Nala Sapphire's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Elara's warning stayed with Nala for days. The prince feared her strength. To thaw his frozen heart, she first had to learn what hid behind his guard. But she had never once seen him lower it. In the throne room he sat stiff on his crystal seat, gold vines curling at his boots, his gold eyes cold. She needed to catch him when the court was not watching. So she went looking for the one person the whole castle confessed to. She found the queen in a side hall, holding a weeping serving girl. Nala had heard the stories. Queen Willa hugged every crying servant. And every noble she comforted left having said something they meant to keep. The queen's white robe pooled around her feet. Her smile never faltered. She patted the girl's back and sent her on, red-eyed but calmer. "You walk heavy for a dragon," the queen said, turning to Nala. "Sit. Tell me what you carry." Nala sat. She meant only to ask about the prince. But the queen took her hand, and the warmth loosened something. "I want to reach him," Nala heard herself say. "He guards himself like a fortress. I don't know what softens him." The queen's smile widened, gentle and knowing. "My son was not always ice." She stroked Nala's knuckles. "When he was small, he kept a goddess carved from frost on his shelf. A dragon woman, blue flames in her hands. His grandmother shaped it. He talked to her at night. The day his grandmother died, he put it away. He has not looked at it since." Nala's breath caught. "Where is it now?" "In the east storeroom, under cloth," the queen said. "He thinks no one remembers." Her brown eyes held Nala's. "You asked for his weakness. It is not weakness. It is the one warm thing left in him. Be careful how you touch it." Nala pulled her hand back, startled by how much she had given away. The queen only smiled, as if she had expected every word. That was her gift, Nala saw. People opened to her like frost to sun. "Why tell me this?" Nala asked. "Because he is lonely," the queen said. "And you are the first thing that has frightened him in years. Fear and love sit close together." She rose, robe whispering across the floor. "Go. Before he decides fear is simpler." Nala walked out changed. She no longer stood blind before a locked door. She knew the shape of the key now. The prince's guard had one crack, cut long ago by grief. A frost goddess on a shelf. A boy who once spoke to her in the dark. But knowing the crack was not the same as using it. To reach that buried warmth, she would have to find the goddess herself, and risk waking the grief he had frozen over for years.