Page 142 of A Throne of Blood and Ice

The queen’s pale brow furrows, and she tilts her head to the side.

The image of a feline surveying its dinner comes to mind.

“Mm,” she says by way of answer, but then she sets her hands in her lap and continues. “I am interested in striking a bargain with you, Blaise.”

“I’m afraid I’ve been warned against such since I was a youth.” My response is cool, though I can’t deny my curiosity has been piqued.

When the queen first summoned me here, I was sure it was to kill me, to take yet another thing away from Nox, but now I’m not so sure.

Whatever the queen wants, it can’t be anything good. But if she’s willing to strike a bargain, she seems to be under the impression that she has something I want.

The thought almost makes me laugh.

I don’t even remember what it feels like to want.

To crave something other than the all-consuming need for blood.

There is nothing else.

“How generous of you,” I say.

I watch the corners of the queen’s lips twitch as she fights off a sneer. It’s an expression I’m all too familiar with, though the queen is better at mastering it than most.

“There is nothing for you here, my dear,” she says, and though it’s not the same at all, I feel a kinship with Nox, the way he speaks of her touching him as if he’s hers. It’s in the way she speaks to me as if there’s an intimacy between us—one I haven’t offered. One she’s simply presumed.

If I were still human, I might cringe.

But I am not, so instead I yawn.

Well, I might have done that as a human as well.

Abra tenses, and I glean a glimmer of satisfaction from that.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, unable to help from getting myself into trouble even when the consequences are potentially eternal, apparently. “You seem to be under the impression that I have Nox.”

It’s a foolish thing to say, to egg her on about our relationship, but the tidbit of satisfaction I feel at her annoyance is like opium to my emotion-starved heart, and I can’t seem to get enough.

The queen is silent for a long while, and there’s a part of me that’s sure she’ll withdraw her offer, that she’ll have me beheaded or staked after all for my bit of insolence. Instead, she perches on the edge of her throne and wraps her arms around her torso.

The gesture is uncertain and vulnerable and so very, very human, and for a moment the queen is no longer an ancient force to be reckoned with.

She is young and unsure and very much afraid.

“It is my understanding that you and I share something in common, my dear,” she says, and her words scrape against my hollow chest.

I trace the icy floor with the tip of my boot and do my best to appear disinterested. Like my heart isn’t thudding like a pick against the bitter layer of ice that’s caked my chest ever since I awoke into this nightmare of a life.

“And what do you believe that is?” The words are scornful, but my tone is more earnest than I intend for it to be.

“We both know the agony of losing a child.”

My heart stops beating. The air I breathe chills my chest, my lungs.

I don’t want to think about that. Because somewhere, deep down, I’m glad for the numbness that has settled over my soul, the dampness that waters down any emotion that might make it past the barriers of my intense cravings.

My baby. Where is my baby?

Something close to hurt threatens to puncture the finest of holes in my heart. Is this Nox’s way of retaliating against me for betraying him? For keeping from him my intentions to die? Did he share with the queen my darkest pain as a means to punish me?

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