Page 33 of The Frost Queen's Blade

The knife was in her hand before she realized she’d reached for it, and in half a breath, she was pressing it to Rune’s throat. A rage pulsated in her chest, an uncaged thing.

“How dare you speak of my family,” she growled, and she watched with satisfaction as a thin line of blood unfurled along the assassin’s neck. “I, more than anyone, understand my father’s thirst for pain and cruelty. You think I’m so sheltered, so ignorant that I never once sat at King Rafe’s feet as he chattered gleefully of all the men he’d slaughtered? That I never watched him at the Death Games, laughing uproariously whenever someone’s guts spilled on the snow? That I never saw him kill?”

Rune chuckled, a strangled sound. The line of red down his neck thickened. “Is that all?”

“Compared to you,” Elma said, “my father was a gentle and forgiving man.”

“How lucky you are to believe in such fairytales.”

That was enough. Elma’s frustration, her grief at the loss of her father and the ongoing loss of Mekya, her claustrophobia in the dark stone prison that rose up around her andthreatened to choke the life from her at every moment… she couldn’t contain herself. She ached so desperately for release, for a deep breath of clear air.

But all she had was Rune.

She twisted the knife, just slightly, her breaths shaking and shallow with rage. Another thick drop of red pearled at the point of her blade and ran down the assassin’s neck.

Slowly, defiantly, he lifted his chin so that his muscle flexed against her blade. The trickle of blood had reached the collar of his jerkin. Soon, it would pool at the dip of his collarbone. Elma wondered if he felt pain the same way she did, whether his breaths were harsh and fast because of the pain or something else entirely.

Rune smiled, slow like honey. “Are you having fun, Your Majesty?” he purred. “I wonder how many other women at court grow excited at the sight of blood. Your pulse is thrumming like a snow rabbit’s. You’rehungry.”

Elma refused to remove the blade, refused to let him get under her skin. But the sight of him like this, backed against the statue, neck laid bare to her… she ached. Shedidhunger. And he only watched her with steady blue eyes as if daring her to try it.

“Open your collar,” she said.

The assassin’s blue eyes widened just slightly. But instead of laughing, or refusing, or calling her as mad as she felt, he reached up, ever so slowly. And with deft fingers, he undid the silver clasp at the top of his leather collar. Then the second one, and the third.

His jerkin fell open to reveal the curve of his tan neck and the soft white linen of his undershirt. His blood was still flowing, though the wound was small.

“Your undershirt,” she said.

Rune opened his mouth as if to speak, then thoughtbetter of it. Perhaps he saw the same animal rage in her that she had seen in her father and knew to keep quiet lest she snap.Always a moment away from snapping, she thought distantly.A moment away from becoming my father.

Yet even as she warred with herself in an attempt to quiet her emotions, Rune began to painstakingly unlace his undershirt until his entire neck and the delicate bones that framed it were open to view. Gooseflesh dotted his skin. His breaths were quick and shallow.

“You’ll want to go a little deeper,” he said, “to quench your thirst.”

Unwanted heat coiled in Elma’s belly. With a slow exhale, she pressed the blade further into the assassin’s flesh, just enough to send another thick droplet cascading down to join the rest. And as she watched, the blood caressed his collarbone and at last came to rest, pooling into the center divot.

“When they said the Volta thirst for blood,” Rune breathed, “they weren’t lying.”

Elma leaned forward, still holding the knife to his throat. She was entranced by it, the contrast of red against his skin, the way he submitted to it, allowed it. His own fingers laying himself bare to her.

She wanted to close her eyes and lick the thick red from his skin, taste the metallic salt of it. She imagined him fighting back, drawing a steel edge delicately across her own bare flesh. She wondered if it might feel like the caress of a lover. Hatred, helplessness, and an insidious lust warred for dominance in her chest.

And somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Elma felt vividlyalive.

All at once the world snapped into focus. Elma saw herself in that moment, knife to the throat of her own assassin,his shirt undone, both of them breathing hard. The heat in her belly turned to ice.

Elma stepped back. Dropped the knife. Nausea rose up to replace her hungry rage. She glanced around, horrified that someone might have been watching, might haveseen… seen what? A queen punishing her lackey for his impertinence?

No, thought Elma.A woman becoming a monster.

“All done?” Rune asked, already lacing up his shirt. “I thought we were getting somewhere.”

Elma opened her mouth to speak and found no words. Her face heated.

The assassin grinned, fastening his jerkin until his neck was once more obscured by leather and linen. “Youareyour father’s daughter.”

Elma’s throat constricted, the ice in her gut rising up to choke her.I want to be alone, she thought. She wanted to be alone in the vast tundra, a speck of color against a white-grey expanse. Nobody, forgotten, a lost soul in the frozen nothing. She could not breathe here. She could not think.

---