” Zita said, returning the mild amusement. “Or perhaps I have a far better idea. Pray tell, my dear, have tales of my second power reached the gentle ears of Aubade?”
***
Zita cupped her hands, forcing warm breath between them as she reentered the castle. The princess had stayed behind with only the churning river and snow-dipped mountains to keep her company. A servant bowed his head politely as he opened the door for her. She turned away from the path to her royal suite and hugged the innermost castle wall. She followed the corridor as it wound up, up, up to a distant tower. She raised a brow at the pile of empty birdcages that had been abandoned throughout the hall, scattered like the skeletal remains of slain enemies on a battlefield. There were no attendants to see her in as she pulled open the first set of doors and saw a harp as tall as she was, but no harpist to be found.
Zita pushed open the door to the room just as Suley whipped around to see her enter.
“Zita,” Suley said, fighting to keep her voice level. “I heard you from the hall.”
“Oh?” Zita asked. She took one step inside and stopped. She scanned the room carefully, but there was only Suley. “It must be so much easier to hear now that you’ve done away with your birds. Will the musician return?”
“You know how much easier it is for me to sleep with music,” Suley said.
“Mmm.” Zita nodded. She took a single step to the side, keeping the door within arm’s reach. The chambers appeared picked over, emptier somehow. No one in her party had brought much from the palace as they’d traveled north through the door, but there was no evidence of Suley’s gowns, her scarves, or the furs she’d been allotted in the armoire that sat ajar. The room was curiously absent from the chains and baubles Suley loved so well.
