Page 134 of Frozen Hearts and Death Magic

“I patched his wound. Just the arm. He’s resting now, but he can’t be found.”

Leah wished she could do something to help him, something to help her kingdom. “I’m so sorry, I…”

The woman’s eyes were full of tears. “At least he’s alive. So many died.”

“Did you see what happened?”

She looked down, and her voice got even lower. “I saw Ironhold soldiers. They were yelling that it was the fae, but… Sali got to our quarters and asked us to hide. He says it was Ironhold soldiers who attacked him and his companions. The only reason he escaped was because he pretended he was dead, then slipped out and found us.”

It must have been hard to get across so many soldiers in that confusion, unless… “You used another passage to get here, then.”

She nodded.

It could be Leah’s way out. “Where does it lead?”

Valeria shook her head. “The servants quarters. They’re raiding it. Looking for traitors.” She rolled her eyes and exhaled in anger.

“Anyone who knows who attacked the castle.”

The young woman nodded again.

Leah sighed. “Do you know anything about my mother or father? If they’re alive?”

“Oh.” Valeria looked down, then, after a deep breath, faced Leah. “You didn’t know? They rang the bells and all. I’m so sorry. Your father, he…”

At first the words made no sense, strange words that couldn’t be strung together to form a sentence—odd, incomprehensible gibberish—but when the meaning hit Leah, her heart knotted. She felt as if there was no longer any ground beneath her, and covered her face with her hands. Gone? Her father was gone?

Why? Why? Did her marriage into Ironhold cause this? Her stupidity? It couldn’t be what she’d done to Cassius, there wouldn’t have been time for that. Now she wished she was still in the Ironhold castle, but that she could kill everyone there. And then she realized she should have known her father was gone, she should have known the moment she’d seen him in her dreams, fading away.

“Do you know if my mother survived?”

The woman shook her head and bit her lip. “Sali was guarding the royal quarters, so… But I don’t know. We’ve been here for a while.”

Leah recalled that the Ironhold guards had been looking for her mother. It meant she had escaped—at least so far. But her father… She wondered if Kasim had survived, but in her heart, Leah knew he was also gone.

“You’re the queen now,” Valeria said. “But I heard you were going to arrive tomorrow or today. How did you—”

“I sneaked in early. They can’t know I’m here.”

“You can’t do anything?” Her eyes were pleading, as if looking up to Leah to solve her problems.

That was what a queen should do, wasn’t it? And yet here she was: hiding, scared, unsure what to do. She just shook her head, her heart filled with shame. It felt shameful to be weak, not to have a solution.

Leah took a deep breath. She had to think, and at least offer some advice. “I think they want to blame this attack on the fae. They will kill anyone who says otherwise. If you pretend you were just hiding because you were scared, you might get away with it, unless they’re killing everyone who was here, but I don’t think it’s the case. I’m pretty sure many people and guards from Frostlake might well believe it was the Fae and that Ironhold is just helping. But your brother, he’ll need to hide. Do you have supplies here?”

The woman shook her head.

Leah swallowed. “Then you’ll have to hide him. You can leave him in the passage. You’ll have to come out and seem glad that the fae have been defeated. Pretend you were just afraid and that you saw nothing. That’s the only way you can survive.”

The woman took in a sharp breath and held the boy even tighter.

“Do this in the morning,” Leah said, “when more people from Frostlake will be around. They can’t go around killing servants and pretend they came to protect our kingdom.” It made sense, and made her heart at ease. “Something else: they’re more powerful than they seem. Some of them might be ironbringers, and they have some strange magic. An uprising would be dangerous right now. I’ll try to leave the kingdom and get help. I’ll be back, but I don’t know when.”

“But how are you going to escape?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

In reality, Leah had no idea. All she felt was cold and emptiness. All she knew was that she had a strange power that could allow her to escape that castle, but could also kill everyone in it, and that she had no idea how to control it.

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