Kristian Frostborne's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Kristian could not strike the duchess and the greybeard yet. He knew they plotted. He had seen it in their feet at the gathering. But knowing was not proof. If he arrested them now, the court would call him a mad tyrant, and his throne would crack under him. He needed to hear the plot spoken aloud, by someone who could not lie. So he sent for the runed cup. His father had kept it locked away. Its rim wept cold mist, and its wintry marks forced honest words from any lips that drank. Kristian filled it with dark wine and set it on the table in a shuttered chamber. Then he sent for the one lord no one at court could sway. Cael Vorne came alone, as he always did. He ruled his own mountain keep and never let a guest near his face. He kept to the shadow by the door. Kristian saw why. Blue ice had frozen half the lord's jaw, and it crawled higher, like a wound that would not stop. Cael watched the cup and did not reach for it. "You summon me to poison me," Cael said. His voice scraped like stone. "To trust you," Kristian said. "Drink. Then answer me true. I have no other honest lord in Snowhaven." Cael studied him a long moment. He lifted the cup with a hand half-turned to ice. He drank. His shoulders stiffened as the cold marks took hold. "Ask," he said, and now the word came out raw, dragged from him. "The duchess and the greybeard," Kristian said. "What do they plan?" Cael's jaw worked against itself. "They mean to poison your chalice at the winter feast. They came to me first. They asked me to open my keep as their haven when the deed was done. I said nothing. I signed nothing." His frozen face twitched. "But I heard the whole of it. I can name the day. I can name the hand that pours." Kristian went still. Here was the proof, spoken by a mouth that could not lie. A witness the court would believe. A lord with land and no debt to any faction. "Will you name it before the throne?" Kristian asked. Cael set the cup down. "I will. But hear the cost, Frostborne." He touched his frozen jaw. "This ice is a curse laid on my line. It climbs each year. Cross the duchess for me, and you take up my enemies as your own. Her poisoners will turn their eyes to you both." He met Kristian's gaze. "I do not fight alone anymore. Neither will you." Kristian reached across the table and gripped the lord's icy hand. "Then we do not fight alone." He had his proof at last. He could break the duchess in open court now, before all the nobles. But he had bound himself to a cursed lord, and the poisoners knew a feast was coming. The blade was already chosen. Now Kristian only had to reach the feast alive.