Frocklin the cold's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Frocklin pulled her furs tight and slipped past the tavern's lit windows, where court servants traded whispers over spilled wine. She heard Lauren's name. She heard the word waterfall. Her blue hands curled into fists. Every rumor that spread without her was leverage lost — and leverage was the only path left to the prince who had never once looked her way. She ducked into her hidden place beyond the hedges, where a great stone cauldron squatted under a line of dangling rats. Inside, her painted proof waited: a portrait she had sketched in secret, Lauren rendered with horseshoes for feet. A promise of what Frocklin could do. A threat she could deliver. Lauren came at dusk, as summoned. She did not flinch at the rats. She looked at the portrait and her mouth thinned. "You were at the waterfall," Frocklin said. "I heard every word of your plan." "Then say your price," Lauren answered. "Quickly." Frocklin smiled for the first time in weeks. She would not transform Lauren — not yet. Lauren would impersonate Rosalind one more time, in front of the whole court, and ruin the ordinary girl the prince adored. The bargain was struck before the rats stopped swinging. The leverage was hers.