My mind wouldn’t settle.
As Kael Stark led through the Stark district’s crystalline corridors, I kept circling the sa thought: What’s happening here? The urgency in that boy’s voice when he interrupted our duel hadn’t been about politics or protocol. It was the sharp, clean fear of soone who’d just received news of a crack in the foundation of their world.
Was it another rift? Like the one I’d just sealed in the valley two days ago? The timing felt too close to be coincidence. Or was this sothing older, sothing buried beneath Iskandriel’s glaciers that had nothing to do with the blue tears in reality I’d faced? I had no answers, only the cold certainty that whatever stirred in the Frostfang Peaks had Erion Stark’s son running ssages like a soldier in warti.
I tightened my grip on Greed’s hilt. The sword remained silent, but I felt his awareness humming beneath the surface. He’d sensed it too, the shift in the air when Kael ntioned the Frostfang Peaks. Not panic. Not yet. But the quiet certainty of a storm gathering just beyond the horizon.
"Your dragon will be cared for in the western aerie," Kael said without turning. The boy moved with a stiffness that spoke of forced composure. Fourteen years old, maybe fifteen, but carrying himself like a soldier who’d already seen battles. "Father gave strict orders. No one touches him. Not even the elders who still rember the old songs."
I nodded, though he couldn’t see it. "He won’t cause trouble if no one provokes him."
A flicker of sothing; amusent? crossed Kael’s face. "After what I just saw in the courtyard? I think ’provoking’ him would be the last thing anyone in Iskandriel considers doing." He hesitated at an archway carved with eight interlocking rings, then added quietly, "Besides... the elders say the northern wastes still echo with wingbeats sotis. They claim the ice keeps secrets even from us." He caught himself imdiately, jaw tightening. "Forget I said that. Father would have my hide if he knew I was gossiping with guests."
Then he was gone, boots clicking against singing ice as he disappeared down a side passage.
Two figures erged from the archway’s shadows. Tall, clad in armor forged from pale blue ice that seed to drink the light around it. Neither spoke. One gestured for to follow; the other fell in behind , a silent sentinel ensuring I didn’t wander.
We walked in silence through corridors that defied architecture. Walls weren’t static: they flowed like slow rivers, reshaping themselves as we passed. Bridges of solidified light spanned chasms where frozen waterfalls hung motionless in mid-cascade. Iskandriel wasn’t built. It was grown, coaxed from glacier and starlight by hands that understood ice as others understood stone.
After ten minutes of winding passages, we reached a circular chamber dominated by a ring of standing stones. Between them, air shimred like heat haze over desert sand, but cold. Bitterly, impossibly cold. Frost feathered the stones’ edges despite no visible source of chill.
"A warp gate," I murmured.
The lead guard finally spoke, his voice muffled by his helt. "It will take you to the palace proper. Step through when the pattern stabilizes. Do not hesitate. Do not look back."
I studied the shimring air. No runes. No visible chanics. Just pure, refined ice magic operating on principles Tomas Veil’s scholarly life had only theorized about. Whoever designed this hadn’t just mastered cold, they’d convinced reality itself to bend around their will.
The shimr resolved into a spiral pattern of interlocking hexagons. I stepped forward without hesitation.
Cold seized , not the bite of winter wind, but the absolute zero between stars. For one heartbeat, I existed nowhere. Then my boots t solid ice again, and the world snapped back into focus.
I stood in a chamber so vast its ceiling vanished into mist. Pillars of glacier-blue crystal rose like ancient trees, their surfaces alive with slow-moving light. At the room’s center, on a dais of seamless ice, sat the Ice Queen.
She was more beautiful than the rumors suggested. Early forties in appearance, though age ant little to rulers of her caliber. Hair the color of fresh snow fell to her waist, framing a face of sharp, elegant angles. Her eyes, ruby red, burning with quiet intensity, held the sa glacial calm I’d seen in Erion Stark, but deeper. Weary. As if she’d been carrying the weight of this city on her shoulders for longer than seed possible.
And she looked hauntingly familiar.
Helene.
The resemblance struck like a physical blow. The curve of her jaw, the proud set of her shoulders, even the way she held her chin, it was all there, refined by years of rule. Helene La r, the white-haired girl with ruby eyes who’d stood in my grandfather’s annex mansion two years ago, declaring she’d been sent to evaluate as a potential husband... she was this queen’s daughter. No wonder Helene had carried herself with that unshakable certainty. She’d been raised to rule cities carved from glaciers.
The Queen studied in return, her gaze missing nothing: the white hair that marked as changed from the silver-haired prodigy in imperial portraits, the obsidian sword in my grip, the faint tension in my shoulders from my clash with Erion. She saw the man I’d beco, not the legend I was supposed to be.
"Klaus Lionhart," she said. Her voice was softer than I expected, not a whisper, but the quiet certainty of snow settling on deep ice. "Grandson of Roman. Shatterer of the Mythril Crystal. Rider of the last Night Dragon."
I inclined my head. "Your Majesty."
A flicker of sothing, not quite a smile, touched her lips. "You wonder why I haven’t asked about your mission. Why I haven’t demanded to know why the Lionhart heir rides into our city unannounced after dark." She leaned forward slightly, the light within her throne catching the frost-rid edges of her gown. "The answer is simple. Tonight is not a night for politics."
She gestured toward a doorway behind her throne. Two new guards, these wearing armor etched with constellations, stepped forward.
"You will rest in the Guest Spire," the Queen continued. "als will be brought to you. Your needs will be t. But you will not wander the palace... Not tonight." Her ruby eyes held mine, and in their depths I saw not hostility, but a warning. "Iskandriel keeps its own counsel, Klaus Lionhart. So storms must be weathered alone before outsiders can be told their na."
The guards gestured for to follow. I bowed once, respectful, not subservient, and turned toward the doorway.
"Klaus," the Queen said as I reached the threshold.
I paused, glancing back.
Her expression had shifted. The regal mask remained, but beneath it, sothing raw showed through, just for a mont. "My daughter Helene spoke of you once. She said you carried storms in your eyes even then." A beat of silence. "Rest well. We will speak properly at dawn."
The guards led away without another word. Through winding passages of living ice, up spiraling staircases that seed to grow beneath my feet, until we reached a chamber carved into the palace’s eastern spire. A single window looked out over the darkened city, its eight districts now mostly extinguished except for the Stark quarter where torches still moved with urgent purpose.
The guards withdrew, sealing the door behind them with a soft click that resonated through the ice.
I sat on the edge of the frost-carved bed, Greed resting across my knees. Outside, Iskandriel slept beneath a sky where the Harbinger Star burned just a little too bright.
Kael’s careless words circled in my mind: The northern wastes still echo with wingbeats. Dragons weren’t extinct here. They’d simply retreated to places too cold, too remote for humans to follow. Another secret this city buried beneath its glaciers.
I flexed my fingers, rembering the impact of Erion’s blade against Greed. He’d held back, of that I was certain. But even restrained, his strength had been unlike anything I’d faced since Sabrina Petrova. And he’d called "the sword that cuts fate." Not a title I’d earned. A description of what I was.
What was happening in the Frostfang Peaks?
And why did I feel, deep in my bones, that whatever storm was gathering had been waiting for to arrive?
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