Page 77 of The Frost Queen's Blade

As he turned to her, he smiled, his face lighting up. There was a soft disarmament in him that had not been present in the Frost Citadel. “Well, well,” he said, pushing off from the wall. “If it isn’t my mother’s new favoredconfidante. What did she tell you? Embarrassing tales of my wayward youth?”

“No,” Elma said, “though now I’m tempted to go back and ask for some.”

Rune made a face. “Please, at least wait until I’m dead or something. The things I got up to…”

“I’m sure they’re not nearly as bad as you think,” Elma said.

They stood for a moment in awkward silence, as if without something to argue about, without blood dripping down their fingers, they were strangers. Elma wanted to be near him. She wanted to devour him, to be devoured. Yet here they stood, worlds apart.

“Do you—”

“I was—”

They spoke at the same time, their words colliding and tangling in the air between them. Elma’s cheeks burned. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right,” said Rune, studying her intently. “I’ll show you to your room. You must not have slept well last night.”

“Yes,” Elma said. “I mean, no.”

When she took Rune’s arm, she felt his heat as if he were on fire. Her nerves seemed to buzz with his proximity. As they walked, she shot sideways glances at him, noticing the lift of his chin, the sway of his sword at his hip.

“What?” he asked, obviously noting the way she couldn’t stop looking at him.

“It’s just…” Elma said, swallowing. It would sound ridiculous, the truth. Saccharine and nonsensical. But in two days, she would go to her uncle, and there was no telling whether she might come back from that alive. “I feel as if I’m seeing you for the first time,” she said at last. “As if your armor’s come off.”

“Well,” he said, “you’re a weapon. I had to keep my guard up in case you tried to pierce me through the heart. The only difference now is that I no longer fear such an attack. You could puncture me full of holes, Your Majesty, and I’d only beg for more.”

Thirty-Three

In the dreamlike city of Slödava, Rothen seemed as far away as a childhood memory. Elma understood that she teetered on the brink of war, and yet all she felt in her first day as a guest of Slödava, was an inexplicable peace. Her advisors no longer lingered in shadows or cast her dark glances across the dinner table. The heavy stone of the Frost Citadel no longer pressed in upon her from all sides. And her duties as queen, while they lay heavy on her shoulders, seemed to have temporarily lightened.

She was an honored guest here and was treated as such. The first day passed with relative ease. After breakfast, Rune took her on a brief tour of the palace, rambling on about his family’s history as they went. Elma found it fascinating, her gaze locking on paintings hung from the walls, on intricate tapestries. This was a wholly new Slödava, a city so unlike the one she’d been brought up to understand.

It galled her, knowing that her own father had seen these halls. He had seen Slödava as it truly was. But he’d kept it from her, as he’d kept everything else.

“Don’t you have any siblings?” Elmaasked as she and Rune made their way out into a frosted courtyard. He had shown her paintings of his parents, his cousins, and aunts and uncles.

“No,” said Rune, kicking at a tuft of snow. “I’m technically my mother’s heir, but without a daughter to sit on the throne, the Belgard line would die with me.”

“Belgard,” Elma repeated, her breath steaming in the frigid air. “Your family name?”

“Quite.”

“I had no idea,” Elma said, her new refrain.

Rune regarded her softly. “There’s no reason to be ashamed. We like to keep our secrets, us Slödavans. Your father never actually knew the royal name, or if he did, he was saving that knowledge for some later purpose. He was granted my mother’s name before he tried to kill her, when we believed that peace was on the table. That was all.”

Elma looked away. She was so full of the desire to undo her father’s wrongs, to create a new legacy for the Volta name. But the image of her own army, flying hers and Godwin’s banners, burned in her mind.

“My men,” she said, eager to turn the subject away from her inadequacies, “have you seen them today?”

“They’ve been given the freedom to come and go as they please, on the condition of pledging loyalty to you, of course. I’ve no idea where they are. Could be drunk in some tavern, for all I know.”

“Loyalty?” Elma repeated. “I’m surprised. I led them into a death trap.”

“You did,” Rune said, a hint of sarcasm glimmering in his eyes, “but what queen hasn’t led her men to certain danger?”

“You say it as if it’s inevitable.”

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